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Boston Stranglers Midnight Ride 2003
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Top level
Scoot Culture
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I took my scooter for a little ride last Friday, and ended up at the Boston Stranglers rally in Marion, MA.
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It was pure chance that I ended up attending. I got an email from Eric Porter on Thursday afternoon asking if I was going to come down for the rally. Eric gave me the email address of a "Strangler" named Buzz who lived in NH and would be riding down on Friday. I contacted Buzz in hopes of riding down with him, and at the last minute got in touch and ended up taking a vacation day from work and meeting him at the Macy's Parking lot.
We hit the open road and made our way down into Boston. Along the way we stopped in to Boston Scoot where I was introduced to "Popeye" the owner of Boston Scoot. We continued on into the city where we met up with the rest of the "Stranglers".
Everyone worked vigorously on their scoots getting them ready for the ride down to Marion. I grabbed a burger and hung out until it was time to hit the road again. Everyone (just about) was on Vespa P200's or T4's. There where a couple Lamy's and even a Bella (owned by Eric Porter).
After gasing up we headed out through the streets of boston in a cloud of 2-stroke smoke that would choke a chain smoker. Not even a mile from our start, we lost a Lamy, a Vespa and a Bella from the heat. Eric and another rider pushed their scoots back to Eric's house to grab his other Bella. We waited.
After an hour or so, we decided to meet up at Woody's house south of Boston. Woody is the owner of javaspeed scooters. We arrived at Woody's with a half-hour or so and Eric was not far behind.
We regrouped and headed out for the long part of the ride down to Marion. It was awesome riding with a large group and I managed to stay within the middle of the pack most of the time. We rode 2 riders strong through the backroads and if we came to any traffic, we hit the side of the road into single file and buzzed up to the front of the line. We even hit the sidewalks occasionally. It was a blast.
We made a pit stop along the way at a "bikes only" ice cream stand / biker shop. Buzz tried on a few leather fringed outfits for a quick laugh and it was back on the road.
We made it down to the Rally by about 7:00pm (although I don't have a watch so I don't know for sure.) and Eric was the first (And sure not the last) to dump his bike riding across the open field to our camp sites.
I quickly unloaded and setup my tent and got ready for a little partying. Buzz and I took a trip down to store to pickup some beer then headed back and started in on the beer while the rest of the people get ready for the 2 day event.
There were lots of people there already, and more kept trickling in through out the evening.
I spent most of my time at the Bonfire talking with Darren who travelled all the way from England just to come to the rally. The fire continued to grow and the crowd continued to party. After about 8 beers, I decided to head back to my tent and call it a night since it was already past 3am and I knew I would have to leave the rally by 9am in order to make it back to Manchester in time to take my wife out for our anniversary.
Morning came pretty quick and I reluctantly dragged my ass out of bed, packed up and got ready for the trip back. Looking around the site, I could see a few people still around the still burning bonfire, still drinking. A few people had just got back from a swim across the lake, while others snored loudly in their tents.
I kicked my bike over and started the journey back... but more about that later. I should have pictures and video online soon along with the story about the trip home. In the meantime, check the photos at scoot.net. Did I mention I won the award for most miles traveled? 440+ miles.
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