Yeah…I was a little confused when I saw the flyer at Sweetwater Harley-Davidson in San Diego…a “dead bird” run. The ride was scheduled for New Years Day at 10:00am. I was vacationing in Chula Vista and enjoying the great riding weather there so I figured, what the heck…I’ll see what it’s all about.
I got to Sweetwater Harley about 9:40 and was surprised to see a lot of bikes. HOG members were running around getting waivers signed and asking what we wanted for lunch. We had about 4 choices for lunch and when we asked where we were going, we were told we would find out when the ride ended.
I met several Road Captains and other members from Sweetwater HOG and everyone was real friendly. Kind of reminded me of home!!!
More people showed up and before we knew it, there were about 100 riders ready for the dead bird run. At the pre-ride briefing, I found out why it was called the dead bird run. Sweetwater HOG figured there were so many turkeys eaten on Thanksgiving and Christmas, a “dead bird” run would be appropriate for New Years. That’s where the name comes from and it appears to be a popular event.
We were split into 5 groups with a Road Captain leading and trailing. I took a position in the second group right behind the lead Road Captain of group 2. I’m not familiar with the San Diego area so I wanted to be sure to stay up front to keep from getting lost. Tammy was the RC I was following and she did a great job with our group. There were several times when the group got split up and she made sure everyone was back together before she made a turn and left someone behind. She was a great RC and an asset to Sweetwater HOG.
The ride took us all over and around San Diego. We went by Hotel Del Coronado and up through La Jolla and then out to the east through the surrounding hills. They made one fuel stop about 80 miles into the ride that took a little long because there was only one unisex bathroom. Everyone hung out and talked until we were ready to go again. Let me tell you, I saw some areas of San Diego that I didn’t know existed.
Of course, we were all curious as to where we were eating lunch but they wouldn’t say. Coming back through San Diego, we hit some freeways and made some pretty good time. We were headed right for Sweetwater Harley so we speculated they were fixing a BBQ or something like that but we were wrong. We rode right past the store and onto southbound I-5. Tammy took us into Chula Vista and turned off the freeway at the offramp I took to go to the RV park. Long story short, we ended up at the Marina Grill right next to the RV park we were staying at. I knew I was going to have some good fish and chips because I’d had a great breakfast there the day before. I didn’t have to ride long to get “home!” This was great ride with a fellow HOG chapter so when you’re out of town vacationing, check out the local Harley store to see if there are any rides going out. This one was a blast!!!
Dave Fisher, Director/Editor
