Ok, I know you've been waiting for part 2 for days now. I'm sorry it took me this long to get it out to you but I had out of town guests this weekend! No, really, I did!
Here is the link to Part 1 Bikes & Blues With Mickey Jones, The Bike Run for St Jude Hospital just in case you missed it. I told you about everything before the ride.
I couldn't take very good photo's during the ride, holding a camera steady on the back of a 1982 Harley Davidson Shovel Head is next to impossible, I did get this shot off of our police escort though.. Kind of...
Our parade route took us over the Granada bridge to A1A along the ocean. Last year I rode with a friends husband on a Yamaha or Kawasaki and the passenger seat sits higher so I was able to shoot photos easier.
Here is the photo I took last year of the same ride to give you an idea of the amount of bikes on this ride.
At this point when we looked out over the ocean we saw our Air Support, the Spruce Creek Gaggles. 3 Squads of 4 older private aircraft, some WW2 planes and then a 4th squad of 3 WW1 aircraft in the rear. They were circling over the ocean waiting for us. As we made our left turn to head north they paced us over the ocean. We were traveling at 35 MPH and the planes have to go a little bit faster so they would circle and go to the end of our parade line then back to the front and circle back again. It really was something to see.
Once we got out of the populated areas of Ormond By The Sea I lost sight of the planes. I thought they were behind us, but I also thought boy they've been back there a long time. All of sudden I look ahead of us up in the sky and here come headlights about 50 feet up headed straight for us. I shouted at Steve OH MY GOD HOW AWESOME and started to blubber and cry, tears streaming back into my hair as the planes went over our heads one squad after another 50 feet over our heads. I could make out every rivet on those flying machines. Bubba Baker later sent a email to the committee and he told us he doesn't often get emotional but he got goosebumps when those planes flew over us.
We then rode into "The Loop" the prettiest part of Ormond Beach. Once again, last years photos:
And back to the Iron Horse for entertainment, food, raffles, an auction and a ride in bike show.
Mickey signed autographs for awhile after we returned, Big Mike played for the rest of the afternoon, Mickey joined him for a few songs later in the day. We raised over $750 in our auction, $880 in our 50/50 raffle, $660 of that went to St. Jude! We raffled off over 50 items, it was almost too many!
We gave our Police Escorts Ride Shirts. I am currently working on a story with someone for Florida Bikers Digest, he writes it, I provide the photos, he asked if I got photos of our motor escort in the tshirts, I thought DOH!
Back to this years photos~
Shhh don't tell Steve I put him in here!
Patrick brought his very own $20.00 to give to the children at St. Jude!
I finally left at 6PM after our last raffle. I don't know how Mickey does events like this all the time. It's really mentally and physically draining. We still had our Golf Classic the next day too! I think this was the first Saturday night that I wanted to stay home in 2 years.
I didn't forget, I know you are dying to find out how much we raised on Saturday, April 14th. Our grand total that we will be sending St. Jude from both events as of right this minute is $32,475.00, we are expecting a check for over 600.00 from our patch and pin person that never came through for us. We fell short of what our committee wanted to make but we did make more then last year. Our major sponsors from this year have already committed to next year and we are already putting forth new ideas for next years events to improve what went wrong this year. We're not going to dwell on the mistakes, we're going to fix them, improve them and make Ormond Beach St. Jude's 2nd home :)
(Once all the photos are on our website I'll post that for you.)
Comments(18)