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Daytona is different. The passion is there, and more of that later, but Bike Week is a place where everyone can be a biker for a week. Imagine a TT where instead of thousands of motrocycling visitors descending for a fortnight, the Manx population simply wheel Fireblades and Gold Stars out of their garages, don leathers and helmets, then carry on with their lives as before. The only bikes travelling to the Bol D’Or on trailers are those destined for the track rather than the campsite, and once the crowds start rolling in, the police throw away the highway code and concentrate on quelling the worst of the rioting. The trailers hauling Harleys to Daytona will be shipping jet-skis to Lake Woodruff in a month’s time, and their owners will be back on the golf course next week. The idea of deliberately flouting the law simply doesn’t occur to them. This is a place to be seen, where being present and being one of the crowd is maybe more important than the event itself. Back on Main St there’s a roaring trade in the special sticker-covered fibreglass pudding-basin helmets that almost everyone wears. Equally popular are black souvenir tee-shirts, presumably to be worn next week on the golf course. Florida is the retirement state, and this is reflected in the grizzled features and lifted faces of many riders cruising past. More... |
© 1998 Martin Gelder