Thunder in the Streets

49 Photos   Oct 10, 2009

This past weekend, we piled into the rig and headed down the road to the 5th Annual Sanford Bikefest, aptly named “Thunder in the Streets”, at Fort Mellon Park in Downtown Sanford. Situated on the southern shores of beautiful Lake Monroe, the town of Sanford really goes all out for this event. The most interesting part of the whole thing for me was the level of integration among different styles of bikers. As it says on the Sanford Chamber’s Website, “Weather you ride a classic, sport-bike, chopper, custom, cruiser, metric or three wheeler, as long as you have the biker spirit and want to enjoy great music, vendors, food and people you are welcome to Sanford and Thunder in the Streets.”

Suprisingly, I found this to be very true. The biker spirit was front and center, no matter what you ride! About half of the attendees were crusty ole Harley folks, with their stickers, patches, parts and gear. Eveyrone customizes their bikes to much that strangely enough, they all start looking the same again. The other half of the folks attending were much more diversified than I had thought possible. There were Latino and African American biker clubs, crotch rockets, Motorcross, American cruisers and even a fare number of my peeps – the Three Wheelers.

We had a great time! Everyone was really nice, and most folks were in good spirits in spite of the blistering heat. The Ural got its fare share of smiles and “thumbs-ups” from some and curious questions from others but all-in-all, everyone seems to really like the rig. We didn’t stay for the evening festivities although I’ve heard it’s usually quite a party. Maybe next year. This was really a dry run for Biketoberbest this weekend, and overall I think it went really well.

Unfortunately, Dre has to work, so I’ll probably be attending The Volusia County Sidecar Rally alone this Thursday. Without my resident sidecar monkey, I’ll have to go easy around the corners, although maybe I can still talk Diggz into joining …