'2 Million Bikers' head to Washington DC on September 11

Disclaimer: As stated by its organizers, today's motorcycle rally in DC was politically motivated. Be that as it may, the following article is about motorcycles, not politics.

Bikers don't like to be told what to do and, more importantly, what NOT to do. So when the organizers of the '2 Million Bikers to DC' (2MB) motorcycle rally received a letter from the U.S. Department of the Interior's National Park Service yesterday, denying them a permit for a ‟non-stop ride” through Washington DC to commemorate the victims of the 9/11 attacks, they decided to come anyway.

And they came!

My day began with rumors about thousands of bikers from all over the region meeting up at a Harley dealership south of Washington DC. No one knew exactly, when they would begin their ride towards DC and which route they would take (the 2MB Facebook page cited security concerns for their decision not to disclose the route but I'm thinking they wanted to keep the authorities guessing so the police wouldn't strategically put up road blocks in advance).

Conflicting news started coming in through Twitter, ranging from Metro PD threatening to arrest every biker making their way in town, to Metro PD granting last-minute permission for the rally. As always, the truth was somewhere in the middle: no, still neither police escort nor a permit for a non-stop ride, but yes, police would cooperate with the rally organizers.

A quick digression: The District of Columbia is not an inexperienced newbie when it comes to hosting a biker rally. After all, more than a million bikers flock to DC every year on Memorial Day for ‟Rolling Thunder”, one of the largest biker rallies and non-stop rides in the world. The reason for not giving permission to this particular rally was purely out of concern for commuter traffic - which is already one of the worst in the country. Add confusing traffic patterns (one-way streets that change directions depending on the time of day, for example), all sorts of motorcades, and lots of tourist buses to the mix, and you have what the potty mouth in me usually refers to as a clusterfuck - and that's on a regular weekday. There's no telling what even just five or ten thousand bikers would do to the local traffic around here. Anyway ...

At 10 am, there were still no news on the when's and where's of the rally, so I decided to swing by the National Mall on the way back from a meeting - there is an advantage to having an office two blocks from the White House after all. 🙂 I ran into a group of three dozen bikers along Constitution Avenue by the Washington Monument. They had come up the 130 miles (200 km) from Charlottesville, Virginia, but decided to skip the Harley dealership and head straight into the heart of DC instead. They told me that the others would leave the dealership at 11 am, broken up into 50 or so groups, and ride into town with the regular traffic. At that point, more scattered groups of bikers started pouring in the National Mall area, going in opposite directions, stopping here and there, seemingly unsure about what to do next. The thermometer of a nearby bank showed 92 degrees F (34 Celsius) already and it wasn't even noon yet. Not a good day to be sitting on top of a hot motorcycle engine in slow-moving DC traffic ...

Shortly after I got back to the office, the 2MB groups had begun their descend on Washington DC - clearly visible on the many traffic cameras in and around the metro DC area. As helicopters started filming and live-streaming the progress of the rally, it became obvious that the original plan had been changed. The ‟official” route no longer included downtown DC. Instead, the '2 Million Bikers' (which, unfortunately, didn't even come close to living up to their name) seemed to be content with simply riding around the Capital Beltway (Interstate 495). Wise choice, given the heat and the growing traffic chaos around the National Mall.

For a taste of what this rally could have done to downtown DC traffic, here are a few pictures of backed up traffic on the Beltway after a motorcycle wreck involving one of the 2BM riders (screen grab from a helicopter cam's live-stream on the WJLA/ABC 7 website).

For lunch, I headed back down to the Washington Monument area to snap a few photos and talk to the bikers who kept pulling into town. They were clearly not part of the actual rally and also seemed fairly confused and somewhat lost.

[cid=23383,http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/GQwi6dhK0Sg/hqdefault.jpg]

This is just my very own estimate but I'd be surprised if there were actually more than 1,000 bikers in downtown DC today. Still, it was fun to watch this rally and the news stories surrounding it unfold over the course of the day.

Next year, dear '2 Million Bikers', please plan your rally for the weekend and enjoy having the whole city to yourselves, including police escorts and as many permits as you like.