Sunday, March 11, 2012

Even on vacation, I can't seem to sleep in. As my Facebook friends could see, I was up early, and I don't think the weather was any happier than I. The rain had stopped, but it was windy and chilly.

I could hear a strange whistling noise coming out of the bathroom that I initially thought was water in the pipes from someone showering above us. I've heard that before. But when I opened the front door, the noise stopped! Close the door, noise in the bathroom; open the door, the noise stopped. It turns out, the tiny window over the tub had a slight air leak that whistled in the wind. The rest of the room is so tight that, once the door opened and the pressure changed, the noise would quit. Opening the window just a bit stopped that.

The ocean has been rough all day, and the wind between the buildings pushed us around as we headed down to Beach Street. It was a shock to see the change from last year. Except for a small handful of vendors, the east side of the street was empty. Bruce Russmeyer's Harley-Davidson store moved to Main Street a few years ago, and it looks like every store on that side had closed as well, with chain link fencing blocking most of the parking lots.

On the west side, it looked more like we've seen before, the Harley-Davidson pavilion taking up a large part of the show. T-shirt and biker accessory kiosks were there, as well as a few food vendors. Custom lighting installers were doing some business, and we looked at a really nice camper-trailer that could be towed behind Linda's trike. There was a trike vendor that had some displays of their product without the panels, so you could see how they're built. Very interesting.

When Linda's knee began to bother her, we stopped in at the "B" Street bar (a tent) for lunch. Good music, good people, pretty barmaids.

I went over to the food kiosk next door to get some food. I had a Polish Sausage dog with peppers & onions, and Linda had just a plain Polish Sausage. The guy called over to the cook, "One naked polack!" Funneee.

I thought our 400 mile was long. We met a guy that came down from Maryland yesterday. 835 miles. He said, "When I hit Myrtle Beach, I was just hittin' my stride!" That's a long ride.

Linda found some nice shirts, and I found a good pair of shades. We're hoping that Main Street will be livelier.

One of the locals told me that, a few years ago there were over 650,000 visitors for Bike Week. This year, they're hoping for 400,000. That's almost a 40% drop in attendance. With gas prices going crazy, I can't imagine trailering a motorcycle down from Michigan or New York. This economy is tough on a lot of people.

We went out for dinner at TGI Friday's, and it's damp, windy and chilly. It's supposed to be much better tomorrow, and we're just gonna hunker down for the night.