I JUST WANT 2 RIDE!!

2016 DAV Rolling Thunder Raffle Motorcycle

I am not sure, as I have never heard any official numbers, but from my perspective attendance was way down over Rolling Thunder 2015.

Normally, starting from the Wednesday before the event, I would start seeing motorcycles headed inbound to Washington.  This year, even through Saturday afternoon, there was little thunder in the area.

Almost every motorcycle dealership in the Washington metro area has some form of pre-event the Saturday before the actual Rolling Thunder parade. Debbie and I attended the pre-event at Fort Washington Harley Davidson.  This dealership is also the Harley Owners Group (HOG) “pin stop” which leads one to believe that there would be a large crowd, as there has been in the past.  Not this year, I was very surprised at the lack of numbers at the dealership.

I make it a point to wonder around the parking lot to check out the bikes and license plates.  This year there were, of course, a lot of motorcycles from the east coast nearly every state from Maine to Florida were present. A couple plates from Texas and one from Montana were the furthest western representatives.  On the international front Canada contributed bikes from Quebec and Newfoundland.

On the way home we stopped at the Jukebox Diner in Sterling, Va.  It was a quite enjoyable meal.  The restaurant is a hat-tip to 1950s in theme and our server, Erich, was having a lot fun with his customers.

Sunday morning, the day of the Rolling Thunder parade, I decided to support my local HOG chapter with the staging for the ride to the Pentagon.  We parked 373 motorcycles in Frederick Harley Davidson parking lot. That was down from 2015 and way off the 750 staged during the 25^th anniversary of Rolling Thunder.

Next year is the 30^th anniversary so maybe the numbers will return to the norm.