Leesburg Valkyrie Ride In Today

[Valkahuna]

The Florida Valk Riders had another successful Ride-In today. The weather was great! Hey, it's Florida, right?

Every year Leesburg Florida has a Bike event that is extremely well attended. This year was no different. We decided to meet at a local restaurant for a "Meet, Greet, and Eat" session that we are so good at. We had at least 28 Valks show up. At least that what Tropic Traveller counted. Even had two friends that ride those "Rare" H-D (Jeez, there must have been a million just like them in Leesburg today - Sorry, could not help myself   !

I tried to capture most every Valk that was there, but then some others showed up later, and I might have missed some. If I missed yours, Sorry!

Here are some pictures:

































After we'd had our fill of tire kickin', stretchin the truth (I was gonna say lyin'), and of course eatin', we decided to head up the road in formation to attend a truck show. I'll tell you, WOW! I talked to one guy that had over $400 thousand in his truck, and it was unbelievable! I'll never again bitch about having to polish my Valk. You had to see these trucks to believe them, and to think these guys use these rigs to do over-the-road hauling, well, they must love to rub metal and paint! Of course, I didn't
take any pictures of the trucks. Duh!

Four of us then decided we had worked up an appetite and rode to the World Famous Yalaha Bakery for some of their fantastic desserts and pastries. Good as always!

From there we rode together until the four of us had to split up with Stuffy and his group going on to Orlando, while my better half and I rode on to New Smyrna Beach.

It was a great day, great folks, beautiful bikes, and good food. I rode about 225 miles total. The only bad part of the whole day was that we had decided to show the M/C public what a great looking M/C should look like. So, the entire group rode (that's actually a very generous term for part crawl, part wait, sweat, fume, dodge - in short, all the things that normally makes us avoid these events) through the middle of Leesburg, and what was conservatively 10s of thousands of Motorcycles. I was very happy to have my Valk. It got hot, but not near as hot as it would have been on my Air Cooled H-D had I been riding it today. All-in-all, not too big a price to pay for the great day we had!!

[Bob M]

We had an awesome time with all you Valk riders today!   Looking forward to doing it again.

[larue]

Got home around 7pm, it was a great turn out and great parade going into Main street, good time at the chrome shop, of course i got me more bling . Good to see everyone again and the new folks as well...looking forward to more of these.
Great activity report Pete, nice job on the pics.
Tex and knucklehead , sorry i lost you guys in traffic

[FloridaValkRyder]

Thanks Pete for the great pics and narrative. I always bring my camera but usually only take close-up pics of things I want to do to my bike, which are more every time we get together. Thanks Bill for calling this ride. A special thanks to you all for making my friend Jim feel so welcome to the group, no surprise there. I told him you guys were the best!!    The ride through Leesburg was "interesting" to say the least. I can't believe we made it all the way through without hitting anything or anyone. Pete, you and your lovely wife have a safe trip back to CT. Pleasure meeting y'all and all the new Florida Valk Folks and seeing all my friends again!
Jeff 

[Jo k]

It was an awesome turnout! I will never remember the names of all the new people we met We watched for you guys on Mainstreet for some photos, but I guess we missed you.  Pete and Viv have a safe trip back north and on your adventure in July (I am jealous)

[Bert AKA,Valkaholic]

Thank's Pete for posting the Pic's.we had a Great time riding with you all .It was nice to see all of the folks that we know and was great to meet alot of New Valkyrie Riders today.It may have  been a little Hot today,but come back to Florida in late July or August ,and we'll  show you Hot..It was worth every minute of the Ride to see that many Valkyries in my Mirrors and to have them all gather up at the same place at once.  Hope you all had a Safe Ride Home and let's do it again soon.

[Thunderbolt]

Good report Pete and wow what a good showing of Valkyrie's.  Must have been JeffK's Blown 6, he didn't have room on the tag but last I remember it is fuel injected too.  $400,000 for something you have to use to pull loads is a chunk of change.  Me I attended a Hamfest in Waldo.  Kinda like a flea martket for Ham Radio pieces n parts. 

[Grumpy]

I managed to snap a few of the trucks.





























Have lots more, just too many to post here.

[James III]

  Great coverage Pete!
What a fantastic day! Great folks, great weather, outstanding machines under the Florida sun. Excellent location call Grumpy!
I gotta say, the tire kickin' has to be my favorite, it's the motorhead comin' out in me. The knowledge each has; tips, tricks, techniques, and all sharing .....again, can't say enough.
Hats off to Perkin's staff; they seemed to get us in and out pretty darn well.
Been to Leesberg's event every year until last year. The town does a good job and it has become a Florida hallmark fest. The place is literally a full house. Riding through town is like trying to thread a needle with a bulldozer while avoiding gold leaf eggs an inch away from the tracks......you gotta have your head screwed on right.
75 Chrome Shop was really another great call. I joined Larue in the bling search and picked up a couple of items that Tundra recommended. The trucks on display were pretty interesting. A few entertainers were in the crowd including a couple of eight foot tall young women, Marlyn Monrow......ya, I spelled it wrong as the identity is questionable, hey, it's a truck stop, buyer beware.
I know Tex thought he was back in Texas (everything is bigger......)

Pete, you and your wife enjoy the summer up north, be safe and we'll see you in the fall!
Thanks Florida Chapter members for a great day!

[Valkahuna]

Thanks for all the well wishes for the summer. We'll miss you all!

Thunderbolt, you were missed. Glad you had a good day!

Bill, thanks for the truck pics, and for bringing Murphy with you today. I guess I was too awestruck from looking at the trucks to take any pics of them. Murphy's bags look really good.    Your "touch" is all over his mounting brackets. The bags look almost good enough to justify his missing InZane last year. Naw!!! He would have enjoyed roasting on the trip with us.

