Fort Worth HOG Careity Foundation Relay 2013

Saturday and Sunday April 27 thru 28 brought about a very long day full of loads of fun, live music, eating, and riding!  Fort Worth HOG and other sponsors, Rumbling Rider included, took part in a charity drive for breast cancer through Careity Foundation.  This was a 24 hour relay ride which started at 9am Saturday morning until 9am Sunday morning.  From start to finish for 24 hours there was a group of bikes on the road at all times.  As a group was arriving back at the dealership, the next one would take off, this went on around the clock.

There were 2 routes set up, one for day time which was on very curvy back roads, and the other for night which was all freeway. Each route was 1 hour long and you would sign up for what times you wanted to ride.  I think I did 5 of the day route, and 5 of the night route.  So that put me at about 1 every other hour minus a couple hours when Margaret and I went to grab some dinner.

There was live music from 2 bands, both were just phenomenal.  I am not knowledgable about local bands, its not my scene, but one of them was a DJ's band from Lonestar 92.5.  The other band had probably the best cover artist singer I have heard in my life.  They did a lot of Heart covers and it was perfect.  There was a pancake breakfast and a BBQ lunch for food.  There was also a bra decorating contest which was appropriate for the purpose of the event.

Saturday morning started chilly in the mid 50's and very overcast but eventually warmed up to low 70's and clear in the afternoon.  By Saturday evening the temperature began dropping quickly and brought us back into the mid to low 50's for the duration of the night.  Along with the cool temperatures was a heavy dew that set in.  So we were chilled and damp.  About 8pm on Saturday the crowd of enthusiastic riders began to dwindle down to the regular HOG chapter members that keep events moving.  Until about midnight riders would show up and do the night route once and then go home.  After midnight however, there were probably only about 20 bikes or so that stayed through the night.  The riding groups dwindled down to about 6 riders for each time block.  We would try to sleep as much as we could but it was cold and that made it difficult.  There were movies that were projected onto the wall of the Honda dealership next door throughout the night to watch as well as some seriously yummy snacks.  Thumbs up to whoever baked those chocolate chip cookies.  And I would like to give special thanks to.......Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, for your constant injection of caffeine that kept us going.

The rides during the night were awesome.  I really enjoyed the ones in the dead of the night between 1 and 4am.  The roads were free of traffic, the earth was quiet except for the rumbling of the bikes moving along the freeway.  I noticed something during the deep night when I could focus on the sound of the bikes without other noise distractions.  Call me crazy but, I'm right.  The sound emitted from a group of Harley's when moving at a constant uninterrupted speed harmonizes within the same sound frequency.  All you hear is ONE deep rumbling of all the bikes instead of each bike individually.  I have never experienced this when riding with other brands of bikes.  It was great, we would be moving along, mesmerized by the harmonics, then pass under a bridge and have it amplified for that second it took to cross under, then back to that low synchronized frequency.

I didn't take any night video of the event.  Ive tried some night shots with the GoPro but it just doesn't do well in low light and night.  Since the route did not change theres not much to the video. I did however take a lot of pictures and a bit of video during the day route.  Some of the route you might notice repeated a couple times in the video but with different riders.  The funnest ride for me was when I went with Road Captain and Sergeant at Arms "Dave".  He likes to ride fast and lean into those curves, I was loving that. You'll know which ride that was from the video, its obvious and I was glad the clips from that one came out good.

We managed to raise over $13,000 for the local foundation. 

Fort Worth HOG Chapter: Careity Foundation for Breast Cancer 24 Hour Relay Video