Original publication: BikerTrash.com
Original byline: Staff
GULF COAST THUNDER RALLY-BILOXI MS
Amy Edgerly
When I first saw the Gulf Coast Thunder bike rally in Biloxi, MS advertised, I thought to myself, “Self — how would you like to go where there are bikes, beaches, bands and casinos?” and I answered, “Self — I’d love it!”
Thus it was decided that Joey (the old man) and I would head east the weekend of October 27 – 29 for the 1st Annual Gulf Coast Thunder bike rally.
Friday morning we set out from Houston early, early in the morning to begin the 6-hour cruise on I-10 to Biloxi MS. We kept thinking we’d see lots of bikes on the road as the morning progressed and our destination become closer, but it really turn out that we didn’t. One or two, here and there, but otherwise just ours (on the back of the truck since we brought the young’uns, too).
It was a beautiful day, and we arrived at the Grand Casino at our original ETA, about 1:00 p.m. While I was checking in, Joey noticed and exchanged pleasantries in the lobby with the hotel’s entertainment for that evening, Mr. “Kiss This” Aaron Tippin. He was just so excited; Joey, that is. And just when Joey thought it couldn’t get any better, he headed down to unload our FXR off the truck and the Tippin road crew were also unloading their bikes from a trailer and lent Joey a hand getting our bike down.
An added bonus for me, I got to see an old friend by attending this rally who had moved from Houston to Purvis, MS a few years ago. I hadn’t seen Melonie “Aunt Mel” since she moved and was happy that she met us at the hotel and visited with us while Joey and our daughter, Simone, had a nice swim in the beautiful hotel pool that overlooked Beach Blvd., Casino Row and the Gulf of Mexico.
After a couple of hours of unwinding from the road trip and having a wonderful catch-up visit with Mel, she graciously offered to take the kids with her back to Purvis for the weekend to hang out with her and her family. This turned out to be great, the kids had a great time up there, and we had a great time in Biloxi! After the kids and Aunt Mel were on their way, Joey and I jumped on the bike and road a couple miles up Beach Blvd. to the Mississippi Coast Coliseum to check out the Thunder Rally.
This was the first of many trips back and forth on this road that weekend. Whoever planned this was a genius for logistics in this respect, because my, what a lovely ride it is. I wondered if everyone knows that Biloxi has beautiful white sandy beaches, palm trees and a gorgeous view of the Gulf? Those gentle, salty sea breezes were a biker’s delight for certain.
So, we arrive at the rally, get our press passes and get checked in and all, and get to meet Mr. John Settle, the actual man behind the Thunder, who owns and operates Cycle Promotions, USA, and the promoter who put this rally together. We also met his associate Mr. Mike McSweeney, who was instrumental in getting bikertrash.com to come over and cover the rally. After a little chat about the biz, and introductions to a couple of the Andrea K Models, who were there to model the vendors’ wares (or wears, as it were) throughout the weekend, Joey and I began our vendor crawl. It turned out to be a perfect time to arrive, as John Kay and Steppenwolf, the slated entertainment for that evening, were doing their sound check right at that moment. After their sound check, the Mill City Rockers played to a rather scarce crowd, but it was early in the event. The Mill City Rockers are an original material hard rock band out of Providence, Rhode Island who came down to perform through out the rally.
I’m the one in my marriage who believes there are two kinds of music — country and western — but Joey really loved the Rockers and later that night they were kind enough to give him their current CD, “Travelin’ Dreamland” which he also loves. They are a bunch of really cool guys with really heavy New England/New York accents, which Joey also dug, being a Massachusetts native himself. We hope that bikers in the Northeast will go see them when you get the chance.
So, Joey and I cruised around, checking out all the vendor booths, trying on beanies, looking at some Badass leather (hey, that’s the name of one of the vendors…! In fact, I ended up buying a really cool vest from him!), t-shirts, helmet stickers, Bourget bikes, bike accessories, chrome, chrome and more chrome, beef jerky, jewelry, and on and on and on. We decided it was time for us to ride back to the hotel before it got dark, get cleaned up and be ready to return in the evening.
