Thunder By The Bay

[joboo]

Thunder By The Bay in Sarasota Fl was a huge event that went on for several days. There were many of the downtown streets that were blocked off on Sunday for the finale. Jagermeister sponsored the big stage and the music was awesome by several bands. There were thousands of bikes, a couple of bike shows and hundreds of vendors with everything from patches to parts to bike customizing on the spot. There were some pretty cool Ventures, Royal Stars and even side cars. I know you guys are gonna complain about pictures but it was pretty hot and most of the bikes (the ones I wanted to take pictures of) were parked in the shade and my cell pictures were all too dark or had pictures of people more than bikes. There was plenty of parking that was either on the streets or huge reserved lots for those that had registered for any of the events. The food was awesome for vendor food but hey who doesn't like the Italian Sausage with peppers and onions or a deep fried snickers bar? Budweiser was the beer sponsor and there were beer tents everywhere. There were even full bar tents and even though there were a lot of mixed groups from MCs to Veterans rider groups and clubs by ethnic background everyone behaved. I was wearing my vest with my American Legion Rider emblem on the back as well as some other veteran and patriot guard patches so I was especially thankful that a lot of folks stopped me to say thank you for your service and several even thanked me for belonging to the Patriot Guard. All in all it was a pretty great time especially the charity poker run and I would recommend that folks try to make it next year.

[djh3]

Donvitto was over there somewhere. We were going to come, but the wife it turned out had a function she had to go to on Sunday. I was a little under the weather and didnt want to ride the 180 miles round trip feeling like I did. Its usually a nice calm event. Was really busy last year when we were there.

[joboo]

The paper here said over 100,000 in attendance this year, the weather was warm (80 F) and sunny after being chilly for the previous couple of days and man it really brought folks out from everywhere.