Nov 8th - Veteran's Day Parade
Nov 8th Sat - Several of our Harley riding friends, all US Veterans represented our HOG Chapter in the Long Beach Veteran's Day parade. It was their first time participating in this event, led by our Safety Officer and the newly elected Director for our HOG Chapter for 2009 - Rick L.Dave and I had originally thought we would attend, but I really was not quite up to being back on the bike just yet - I still have my stitches and I'm not supposed to overextend my arms and chest, etc. for another 2 weeks.
Beautiful warm weather for a parade, OK, they might be a bit HOT on the bikes, wearing their branch colors under their black leather HOG Chapter vests.
When I spoke with a couple of our friends who attended they mentioned that while they were glad they went, they probably wouldn't repeat the experience.
The parade moved slowly and they were #139 in line to go down Atlantic Blvd. There was a group of veterans riding horses, followed by Veterans for Peace, riding motorcycles directly in front of their group and several of the people along the route were cheering and waving 'Mexican' flags (?) - so they had to ride extremely slowly, which is difficult to do and not use a lot of throttle, so they wouldn't startle the horses and while this particular group of our friends are all retired military, they are still very much warriors - so the whole 'Veterans for Peace' group, just didn't set real well with them.
I had told Dave that if we attended, it would be to cheer on our veteran friends, as even though Rick said all Chapter members were welcome, we didn't feel right about receiving cheers for being something that we're not - we are not US veterans.
We support our troops. We support our Veterans. We honor their service and sacrifice to our country, on behalf of all of us. "Freedom isn't Free" and "These Colors Don't Run" are some favorite patches on our vests.
Rick mentioned that our HOG Chapter has been invited to participate in the parade next year and that will be a good event for him as our new director and a veteran and son of a veteran and a good opportunity for several of our members to receive recognition - we have a lot of veterans in the Chapter.
posted by Holly @ 8:42 AM
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