INTRO
- Editor 'arris
As
I pull up to the lights at the end of Main Street the Florida drought
has just broken and Bike Week is looking decidedly wet. Theres a
girl with her back to me under a large umbrella, standing in front of
a large bath sized bucket of cold beer.
She's
abiding by the Daytona dress code, skimpy top, a leather dress that could
double as a headband and a garter belt - stuffed with twenty dollar notes.
With no customers to deal with, she pulls gently down on her skirt, showing
more thong, and pulls out three of the notes. Carefully refolding them
before reinserting them under the garter belt - just in case people didnt
get the message that she was there to sell beer in exchange for hard cash.
The
light turns green and I pull away on a Honda VTX1800 amongst a heaving
swarm of American v-twins. The air is full of exhaust fumes and the din
of a thousand slash cut pipes. The uniform here is jeans, black t-shirt,
shades, bushy beard and a beer gut (and that's just the women).
This
is early March, this is Daytona, this is Bike Week 2001.
With the main
racing events still to happen, I checked out the first weekend of Bike
Week with fellow journalist Mark Richardson (Toronto Star) and here's
a selection of some of the madness - all in easy to follow pictorial form
...
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