Everyone Wore Chains and Leather.
Within days, I’d forgotten about jumping out the window. I was too drunk to care.
Bike Week is, essentially, a week-long party that takes over an entire town – in this case, Daytona, Florida – terrifying local residents and sending them indoors, or enticing them outdoors to drown in the deafening roar of engines that never stops.
Bike Week is an experience that would be best finished for bystanders in one day. But for those who partake in the multitude of activities offered to the throngs of bikers who attend, one day would be insufficient.
Motorcycles lined the streets, parked three- and four-deep along the curbs with a never-ending line of bikes cruising past.
Everyone wore chains and leather. Men had scraggly, ridiculous beards of all shapes and colors. Women wore virtually nothing – and, sometimes, nothing at all.
Shops on the main drag sold everything from food, jewelry, and official Bike Week gear to leather jackets, swimming pools and vintage motorcycles. The most popular thing to buy at Bike Week, by far, was a tattoo. Lines for the pop-up tents and vendors offering tattoos snaked into the streets, blurring the line between “queue” and “crowd.” Most of the people in the lines were already covered with ink – brightly colored birds and flowers on the women, skulls and knives etched into the men. Some of them were completely covered – meaning, I couldn’t tell where they might get another tattoo, since there was no skin left on their legs, arms, torsos, necks or faces.
At one point, I decided to get a tattoo: a black panther, which would go on my upper left arm. Something about my seventh grade book report on wild cats made me believe this was a fine choice. And Larry – who already had some small, rather lame tattoos, promised to fund this effort if I wanted to stand in the line.
I did. Larry went off to look at the bikes, and I got in line.
Figuring it would be awhile, I stood prepared and double-fisted, not wanting to go without beer for a moment. After the first beer, I had to use the facilities – but I held it … just long enough to finish the second beer. I had to find Larry to get another one and by the time I did, I had decided the tattoo line wasn’t worth it.
While the main draw was walking up and down the street looking at all the different motorcycles (with me proudly yelling “shovelhead!” and “panhead!” at Larry), Bike Week also had fine recreational activities like motorcycle races, bike shows, light shows, mud puddle jumps, beach rides, concerts, and parades.
My least favorite activity – which took place at every large biker event I ever attended – was the Weenie Bite Competition. Bikers would ride through a field with a “chick” on the back, standing up, both of them cruising slowly under a hot dog, hanging from a string. Chicks were supposed to bite off as much of the hot dog as they could, sometimes being smacked mercilessly in the face until the bike spun out and pulled away. There weren’t a lot of actual bites taken from that hot dog.
I wonder if they switched out that disgusting hot dog for every rider. Probably not.
“Do you want to do it?” Larry asked.
“Fuck no,” I said.
Larry laughed. “You’d be good at it!”
“I am not doing that,” I said. It looked not only difficult but humiliating.
And I never tried it, a fact of which I am extremely proud. I was plenty humiliated by other activities.