Parade Day

Ok, we came, we saw, and we persisted till we got it done. Parade day, we were up at 4 and headed to town by 5. Stopped and washed the bike so she would be pretty in the parade. Realized it is almost a 2 hour drive into town, ouch, got Mike's bike dropped off and loaded him up on the trike (see picture in the gallery). The shocks were bottomed out so he did a lot of complaining, oh well. We got to the staging area like 5 minutes late thanks to getting lost on the way (bad directions due to construction) so we ended up in the Enthusiast section, longgggg wait for our turn to go. Sunny near 80 degrees, no clouds, hot, hot, hot and the parade of course took forever to get to us, we left the lot at 11:30 after waiting 3 hours. Ride took like 20 some minutes. The town obviously loves Harley, there were thousands of folks on the streets to greet and cheer on the riders.
After the parade was when it got real interesting, they parked us in an out of the way dirt lot to be retrieved after the parade was over. So, we went and got something to eat and drink and waited for awhile, then I went for the bike. Mike took a shuttle downtown to his bike, he took Minnie with him.
I hiked back to my bike and a few blocks in realized it had not yet cooled off from the parade and I discovered the roads were totally messed up, I'm trying to get to Mike's bike's location (in a nice shady parking garage) and I keep getting shunted to the right, so I circle round and try the next block where i could have turned right and went right to the lot, no joy, now I was sent to the left with no outlet, so near to the far end I park the trike on the street and begin the long walk back to the parking garage. Well, it took me so long Mike had left for the far end from me to look for me and the bike, I couldn't catch him so had to backtrack and cross the street, then he was gone. So I am working my way up the street asking all the officual looking sorts if they have seen him, finally a bus driver says waayyy up the road, so off I go. I think I walked like 3 miles today in biker boots, sucked.
Well, we finally reconnect and take a shuttle down to Veterans Park to check out the stuff down there, mostly music but a large display aobut HD, and what should I find, the new trike, I got to sit on it!!!! Very comfy and cool, but complicated. Fella I talked to said watch the DVD they give you with the bike. Good, it will take me that to learn how to use all the features.
Miss Minnie was very popular both in and out of the parade. In the parade Mike said he couldn't figure out if they were more entertained by Minnie or a guy riding bitch. Both were very popular.
End of a long hot day we finally got the bikes reunited, all our gear on and headed off to the room, (a 2 hour ride away). Got back around 9:30pm, very long day. Night now, more later, off to Mitchell, SD and the corn Palace tomorrow.