Easy Rider - Bike Week at Myrtle Beach

As we made our way to Holden Beach this weekend, we decided to detour to Myrtle Beach to pick up a car carrier that Henry had loaned out.  Little did we know that we were headed right in the middle of the 2011 Bike Week of Myrtle Beach.  This is the week where once a year, thousands of motorcyclists converge on this popular coastal area called the Grand Strand.  This year, over 200,000 bikers were expected to attend this event, and I think we saw 190,000 of them judging by the traffic jams we kept getting into.  2011 is Myrtle Beach's sixty-seventh year of hosting this event.  Can you imagine what some of those bikes looked like back in the 1940's.   Here's a photo of a 1940 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead that I found.  Nice, isn't it?

found this photo on "theworldofmotorcycles.com"

We saw all ages and shapes of people riding - from clean cut to not so clean cut.  And the clothes they were wearing?  The men's clothing didn't vary a lot - most had on Harley T-shirts but the women's clothing was a wide assortment ranging from Bikini Babe to Soccer Mom.  And a few with pretty much nothing but body paint.

There was rarely a parking lot that didn't look like this.

It was a little out of our league, so we puttered on out of Myrtle Beach as fast as our little Ford truck could go, but we talked about it afterwards and thought we would fit in better if we were to show up next year on something like this:

I may have to grow my hair a little longer and get a tatoo on my shoulder - Henry will also need long hair, a beard and a tatoo or two - but we've got a year to get prepared.  Can't you just see us now?  Who knows, it might be fun!