Love Ride 24 Thoughts - Huge success
We did the Love Ride yesterday which was the 24th annual Love Ride. As mentioned, it's a huge charity event put on by Glendale (CA) Harley Davidson and has become quite the show over the years with numerous celebrities involved and riding (Peter Fonda, Lorenzo Lamas, Robert Patrick [very cool dude btw] and Jay Leno who has been the Grand Marshal for some time.
As was the case last year, the pre-ride rally at the Glendale dealership was again haphazzard and rushed. And while I absolutely love Leno and think almost anything he says is hilarious, he really should at least give himself a little more time next year and get rid of the bed hair.
This year, after some 13 years of the ride gonnig up to Castaic Lake, the rally headed east out to the Pomona Fairgrounds. And unlike years past when you weren't even able to purchase anything from the limited vendor area, the vendor area this year was huge, full of great booths and for the first time in memory, I was actually interested in some of the stuff. I mean, how many "bad hog", "biker babe", "the bitch fell off", etc t-shirt vendors can you see over and over? The selection here included these staples of course but there was other cool stuff as well.
The weatherman was predicting light rain but the day turned out perfect: light clouds, broken sun and temps in the high 60's so everyone was happy. The free (not including the 70 buck donation per person) grub sucked for the most part but hey, it's all for a good cause so who wants to complain?
The entertainment? Aaaahh....well, listen: After 280 year old BB King two years ago who bored me and most of my friends to tears, we had the Black Crows last year who freakin' tore it up with a great show. Considering past acts have included ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen, Sammy Hagar, Jackson Browne et al, we were wondering who they might feature this year. And the headliner was.....Greg Allman. Yaaaawwwwwwnnnnn.
Look, I grew up on the Allman Brothers but for Gods' sake, can we get someone playing some current music??? As was the case two years ago, we bailed out shortly after this yawner commenced. It was just as well, we'd gotten their early for the lineup and were amongst the first in the fairgrounds so by the time Allman came on around 2, we'd been there for about 4 hours and had our fun.
One item that did make my day was meeting a minor celebrity from one of my favorite movies of all time. If you're under 50 you might not remember or care but American Grafitti was a fine 1973 film about kids growing up in the early 60's. It starred many people who used it as their launching pad to bigger fame including Harrison Ford, Ron Howard (who was already known as Opie), Richard Dreyfuss, Suzanne Somers and nominated for best supporting actress, Candy Clark who played the spaced out blonde Debbie. We walked into the vendor area and she was sitting there signing autographs. I'm not big on the cult of celebrity in this country and Candy Clark is probably known to very few people but it was very cool to meet her and she couldn't have been nicer. When I saw her I blurted out something like, "Holy Shit" and she laughed and walked right up to me and gave me a huge hug. My riding buddy had no clue who she was at first and later told me he thought we knew each other.
So Candy signed an awesome pic from the movie and was gracious enough to let my wife take a pic of us together. "Peel out" indeed. Thanks Candy.
As was the case last year, the pre-ride rally at the Glendale dealership was again haphazzard and rushed. And while I absolutely love Leno and think almost anything he says is hilarious, he really should at least give himself a little more time next year and get rid of the bed hair.
This year, after some 13 years of the ride gonnig up to Castaic Lake, the rally headed east out to the Pomona Fairgrounds. And unlike years past when you weren't even able to purchase anything from the limited vendor area, the vendor area this year was huge, full of great booths and for the first time in memory, I was actually interested in some of the stuff. I mean, how many "bad hog", "biker babe", "the bitch fell off", etc t-shirt vendors can you see over and over? The selection here included these staples of course but there was other cool stuff as well.
The weatherman was predicting light rain but the day turned out perfect: light clouds, broken sun and temps in the high 60's so everyone was happy. The free (not including the 70 buck donation per person) grub sucked for the most part but hey, it's all for a good cause so who wants to complain?
The entertainment? Aaaahh....well, listen: After 280 year old BB King two years ago who bored me and most of my friends to tears, we had the Black Crows last year who freakin' tore it up with a great show. Considering past acts have included ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen, Sammy Hagar, Jackson Browne et al, we were wondering who they might feature this year. And the headliner was.....Greg Allman. Yaaaawwwwwwnnnnn.
Look, I grew up on the Allman Brothers but for Gods' sake, can we get someone playing some current music??? As was the case two years ago, we bailed out shortly after this yawner commenced. It was just as well, we'd gotten their early for the lineup and were amongst the first in the fairgrounds so by the time Allman came on around 2, we'd been there for about 4 hours and had our fun.
One item that did make my day was meeting a minor celebrity from one of my favorite movies of all time. If you're under 50 you might not remember or care but American Grafitti was a fine 1973 film about kids growing up in the early 60's. It starred many people who used it as their launching pad to bigger fame including Harrison Ford, Ron Howard (who was already known as Opie), Richard Dreyfuss, Suzanne Somers and nominated for best supporting actress, Candy Clark who played the spaced out blonde Debbie. We walked into the vendor area and she was sitting there signing autographs. I'm not big on the cult of celebrity in this country and Candy Clark is probably known to very few people but it was very cool to meet her and she couldn't have been nicer. When I saw her I blurted out something like, "Holy Shit" and she laughed and walked right up to me and gave me a huge hug. My riding buddy had no clue who she was at first and later told me he thought we knew each other.
So Candy signed an awesome pic from the movie and was gracious enough to let my wife take a pic of us together. "Peel out" indeed. Thanks Candy.
posted by Mike at 9:50 AM PERMALINK
2 Comments:
hey man, glad to hear you had a good time at the loveride. i thought the vendor area had some cool things to see as well. we were there for our first time this year with our hearse and it went really well. have a look around our site if you have a second, id appreciate any feedback you may have.
http://blackvelvethearse.com
great picture and a great movie.
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