Day 6, Monday, July 14, 2008 – 15 miles
This was a busy day but we only put 15 miles on the bike!
Since I kind of glossed over it yesterday, we are at
Billings for the Gold Wing Touring
Association’s (GWTA) “Gold Rush” rally. It is an annual national motorcycle
rally held at
various locations around the country. Last year was in Sioux Falls, SD and that
is where we
made our hotel reservation for this year. As you can tell, this trip was on the
calendar a
long time! The organizations byline is “Destination Friendship” so it is
basically a social club
built around motorcycling. They embrace all brands but the Honda GoldWing is
special.
We started out with registration and then moved on to the Opening Ceremonies.
I took a bunch of pictures and showed you this one but I
can’t do justice for the 1100
crazy bikers that were registered. They get loud, they get silly, they all have
fun. After that was
done with, we attended a seminar on Mountain Riding even though we had
experiencd ours
on the way to the rally. On of the takeaways was about the pressure changes
from sea level to
altitude. Ever have your little plastic bottle of shampoo squirt you when you
left a lower place
and went to a higher one? It’s the pressure change that causes it. The bottled
air pressure is
higher than the surrounding air at the higher altitude.
Of couse the opposite is true too. This bottle was opened on
Beartooth Pass and brought down
to Billings’s 3000 or so feet. (Didn’t Cathy model this well. The instructor
had us pass it around.)
We grabbed some lunch from the nearby Cracker Barrel and
then went back to our room to
regroup. (Cathy takes a nap.) To tie up some loose ends, I called my brother
Alan to see
where he had been hiding. (We called my parents Sunday to find their story and
my other
brother, Duane sent me an email.) It turns out that Saturday, my Mom needed
fasting labs
drawn, so after that they had gone out to breakfast. It was at the same
restaurant where my
brother Duane’s CMA (Christian Motorcyclists Association) chapter was holding
their
monthly meeting so they all ate together. Meanwhile Alan was up in Wisconsin
helping my
cousins Steve and Patty clean up all the downed trees at their lake cabin at
Fox Lake which
happens to be our final destination [Cathy and I] before heading for home.
Mystery solved!
After our little break, Cathy and I went back and played
Dirty Bingo where you ultimately steal
the prizes from each other. At the end, everybody gets to open them. When you
steal, you
have to introduce yourself so they know who to dislike.
The little girl is kind of sad because some big biker guy
(me) stole one of her gifts.
(It’s that ugly yellow thing in the next picture, shown after it was stolen
from me)
Since it created such a fuss, the winning lady had to open it in the middle for
all to see.
It was some sort of musical flower pot that played “Daisy,
Daisy”. Cathy got a can cooler
and some cookie cutters! We all had fun even though I didn’t get to keep
anything.
I guess that’s what I get for stealing from the little girl.
We left there and went to a seminar hosted by the GWTA
Webmaster on webpage design.
Dinner was at the hotel restaurant and was very tasty. Then it was on to the
light parade.
This is our region ‘E’ getting lined up. As you can see, we
are just a protion of the 700 or so
bikes in the parade. We were police escorted from the staging are up to the
Rimrock Bluffs
and back down and on to the Cold Stone Ice Cream place. We could see the line
of bikes
was already going to the top of the bluff before we left the parking lot! There
were crowds
of people waving and cheering us on so of course we all turned our radios up
loud on the
same station, used our hazard flashers and other lights as well as our horns to
make some
noise. We waited in line for ice cream for an hour and a half but it was worth
it!
After ice cream, it was back to the hotel. 12:30!! No web update tonight!
I did however, save you a picture of that missing waterfall. Goodnight!