 Daytona Bike week is an event every cyclist should experience once because it makes for a great vacation and Florida offers some great roads to ride. Vacation is supposed to be about getting away from the everyday humdrum of life, escaping the mundane routines for adventure and abandon. In short, fuck work! But when your job is music like mine, work is more of a lifestyle. On March 15th I celebrated 26 years at Long Islands #1 rock station WBAB, if you couple this with the 6 previous years of working for bands and spinning in clubs, it becomes safe to say music flows through my veins.
When I do a long road trip gobbling up hundreds of miles a day I embrace the sound of the wind and...
the bike as I carve up the asphalt. It frees my mind and spirit in a way no other activity does. However when ever I come up on a bike with a radio cranking I stretch to hear what they are listening to. Not having a radio on my bike is a choice I made a long time ago yet while on this trip several times I yearned for some tunes as I rode. As a matter of fact I almost bought a sweet little compact system for I-pods on the bike while in Ft. Meyers Harley but the $500.00 price swayed me to rethink how important it is/was.
Music is everywhere and it says so much about the dichotomy of riders gathered on the strip alone. One couple on a tricked out Harley Road King smiled and sang along with hip-hop cranking from their speakers while three bikes away someone else was pumping country. As you walk shoulder to shoulder down the main strip in Daytona you get bombarded with all kinds of music, radio stations and I-pods blasting out of bikes and bands and deejays revving up the crowd in outdoor clubs. All while emcees hawk passersby into this or that contest or purchase. Lights, signs, tits and ass, chrome and paint, every walk of life, the ever changing smell of foods being prepared and devoured and occasionally lost, all mixes with the music and the constant thunder of someone cranking their throttle just one more time. It truly is a sensory overload. Now just add beer.
Ok switch gears as we scoot down to the Florida Keys. Cruising into Key Largo next to my buddy Ski who is cranking out some county music on the radio of his Electra Glide was a welcome change to the sound of the interstate for several hundred miles, and walking into the Key Largo Grand Resort hearing Bob Marley flowing though the lobby was pure heaven. Music feeds my soul while the bike cleans it.
In the end, with a truck load of bike we left Daytona for home and scanned the radio and my I-pod for tunes all the way home. Sometimes the hum of the truck on the road was enough to lull you to never land and crash before the next driver switch and then it’s back on to the radio to wake up. Yes I love music, all kinds of it and I will eventually put tunes on my bike but they will have to come on a brand new Road Glide and that won’t happen too soon so I will enjoy the sounds of my FXDWG on the blacktop and what ever music I pass through along the way. Ok I have to go watch the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Rock on!
On the air and in the wind, Fingers |
ROAD MAP 