[Grumpy]

Thanks for all the well wishes for the summer. We'll miss you all!

Thunderbolt, you were missed. Glad you had a good day!

Bill, thanks for the truck pics, and for bringing Murphy with you today. I guess I was too awestruck from looking at the trucks to take any pics of them. Murphy's bags look really good.    Your "touch" is all over his mounting brackets. The bags look almost good enough to justify his missing InZane last year. Naw!!! He would have enjoyed roasting on the trip with us.

Murphy is getting where he rides a lot with me, he is going to Corbin, Ky next month, doing Joes ride, then we are spending a couple days in the Smokeys before heading home.  Have a safe trip back up north, looking forward to sharing the wind with you again.

[IamGCW]

Crystal and I were there and really enjoyed the meeting.  Near the end of the main street crawl another Valkyrie group rider chatted with us.  He had not heard of the VRCC and will look for the Florida chapter.  He counted 32 Valk's passing by. 

The Perkins pictures are not showing. 

Gil

[James III]

Just a photobucket tip....if you post a picture from the upload file, it has a certain IMG coding. If that pic is then moved to one of your final destination folders it now has a different IMG coding, thus the posted photo goes away and is replaced by the "image moved or deleted". Not sure if that's what has happened but I did find that out the hard way more than once.
Hope you can get those back up Valkahuna; really great photos and your extra effort to take them.
Grumpy, your truck pics captured a lot better detail than I could see, as dang, it was hot out there......
You know you have it going on when your fan blades are airbrushed! Really nice machines.
Oh ya, and Thunderbolt, we did miss you.

[_Sheffjs_]

Well, for us, it was our first bike fest and first meeting of the group...we had a blast, everyone was so nice...I could have stayed in the Perkins lot the whole day!! Great pics too, thnx  the ride thru town was....indescribable lol I can't wait for the next get together....has it been planned yet?  have you ever done a cookout at a park somewhere?? And next time, I will bring name tags ! ~ Sherry & Jerry

[valkchik]

Todd and I had a great time, as well. The Perkins parking lot meetup was the highlight, as well as the Ride of Valkyries. Being our first rodeo, we checked out some of the vendor booths at Bikefest instead of heading to the truck show (sorry we missed you, Greg! a pleasure meeting you and look forward to another ride), then we took a ride around Clermont with our new friends, Jerry, Sherry and JonPaul, and our old friends, Bob and Michele.  All the guys could talk about afterwards were farkles and the super-charged Valk. It will give these gear-head guys fond memories for weeks to come. Thanks for the pics -- Valks and trucks. All that raw power and chrome got Todd's blood boiling. Something I haven't been able to do in years!  

Also, I saw in Gil's post that they met another Valk rider who was unaware of our Board. Initially I had trouble finding it, too, and so have others. When you go the VRCC main website, you easily find the FL Chapter website but not the Board where all the action is.  To help combat that, I took the liberty of creating a Facebook page for the Florida Chapter, directing any viewers to the Board. It won't take the place of the Board as I have disabled posting, it's meant only as a directional beacon. So maybe that will help new members find us. If you have any suggestions for the FB page, let me know.  https://www.facebook.com/VRCCFlorida

Thanks again, all, for another successful Valk meetup!
Pennie

[John Schmidt]

It's really quite easy to find all the boards, just click on the link below then save it as a favorite. When it comes up, scroll to the bottom and you'll find all the individual chapters that have been changed over to the new format that the main board went to well over a year ago.

You can also just type in a search for VRCC and Valkyrieriders.com will show up on the search page. Click on that and you get the "old" homepage. Click on General and the page/link below comes up. But, like Valkchik said...if you're not aware of the VRCC, it's all moot. I'm just glad to see all the new faces and bikes. Like I told one unnamed person....."it's nice to make new friends, you get tired of making the old ones." 

http://www.valkyrieforum.com/bbs/index.php

[IamGCW]

He was looking for the main board not the Florida Chapter.  Once on VRCC it is easy to find the other boards, for the internet familiar that is.

Gil

[F6MoRider]

Also posted this to Valkchik's other post on the new beacon on Facebook.  When one comes in via valkyrieriders.com, the Message Boards Menu area contains BOTH a "Chapter Boards" link and a "Message Boards" link on the main page, the "Chapter Boards" link includes a link to the OLD VRCCFlorida board. One must select "Message Boards" from the menu list and NOT the "Chapter Boards" link to find us here on the new board.

This is a problem.  Could the admin edit the URL for the old VRCCFlorida link and replace it with the URL that brings the user here?  That way, either links will point here to the new board.

[texaninsouthfl]

All,

It was a real pleasure meeting and riding with you all. It's always nice to put faces with names. I hope to get more opportunities to meet up with y'all in the future... I wish the south Florida Valkyrie folks were as active as the central Florida folks.

The only bad part of the day for me wasn't the slow ride down main street... I enjoyed that. The only downside was my Phat Girl now has an inferiority complex. She says I must take out a loan so I can adorn her with all the shiny stuff and accessories sported by all her sisters she met on Saturday. She felt down right homely by comparison... 

Larue... we waited for you down at the end of Main Street... we figured you got hijacked by some tatted up, toothless old biker chick drawn like a moth to a flame to the endless chrome bits on your bike. 

[Valkahuna]

Hey Tex,

It was great of you to come up to share some wind with us! You and the other "Southerners" are always welcome. As for your favorite bike feeling a bit "under dressed", just remember Cinderella. When she got a new dress, she was the "Belle of the Ball". 

(You are probably wondering how I know this stuff, well, I'm not weird, just have a seven year old grand daughter who is all over this stuff! )