The invitation had gone out to all Ghosts and Ghouls that like to ride. It was time for the 2009 Annual Hyde Park Halloween Run! Departure from 640 South St was to be @ 11 sharp. From there, we’d roll over to Ronnies and hang out for a bit while knocking back some road sodas and sharing some laughs.
11:00 arrived and we had a respectable crew saddled up and ready.
Mike had zip tied a skeleton to his front forks – excellent contribution, Mike!
We fired up and headed off to our next destination. 25 minutes later found us turning off the main drag and into the neighborhood of our esteemed host Ronald.
And wouldn’t you know it; I was making the last turn before the aforementioned destination and was leaning hard into a left turn. Leaning harder and harder…and…dammit! Too hard! I caught the floorboard frame, and more importantly; the brand new kickstand spring! The telltale sound of the kickstand dragging along the pavement signaled to all around me that the idiot had arrived.
We pulled up to Ronnie’s and got settled. And I broke out my trusty mini-bungie cord to keep the kickstand up and out of the way where it can't cause any trouble.
Does this pic look familiar? (I’m talking about the spring, not the beer. We can ignore the beer for the purposes of this tale.)
We hung out in the sunshine and enjoyed each other’s company until it was time to roll out.
We shot to the registration location, handed our money over, and took in the sights for a few. Having arrived later than we’d planned, we only had short time until the signal was given to fire things up and head on out.
We found ourselves next to this guy, right out of the gate.
Had to catch up to him and catch a side-shot.
This guy was dangerous – riding up onto people’s lawns and stuff. What the hell is he thinking?
I tried taking a shot of myself through my side mirror…but as you can see; I have a problem keeping my side mirrors clean.
Here’s a shot of Ronnie. If you think his mask is scary, you should see him without it.
Hey kid, just look at your father if you want to see what happens when you don’t keep your hair cut short.
We made it safely through all the many towns and bystanders who were out waving us on. The weather wound up much warmer than we’d expected and by the time we arrived at the end, we couldn’t wait to peel off some of our outer layers.
The food line was beyond ridiculously long, so we contented ourselves by enjoying the road sodas we’d brought with us, and walking around, checking out creativeness of some of the bikes.
I managed to snap a pic of this bike…
…and then my camera batteries died. Man, WTF? This camera goes through batteries faster than this group can polish off a 12-pack. And that’s pretty damn fast.
The beers eventually ran out so we made our way down to the food line, finally managing to finagle some sustenance for ourselves. We mingled about for a bit longer before heading back to the bikes. The sun was beginning to wane and the temps were stating to drop. Did I mention that we'd run out of beers? We could have gone inside and paid for some, but that would be just silly.
In years past, I’ve had folks back to the house for more beers and a warming fire. This year; everyone had different things to do and responsibilities to take care of, so I bade my farewells and headed back to the homestead to catch the Pats game.
And with that; another successful Halloween Run was in the books.
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