Escort Service

The flag setup that I'd been working with (for the bike) consisted of wooden poles to hold the flags. They'd held up through all of last year, but on the Rolling Thunder trip this year, one of them broke. Fortunately, because the poles are braced together, I didn't lose the flag that was attached to the pole that broke, everything kinda stayed in place...sorta. But it was apparent that I needed to upgrade to something stronger.

So what to go with? I checked out the local home improvement stores to see if I could find stronger (hickory) wood to work with, but none of the tool handles were long enough for what I needed. Talking things over with McCarthy, he suggested using sections of EMT but we weren't sure if they'd be strong enough by themselves. I'm not sure which one of us came up with the idea to use a wooden dowel inside to increase the structural integrity (there were several beers involved in this discussion), but that was what I decided to go with. And not a moment too soon - my Legion Post had offered to do an escort!

Michael Peterson (country singer & songwriter) is the spokesperson for the American Legion Auxiliary, as well as the American Legion Scholarship Fund. He'd just been over in Iraq and Afghanistan, touring and performing for the troops, almost non-stop, for two weeks. He had just returned and had a performance to do on Saturday at Gillette. However, he was flying in on Thursday afternoon and had been invited to do a meet/greet at our Post in Sharon that evening. So that meant we needed to get the bikes out, go meet him at the airport, and bring him back!

Thursday arrived, and brought with it some blasting heat and humidity. There were 7 of us making the run, and as we waited for the departure time to arrive, we holed up inside, in the AC and out of the sun.

Thursday arrived, and brought with it some blasting heat and humidity. There were 7 of us making the run, but prior to departure time, we hid out inside the post, soaking up as much AC as possible. Billy Cabino's bike was in the shop for service, so he and Mary were riding on hers. She saw my empty back seat (complete with wraparound armrests and everything) and asked me if anyone was riding on the back of my bike and I said no, so she then said “I’m going to look good on the back of your bike today.” LOL

Before long, it was time to roll on out. The new flag-mount setup wouldn’t be tested too much for the ride down, as the flags were furled for this leg. It’d be the return trip, with flags unfurled and at highway speeds, that would really test things out. Anyway, it was time to roll!

Rolling out of the Post…

We arrived at TF Green and made our way to the short-term parking lot. Well, our bikes weren’t big enough to trigger the ticket machine at the gate, so we had to turn the bikes around and ride against traffic to reach a different lot (as per the attendant’s instructions). We were kinda fuming at this, but luckily a cop arrived and, seeing all the flags on the bikes, asked what was going on. We explained we were there to pick someone up that was returning from Afghanistan and escort them back to our Post and that we only needed about 20 minutes. He directed us over to the loading/unloading area (the area with VERY STRICT “No Parking” enforcement) and told us to park there. Sweet! Front row!

Inside, we ambled about for a few minutes until Michael and his manager Jill arrived, where hellos and handshakes were exchanged all around. Then, it was back out to the bikes!

I’d unfurled the flags when we first parked, so it was simply a matter of hopping on and going. We hit some rush-hour traffic up through Providence but once we cleared that, it was smooth sailing for the rest of the ride. We made it to the hotel, got our guests checked in and then we headed back over to the Post for some well-deserved beerfreshments.

Here’s a shot as we were heading back to the Post from the hotel. As you can see, the flags were flying great!
We had a couple of hours to kill before we’d need to head back over to the hotel, pick our guests up and bring them over to the Post for the official meet/greet. All went well, there were all kinds of Legion dignitaries from all over, and they all said the night was great.

But the best compliment came from our guests themselves. At the end of the night, after Moose dropped them back off at the hotel, he came back and told us that, in the many, many years they’ve been doing these tours and such, they said they’d never seen/experienced anything like the escort we gave them.

Not too shabby at all, and we congratulated ourselves in proper fashion (cold ones, all around).

Ride Hard, Take Chances