After cleaning up, having a bite to eat in one of the hotel restaurants, playing a few slots and making our money back that we had spent for dinner, we rode back to the rally in time to see the last half of the Steppenwolf show. By that time the crowd had swelled and there were many more people, and as expected, was a very enthusiastic audience for Steppenwolf. We took pictures of a few happy faces, made a couple trips to the beer bar and walked around meeting folks and getting briefly acquainted. It was after Steppenwolf that we headed out to the parking lot to watch the biker exodus from the coliseum and where we ran into the Mill City Rockers and Joey got his CD.
Then, we were pretty darn pooped from the long day, we rode back our hotel, played a few more slots and got ourselves up about $100, and went to bed and crashed with happy biker visions dancing in our heads.
Saturday Saturday morning we arose early (9:00 a.m.) for the event I had been waiting for, the poker run. We rode to the coliseum for the start of the run at 10:00. Our cards were $10 each, half of which was donated to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Biloxi, the other half going towards the prizes. Quite reasonable in my opinion. Then we were off to the first stop, a couple miles down Beach Blvd., a bar called Bounty Hunters.
There were a few more of the early poker run entrants who had drawn their cards and were waking up with a beer or Bloody Mary breakfast, as were we. At this stop we met a really neat couple that we ended up riding with all day, Jose and Shari. Meeting them turned out to be really cool, because they provided us with a real treat later on that night, which I will tell you about later. In the meantime, we finished our Bloody Marys and moved on to the next stop, one of 4 cycle shops that were to be all the subsequent stops on the run. (I wish I could remember the names of each shop, but I had to turn in my card at the end of the run, so don’t have that information with me anymore.)
However, our hosts at each shop were friendly and accommodating, allowing us to snap photos of them and their stores. The last stop on the run for us (because we switched stops 5 and 6) was the Harley Davidson shop that was brand new and quite spiffy. It was here I purchased my requisite H-D T-shirt from my travels, while Joey got a kick out of someone’s little dude riding the Harley kiddie ride in the store. We jumped on I-10 and rode that to I-110, back down to Beach Blvd., and around back to the Coliseum to turn in our crappy, loser cards, as we all drew really bad hands.
This little stint back to the rally was the only time we actually got to ride over probably 30 mph, as the poker run took us through the busiest streets in Biloxi and the Saturday morning traffic was bumper to bumper just about the whole way. I have to admit, this was a bit disappointing to us. I guess we expected we’d have more countryside riding and rural stops on the run. But that is only due to our Texas conditioning of riding from ice house to ice house on poker runs, or just for pleasure.
I understand that without those wonderful shop owners participating, we wouldn’t have had a poker run at all, and what’s a rally without a poker run?
Once we were back at the rally and our cards were turned in, we hit the nearest food stand that fortunately served Greek food (a favorite), because we were positively starving. We scarfed down some real lamb gyros dripping in cucumber sauce while we kicked back at one of the shaded tables, occupied by other hungry bikers as well. After our repast we did more shopping and schmoozing and also watched the fashion show courtesy of the Andrea K Models , during which time I decided that I was definitely going to get me that vest I bought. Joey shutterbugged the models (poor Joey!), and when that was through, we walked over to the Dyno Guy’s mobile shop and watched Jose’s bike get diagnosed and tuned.
Here we met “Puppy” DeGroat and his lovely wife and had our picture taken all together. Puppy then took us over to show us his bike that was entered in the bike show. Throughout the day Saturday, bikes had been riding in for the ride-in bike show and man, did we see some “purty” ones! What I enjoy about bike shows is seeing all the ingenuity and creativity that goes into a lot of these custom bikes. You see things that make you say, “Man! How did he think of that? “What a neat idea!” Things like a taillight that is cutout of the fender in the shape of the H-D logo.
And theme bikes with paint and accessories to go along with a person’s nickname or one certain item or image. And I have to admit, I also love all the pretty colors… but I’m a girl, what do you expect?
Well, it was truly a beautiful sunny day, so Jose, Shari, Joe and I decided to do some more riding. They are from Biloxi, so they showed us around to a couple of other spots and watering holes. We also went back to Bounty Hunters and commiserated with a handful of others for a bit, played some pool and hung out.
