DAY TWELVE - Nashville CMA Opening Parade

This morning the Harley Davidson dealer put on a wonderful breakfast for us before we headed out to the staging area for the parade.  The staging area was a parking lot which we filled with Harley Davidson’s.  The people in the office buildings around were quite surprised to find all these Harley’s pulling into an area that is normally quiet in downtown Nashville.  We had a lot of people come out of their office’s to check out all the bikes and find out what was going on.  There was lots of time to mingle and to find some much needed shade from the crazy heat that we are getting on this trip.

The parade was well organized from the time we left the parking lot all the way to the start of the parade.  There was a police escort and police directing traffic for approximately eight blocks as we made our way through downtown to the parade itself where all the floats we pulled over for us to pass through to the start of the parade and help lead the parade through the main street of Nashville.  The motorcycles were four abreast as we travelled the parade route honking, waving and of course revving our engines to the people all along the route.  There were lots of people taking pictures of all the bikes and little did they know it was just us crazy HOG folks having a blast with big smiles on our faces.  Once the parade route was complete we were quickly escorted back to the parking lot and we were able to walk back to the parade route and watch the rest of the parade come through.  This all in all seemed a little surreal as we had just been in it!!

Lunch was served at the Wildhorse Saloon as the second and third floor of the bar was set aside for us.  Great food was appreciated by everyone.  I took in the line dancing lesson and had fun with Paula trying to keep up as the music got faster and faster.  After walking a slow pace back to our bikes we headed back to the hotel to enjoy the pool.  This afternoon was very quiet for most of us as I took a nap and then Skip, Miles, Patty and I order pizza for supper at the pool.  The pool at the Ramada is indoors away from the heat!

Tomorrow we head to Charleston, West Virginia on our way to Cleveland which is about 400 miles.  So we are “kick stands up” by 7:00 a.m. again to beat some of this heat!