No more Rolling Thunder after this year
 

Apparently the costs associated with the DC parade have gotten higher than the organizers can handle. Seems a shame. I only went once and it was kinda nuts, but I don't like parades much.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2018/12/rolling-thunder-to-hold-final-ride-in-2019-after-32-years/

I had heard the DC police and Capitol police are charging a ton of money for the security, and it just makes it stupid expensive to do it.

Our biggest bike gathering in Washington is known as The Oyster Run, held in Anacortes the last Sunday of September. Authorities up there have tried to cancel it numerous times, citing security costs and whatnot. The organizers have the attitude that "we are not asking if we can come, we are informing you that we are...". And they just keep coming. The organizers are, of course, the local Bandidos charter.

Interestingly, I participated in the first few rides that eventually became the Oyster Run. We started at a schitthole bar in Marysville, south of Anacortes, with the idea being that we would stop at every bar in between that served oysters. Took all day to go about 50 miles, proceeding like that. I quit riding with those guys shortly after that. Had no idea how big it would get.

Even more interestingly (maybe...) I was on my way home from Sturgis in about 2004 or so, having left the moment I arrived, and ran into Limp Lee, the Bandido organizer of the event, somewhere in eastern Montana at a gas station. He had Oyster Run flyers he was going to hand out in Sturgis. We caught up a bit, we both went on our way, and I haven't seen him since.

Funny, though, after all these years they still just tell Anacortes when they are coming. As a courtesy, you know...

George has been out for some time now, sporting a "no contact" order. We can't call him "Bandido George" anymore, because he can't have anything to do with them.

Yeah, I knew a few guys who went that route, all the way to patching in. I stuck a toe in those waters just long enough to convince me it was a really bad dead end. I soon lost track of the guys I knew who followed that path. Sometimes I wonder what ever became of them.