Outer Daytona

Outer Daytona

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

IF THERE WERE EVER A YEAR FOR RIDING to Daytona, rather than hauling a bike down there, this was it. Global warming or a fluke in the jetstream (pick one) brought 70-plus temperatures that stretched all the way from Wisconsin to the Deep South.

For the first time in years, I was able to load my bike (BMW RI 100RS this time) into the van without slip-sliding around in the snow. We also loaded my buddy Pat Donnelly’s Ducati 900SS on a warm, sunny afternoon, and I gingerly suggested maybe we should be riding these bikes to Daytona for once. Pat sagely reminded me that we also had to get home, and that spring weather is a fickle temptress, though he did not use those exact words, much to my relief.

So the van it was. We took off early on a Sunday morning and headed down through Illinois, into Kentucky and Tennessee, stopping for the night at a motel on a Tennessee mountain ridge just off the interstate, where I was finally able to have my mandatory sacramental grits for breakfast.

In the motel lobby, I perused the usual rack of tourist brochures (“Visit the Confederate Caverns Fudge Factory & Muscle Car Wax Museum,” etc.) and picked one out on the Lookout Mountain Battlefield.

Now, I have been going to Florida on family vacations since I was a kid, and have driven to Daytona Bike Week as an adult about 20 times, and have never seen Lookout Mountain. This, despite the fact that (a) I am something of a Civil War buff, (b) every old barn in the entire South says See Rock City & Lookout Mountain in big bold letters on the roof and (c) I used to beg my parents every year to stop and let me see it.

But they were always in too much of a hurry to “get to Florida.”

And as an adult, I was always in too much of a hurry to “get to Daytona.” Or driving with someone else who was. This year, I suddenly decided, would be different.

I looked at Pat across the breakfast table and sized him up. “How would you like to get off the interstate for a while and drive up Lookout Mountain?” I asked.

Pat shrugged agreeably. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

What a guy. The first human in history who didn’t have to “get to Florida” im-

mediately. We should have him bronzed.

So, right at the edge of Chattanooga, we pulled off the highway, labored up the steep, winding climb to Lookout Mountain and got out to look around. The spectacular view alone would have been worth it, even without the historic significance of the battlefield. A wonderful place. We walked the grounds, watched a movie at the park headquarters and browsed among the Civil War books. Mission accomplished.

After 52 years and 1 month (or 456,240 hours) of life, I’d finally taken that impossible two-hour detour from forward progress to see Lookout Mountain.

This diversion, I’m afraid, set the tone for much of the remaining trip. On the rest of the drive to Daytona, I began to evolve a slightly different Bike Week itinerary in my mind. Our hotel location would play a big part in it.

When I called-late as usual-for hotel reservations near the beach, everything was full. So we got reservations well inland, at a motel on Lake Monroe in the town of Sanford. Instead of being immersed in the noise and traffic of Daytona-where loud pipes are busy saving lives almost around the clock-we would be visiting that fine city in a series of “raids” from our outlying base camp, almost 30 miles away.

In practice, this worked out pretty well. We rode through downtown Daytona and “did” Main Street only once. And that was enough. Traffic in Daytona is so clogged now on the major boulevards that it’s more a test of engine-cooling capacity than a ride. Gridlock is endemic.

Nevertheless, we made it to the track

twice during the week, once for the 600 Supersport race on Friday, and then for the 200 on Sunday, both times sneaking into town on backroads from Sanford.

In between, we took a day off to zip over to the coast with two Harley-riding buddies we’d met at our hotel, Rick Olson and Jeff Zarth, to visit the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral.

I had seen this place from the air, 12 years ago when Barb and I flew our ancient Piper Cub over the launch pads, but I’d never visited on the ground. It’s a spectacular, well-orchestrated tour with a bus ride, technical exhibits, three IMAX movies and a close-up look at an enormous Saturn V moon rocket that’s enough to leave you weak in the knees with the grandeur of it all. If you’ve never gone there, go. Makes you proud to be an American-living in a country with other Americans who are vastly smarter than you are.

Another morning, Pat (also a private pilot) and I rode over to Sanford Airport to look at a 150-horse Citabria for sale. I used to fly aerobatics in these things, and am getting the fever again.

In the afternoon, we rode up to Deland to preview the offerings at the bike auction in the auditorium at Stetson University, and then went back on Friday night for the auction itself, running into Editor David Edwards in the bleachers. Then, speaking of old friends, former CW Editor Allan Girdler showed up as a guest at our hotel, and we had dinner and breakfast with Allan and his friend Jaci.

After my usual gallon of coffee, I went running every morning, exploring the streets of Sanford, which is a lovely, sleepy old Southern town of huge shade trees hung with Spanish moss, a nice main street and grand old houses right out of a James Lee Burke novel.

It felt good this year to turn the annual Daytona trek into more of an openended, free-form vacation in the sunny South rather than a fixed ritual of events and meetings and rides. You have to remind yourself occasionally that some people come to Florida even when there’s no Bike Week.

Maybe next year I’ll see Rock City on the way down, or ride those famous glass-bottom boats at Silver Springs.

If you balance everything just right between riding and relaxing, you can still get that annual Daytona bike fix, but avoid the lethal overdose. □