I was up at 4:30 this morning so that I could get an early start this morning. It had rained last night, but thanks to my new tent, I was very dry! I packed up everything and got an early start on my way to Washington, DC.
I got caught in the rain about 25 miles into my trip. Luckily I had stopped for gas. The rain only lasted about 30 minutes. I waited it out under the overhang at the gas station. Once the rain stopped, I started back on my way.
The weather going through West Virginia was very foggy and at some points I couldn’t see more than 50 yards ahead of me. Needless to say, I went very slow when it was this bad. After a while, everything cleared up and it was nice riding after that. The road was dry and there wasn’t much traffic to ride in.
I stopped at one of the rest stops on Highway 79 in West Virginia. They had a group that was providing snacks for a donation to their group for the entire Memorial day weekend. I had a hot dog and soda for breakfast. It really hit the spot. I took a short nap while the rain dried. When I got up, the roads were all dry and riding was much better once I got into Maryland.
I got to the Pentagon, where they were gathering for the Rolling Thunder Ride, at 1:30. They were already in the overflow lot. I got there and they said that we wouldn’t ride until about 3:00 in the afternoon. We just had to sit and wait. A few of us decided that we are just going to go over to the Rolling Thunder area at the mall and avoid the wait. The police said that unless we rode in the parade we would have to park outside the area which was quite a ways away. We decided to wait and ride so that we could park on the inside and close the the event area. We walked over to the main lot to see how many motorcycles were over there. There were motorcycles as far as you could see. No wonder we weren't supposed to start riding until 3:00.
Finally, at about 2:45 they told us to move up and get ready to ride. We moved up and staged. We finally rode at 3:00. It was pretty neat riding through Washington, DC with all the people standing along the side of the road. It was a really neat feeling. We rode in on Constitution Avenue, over on third street and then back down on Independence. The disaster started at the end of Independence wen we all just came to a big clogged up mess. People that were directing people just said to “go this way” to the parking area. The next thing we knew, we were headed across the bring back to Virginia. It was a great big mess! For an event this big, that had been going on for as long as this one has, you would think that they would have things more organized. If I would have know that it was this disorganized, I would have avoided it and done other things.
I finally made it back to the mall where the event was going on. It took almost 45 minutes to get back there. I walked around for about 15 minutes and decided that I would rather hang out back at the hotel with the guys from the ride.
I went over to the Holiday Inn where everyone in the group was staying since I didn’t see them at the event. I ended up talking to Larry McAndress, who I ate dinner with in Junction City, KS. We had a nice conversation. He said the group went over there about 6:30 and they rode about 12:30 so they were out of there pretty quickly.
After we finished talking, I went over to the church where we were camping and found a nice spot on one of the couches where I will be sleeping tonight.
