The die is cast for Daytona

 

A rat bike at Daytona Beach Bike Week.

I crunched the numbers and decided this afternoon, weather permitting, that I'm riding to Bike Week in Daytona Beach with my Jonesboro BMW friend Charlie Parsons.

I've been to Bike Week - billed as "The world's largest motorcycle event" - twice in the early 1990s. The Space Coast BMW Club used to host a sort of mini-rally at the Bulow campgrounds a short distance northwest of Daytona and that's where I camped in 1993 and 1994.

I rode down from Indianapolis both years. I lacked proper cold weather riding gear the first year and when I rolled out on Friday afternoon, most of Indiana was covered with snow. I was wearing a huge set of Carhart coveralls over my leathers and looked like an overstuffed piece of furniture perched on my '91 K100RS.

I bought a proper cold weather riding suit from one of the Bike Week vendors and rode home in style. The next year, I'd had Gerbings Heated Clothing wire the liner to my First Gear jacket and enjoyed a much more comfortable ride to and from Daytona.

Riding to Bike Week from Indiana is always a dicey proposition because you never know when the weather window is going to slam shut on you and leave you stranded in Florida or somewhere between Daytona and home.

Although the distance from my Arkansas home to Daytona is comparable to the Indy-to-Daytona ride, the entire trip is done at lower (read "warmer") latitudes, removing a some of the weather worries. I've looked at a couple of routes. One is the shortest, a diagonal across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. The other is longer, but probably warmer, riding down I-55 to Louisiana, then following I-10 east to Jacksonville and then south on I-95.

Bulow is gone and the Space Coasters no longer host the event, but a specially organized BMW Club - B-Cubed (Beemers for Bikeweek and Biketoberfest) - has organized a similar affair at a travel park/campground at the I-95 exit to Flagler Beach.

I lost interest in Bike Week after 1994, but the trip is starting to sound like a good idea again.