Daytona Bike Week 2012 Florida, USA

Daytona Bike Week 2012, Florida USA

(more photo's will be added during the week, so please come back for more!)

Daytona Bike Week started after a week of rain, and the beginning was a bit cloudy and during the First weekend of Bike Week some rain fell, but soon the sun came through, to become the hottest Daytona Bike Week ever. The 71^st Edition was not as crowded as it was during the good years, 10 years ago. I doubt if the expected number of 500.000 made it to Daytona Beach, more realistic numbers I guess, would be somewhere in between 250.000 and 300.000.

Daytona is mostly for the show-offs and posers, it’s completely different to Sturgis. In Daytona the average age of the biker seems to be somewhere between 50 and sixty, remember the old days when you looked at an old biker with that typical big grey beard? You had to photograph him, right?! Well, nowadays it’s hard to take a picture without a grey beard in it… Bright side is; never, ever seen so many women on bikes! On H-D's, fast Japanese sports bikes, anything! Cool, and hot to see, thanks ladies!

Trailers, pick-up and RV’s bring the modern biker to their destination. It used to be the old saying; Bikes, Babes and Booze, well, in 2012 it’s more something like Beards, Bastards and Bucks. Lots of bucks, as Daytona (like many other events) is more and more one big commercial business, a freak show where we all have to pay for. Big time. Bike parking? $5 every time you enter. A car even $10.- Greasy food, just a bite, that’s been kept warm all day, is gonna cost you even more, more than a nice dinner at a good restaurant. No wonder many vendors were complaining for not selling enough to make a profit. ‘Everybody looked, nobody bought’.

Sun, sea and the fact that Spring Break was at the same weekend was great, we had nine bike shows to cover in just seven days, there was a lot of action, good music and many nice people we met. Bike Week Daytona can’t be told, you have to experience it yourself. Hotspots were Main Street, Bruce Rossmeyer's H-D Dealership in Ormond Beach, various Saloons such as the Boothill, Kickstart and of course the Silver Saloon.

Enjoy the photo’s, more will be on the website www.madnessphotography.nl soon, a full feature will be in Bigtwin Magazine soon.