Ride, gather, repeat for Biketoberfest in Volusia County

DAYTONA BEACH — The thousands of bikers rumbling into your rearview mirror this week are pretty much running the same cycle:

Ride. Gather. Repeat.

“We’ll ride, stop, ride some more, have a couple beers now and then, and ride the coast,” said Mark Rowe, just one Biketoberfest visitor among the legions traversing Volusia and Flagler counties on Thursday during the fall rally’s official first day.

It was a rainy one, in places — with a few herds of Harleys getting bathed in the afternoon’s driving, sideways rain — but the crowds grew anyway on Main Street in Daytona Beach, at Destination Daytona near Ormond Beach and at biker bars like the Iron Horse Saloon in between.

“This is something else,” said Ronnie Lane, a chicken farmer from Duluth, Ga., who was chewing on a cigar, watching bikes and women pass him by on Main Street. “I’m enjoying it for an old country farmer, it’s something else to see.”

Lane, although he was wearing a biker’s do-rag from last year’s event, said this was his first trip down — and he doesn’t even have a bike.

Tourism officials say the fall rally brings about 125,000 bikers to the area each year, good for an estimated $214 million economic impact.

As for the visitor profile, looks can be deceiving. Take Kevin Halbert, one of the many Biketoberfest regulars covered in tattoos. His back, chest and arms are filled with images that represent a painful divorce — a flaming serpent (“it burned me, turned me into a snake”) and a phoenix rising out of the desert.

But Halbert, a banker from Dallas, can hide all the ink behind a dress shirt.

“What’s sweet about Daytona, as opposed to all the other rallies, is you meet people from all over the world,” Halbert said, a second before someone on a bike recognized him and shouted.

Another banker-biker, Gerald Duboulay, was enjoying a beer with Myra Castro in the shade and taking in the smell of bike exhaust.

“She could wear some Coco Chanel, and I could wear some two-stroke oil,” Duboulay said of the aroma he loves.

Motorcycle traffic was more subdued at the Harley-Davidson dealership in New Smyrna Beach, and bikers congregated instead at the traditional hangout Pub 44 on State Road 44. At the dealership, though, Denny Payne said just the lead-up to Biketoberfest has already been good for business.

“We’re pretty pleased with the overall outcome,” he said. “For the most part, it’s been very good for us . . . Most of our business comes from this influx from out of state, in times like this.”

While Biketoberfest officially started Thursday (and officially ends Sunday), the edges are blurred. The Holly Hill City Commission, for example, held a special meeting last week to declare it a 10-day event starting Oct. 7. And Mark Rowe, the biker from Augusta, Ga., who was just planning on riding the coast, said he’d been in town since Monday.