As dinnertime approached we started tossing ideas around about where to go to eat, and then Shari came up with a brilliant idea. She is the manager of La Cucina, the very upscale Italian restaurant in the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino. So she invited us to join them for dinner there, and thank God we did! We were treated to one of the most exquisite dining experiences of our lives: Grey Goose martinis at the beginning of a 6 course dinner consisting of an appetizer sampler tray which included calamari and large scallops; a creamy seafood soup to die for; a brick oven goat cheese stuffed pizza with truffles; lobster champagne risotto; entrees which were 20 oz filet mignons with port wine sauce and portobello mushrooms for the guys, and haddock in lobster sauce (served by the chef himself) for the ladies. Since we were stuffed by then we had just a dessert wine in lieu of an actual dessert.
Throughout the meal we also enjoyed 2 different kinds of wine. We had such a lovely time and were treated like biker royalty. I guess it’s true — you just never know what kind of people you will meet when hanging out with bikers!! We took our time over dinner of course, but pretty soon 9:00 p.m. was upon us which was time for the drawing to give away the 2000 Indian motorcycle over at the Grand Casino. So the guys rode on over there to cover that while we ladies stayed behind to enjoy another bottle of wine with Dominick, the manager of the restaurant that night since Shari wasn’t working.
When Shari and I arrived at the Grand, the drawing was over and Joey had taken many pictures. He and Jose were enjoying a cocktail at the bar next to the hotel lobby at that time, and were just about ready to call it a night.
However, within a matter of minutes, who should emerge from a private party room right next to the bar, but Crystal Gayle. I guess Joey was still able to think on his feet because he didn’t hesitate to introduce himself to her and politely ask for a picture with his wife (me!) and she very sweetly agreed. Yes, her hair is still almost to the floor… but what surprised me is how petite she is! She seemed to be a very kind and gracious person.
It was a real thrill for me to meet her. It had been a long, fun-filled day for us and now it was time we called it a night. Jose and Shari went on home, and we went on up to our room.
Sadly, we had to miss the rally’s activities the following day because we had to drive up to Purvis to collect our children and then drive back to Houston.
However, it was just impossible to leave without one last ride, so Joey got up and left at about 7:00 a.m. and rode back down to the Coliseum. The Charlie Daniels’ road crew was busy at work setting up for that afternoon’s concert, (which I will never forgive myself for missing). Joey, being a musician himself, couldn’t pass up the chance to hang out with these guys, which he did for a bit. When he returned to the hotel to pick me up to go to breakfast, he reported astonishingly that Charlie Daniels has 12 violins he uses for live performances. All I could say was “Damn! Damn! Damn! I wish I could go see him!”
Anyway, we took one last cruise on the bike along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to grab breakfast. I couldn’t return home without being able to say I went to the beach, so after breakfast we walked across the street, took off our shoes and took a little walk down to the water. There we communed with pelicans, terns and egrets and bid our farewells to the lovely scenery we had enjoyed these past 2 days. We got back on the bike and rode to the hotel to load it up on the truck and check out of the hotel. Joe loaded the bike while I checked out and got a not so nice surprise. I hate to slam a sponsor of a bike event, and the Grand Casino was a big sponsor for this one. But I was not happy when I checked out and found I had been charged twice the phone quote as the “special rate” for the Gulf Coast Thunder weekend. Just a word of caution to everyone who ever makes a hotel reservation with an 800 operator; make sure you understand what they mean when they quote you a rate. Don’t take it for granted that they speak the same English that you do. To them, “for both nights” actually means “for each night”, which we all know are two entirely different things, but apparently not to the hotel industry. It also would have been nice if the public relations person for the Grand hadn’t prevented Joey from taking a picture of a nice woman sporting a www.bikertrash.com halter top next to the Indian bike that was given away. But sometimes things just don’t turn out like you plan or hope. C’est la vie.
However, without sponsors and vendors who participate in these rallies, we wouldn’t have them to attend at all. So I’d like to make special mention of those sponsors and vendors who made this rally possible, and encourage us all to support them when given the opportunity.
This was the first year for the Gulf Coast Thunder rally in Biloxi, MS, and we hope these sponsors and vendors will return next year, along with even more bikes!
And don’t forget to tell us your stories!
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