Yesterday morning we met up with Jimmy and headed to the Sean Powers Memorial Ride, the proceeds to go to a scholarship fund in his name. We didn't personally know Sean Powers, but he was a Hillsboro cop who was run off the rode, while riding his motorcycle home from work, by a drunk driver. We knew his sister-in-law, so were affected indirectly by the tragedy.
There was a ride last year that we were unable to participate in, but we made it this year. The Weather Gods were smiling on us as it warmed up into the low 80's (much better than the high of 69 we had the day before!) and there were just light, fluffy clouds in the sky (also much better than the dark cloud cover that we had all week).
The following is a few pictures I took along the way:
Just some of the bikes that went. By the time we were ready to leave, they were six abreast.
The Sean memorial bike (the white one)
SMB from the side
Our escorts - did I mention that Sean was a cop?
Cops from Hopkinton (where Sean lived) and Sheriffs part of our escort.
Northfield was also represented.
The two "unmarkeked" bikes are from Salem.
Headed down Main Street in Hillsboro towards the highway. We were positioned about 2/3 in back of the line.
The bikes behind us on Main Street
This is on Rt 202 going toward Henniker
There were several hundred bikes there. To give you an idea, where it looks like the road ends, that is a bridge. It is about 1/2 mile away at this point and there is nothing between us and the bridge but bikes.
OUr police escorts only had a couple of places that they had to stop and direct traffic. The local PD and Fire Departments did a lot of that for us. It is good to have a police escort - in 96 miles (slow miles - it took 3 hours), we stopped once (and that was only because we got bunched up on the return trip into Hillsboro).
Although a lot of the ride was like this, thru country roads, we did go thru a lot of towns. It was like a parade atmosphere; people holding their kids on their shoulders to watch, adults brought their elderly parents/grandparents out to wave flags, and people stopped the work in their yards to watch us go by. We waved to kids and others who waved (or looked like they wanted to wave). It must have been something to watch from their side - hundreds of bikes going by (slowly, did I mention we averaged 30 MPH?) taking several minutes to clear the area.
We met another big batch of bikers in Greenfield, who were going the opposite way. Don't know what they were doing a run for, but since it didn't look like they had police escort (at least I didn't see any in front), they were probably glad they went thru at the same time as us and got the benifit of the Chief stopping traffic
We finally ended back up in Hillsboro for a cook out lunch and meeting up with friends. We got to catch up with Sean's SIL and chatted with her for a while (saw her lovely twins too). Then we headed home as we had lots of stuff to do.
Good weather, good people, good riding for a good cause - it was a GOOD day!
Bogie--I probably should give you grief for your "adults brought their elderly parents/grandparents" phrasing (since you are now nearly 3 years older than I was when I became a grandparent); but, I'll leave that up to CK and Dudette!
The "parade for a cause" is a neat concept and I'm sure that much good will come from the scholarship fund. Good on the whole bunch! (You and WS must have taken only one bike if you had hands free to take photos.) Good pics, too!
Posted by: Cop Car | July 26, 2009 at 09:07 AM
Sean was actually from Hillsboro, and served on the Hopkinton PD. You had it backwards :)
Posted by: Anon | July 26, 2009 at 08:31 PM
Anon - you're right, I was typing ahead of my brain!
Cop Car - I don't ride in groups - even with just WS, I only ride to work (that doesn't mean I can't take the long way around sometimes though).
Posted by: bogie | July 27, 2009 at 03:55 AM
CC - about the elderly comment; these people that the adults were bringing out were easily in their 90's - if that can't be called elderly, I'm not sure anyone qualifies.
Posted by: bogie | July 29, 2009 at 07:32 AM
Since Typepad will not let me log into my acocunt - there will be no posting this weekend.
Posted by: bogie | August 01, 2009 at 06:51 AM