Thunder on the Beach motorcycle Rally 2011

Sorry this post is a little late...ENJOY!!!

April 28, 2011 packed and ready to go (around 6:30am) to Thunder on the Beach motorcycle Rally

and do a short visit with my mom and dad in Port Saint Joe, Florida. Started out as a beautiful day for a ride but ended up turning cold and had the look of rain.

Made it to mom’s house around 2:00pm, lunch was ready and I ate like a pig.

More or less, just hung around the house the rest of the day just shooting the bull with mom waiting on dad to get off work around 7:00pm.


Friday morning after a big breakfast, I decided to ride to Panama City beach to check out the rally. Road down the beach checking out the bikes as I putted along,

I was surprised how few bikes there were on the streets. The rally seemed down compared to 2008, the last time for me to attend the rally. Don’t get me wrong there were tens of thousands of bikes but just not the same as 2008 rally and it was Friday.

I pulled into one of the bikini bike wash,

as this was my hangout in 2008. (Old habits die hard) and snapped a few photos of passing bikers.

After that I headed back down the beach towards the Port, and made a wrong turn that ended up being a right turn. This ended up being a little road under heavy construction but near the end there were vendors set up in several locations…

more just t-shirt places, good place to get off your bike and walk around a little. Ended getting me a rally patch, but held off on the t-shirt…at 6’5” even the biggest shirt only fits once, one wash and they shrink to half its size.


Ended up getting home with a BAD headache, not sure what happened. I guess going all day without eating or drinking in the hot sun may have had something to do with it. Ha-ha. The next morning my dad did not have to go into work until 1:30pm so I spent the first part of the day with them…score…more free food. Dad took mom and me out to lunch at Papa Joes oyster bar & grill…food was most excellent!

I had the shrimp po-boy dad had crab paddies and mom had the fresh oysters…we also had some of the biggest fried crab claws I had ever seen as an appetizer. Mmm, Mmmm good to everything…nice call pops.


After dad went to work, I headed back to the rally around 3:00pm, got to say kind of the same old same old, just not that much going on. I snapped quite a few photos of riders,

I’ll post all of them on my faceBook account, here they are enjoy….

Thunder 1
Thunder 2
Thunder 3
Thunder 4

Woke up early Sunday morning around 5:00am (you guessed it to another huge breakfast) then after saying my goodbyes I was off…Petal, Mississippi here I come…got home around 12:00pm…nice ride.


Thanks mom and dad for the great weekend and all the free food!!!

I gained (I’m not kidding) 8 pounds in four days….good eating…back on the tuna fish now…

Till next time


Big Al

Daytona Run (part 3)

Hmmm where was I…oh yea my bike started to sput and sputter then it died, I reached down and turn my gas tank to the reserved tank and it fired back up, yea I was out of gas at 112 miles.

Something was wrong, I normally go around 140 miles till empty not counting the reserve. Anyway stopped at the next exit and got gas, luckily I had been keeping up with my mileage on an App on my Iphone; I was only getting a little over 30 mpg? What the heck? Oh well, so off we went. (more on this later)

We made it to the next two or three gas stops ok but each time I was running out of gas around 112 miles. The stalker

that had joined our group also started to complain about the speed and

the 100 plus miles we were going between stops.

I have to admit David and I found this funny, I don’t remember asking him to come alone in the first place, and it’s a free county, he could have pull off anytime he wanted to. Truth is we normally keep our speeds down; we were just trying to out run the rain.

Then we found out over lunch

that the stalker did not have a room to stay at in Daytona…hmmm where would he sleep once we get there? With a tag like this,

 he sure was not going to sleep with me. Ha-ha. These are thoughts that started going through my head. Anyway we made it to Daytona just before dark,

we said goodbye to the stalker (I call him the stalker mainly because I can’t remember his name. ha-ha)

so if you see this tag someday, tell the stalker the boys from Hattiesburg said hello. Oh yea, the stalker also road a Yamaha

So we checked into the room

got a bite to eat and then went to sleep, so we would be ready for our big day in Daytona tomorrow.


Sorry for the delay on this post, the next one will be faster.


Till next time


Big Al

Daytona Run!!

Was trying to think of how I wanted to start my big adventure story

about last weekend's Daytona run. After much thinking,

I decided to start at the beginning. Well as you may recall from a couple of posts back, the Daytona trip was more just to see how David and I could handle long hauls in one day on our bikes, first I must say we passed with flying colors.

A 600 miles in a day ride turned out to be no big deal at all, even in the rain for the first 4 hours of the trip.

Ok I’m getting ahead of myself, I said I was going to start at the beginning, the Thursday before the trip Dave and I noticed my rear tire was getting a little bald

so I put it in the shop Hattiesburg Cycles

to get a new one put on, with the understanding I could get it out Friday (the day before the trip) when I went to pick up my bike Friday I decided to get a cruise control for my bike, after hearing the shop wanted 65 dollars to install it I decided to install it myself after work Friday night. (Cheap, cheap)

Anyway the funny part was I had not packed, washed the bike, adjusted my batwing fairing and now I had to install a cruise control and be ready to go Saturday by 5:00am. (Pressure, pressure)

As luck would have it, I could not get off work Friday till around 7:00pm.  I went home, had a quick bite, then had to get the wife to drive me to the cycle shop to pick up my bike…and yep you guessed it, it was raining. On with the rain suit and a quick ride home into my shop I went.

First line of business, adjust my batwing fairing down a little so it would fit closer to my headlight (check) then came the cruise control, VISTA CRUISE THROTTLE LOCK

it’s a very simple set up, only took me around 20 minutes to install. (Check) I got to say it was one of the best things I ever put on my bike and for around 30 dollars it’s a steal (more on it later). I bought a cup holder

while in Daytona for 20 dollars so I figured I might as well show it to you now while we were on the subject of bike add-ons. The good news about the cup holder is it has a quick release so I can remove it with ease, I swore I would never have one of them on my bike, but after guzzling water

and Mountain Dews

all the way home from Daytona, I’m sold on this add on too. Then I went inside and did what every good man does, went to bed and put off packing until the morning of the trip. Ha-ha.

Lots more to come

Big Al