Indiana, Anderson - Thursday, May 22, 2014 - Timberline Valley RV Resort

Bright and early this morning we headed to Indianapolis to be with our Rolling Thunder Indiana One group as they prepared to head to Washington D.C. for this year’s demonstration ride.

This year there are 73 bikes in our group, many with passengers, so I am guessing over 100 people.  Most of those people are from Indiana, but groups from Texas and Colorado also gathered here to ride with the Indiana group.

 

  

Part of the ceremony is a release of balloons with the names of the 51 Indiana POW/MIAs still missing from the Viet Nam conflict.

 

 

Governor Pence was there and gave a very impressive speech.  I think he really wanted to head out with the group.

Another part of the ceremony is a roll call of the 51 Indiana POW/MIA names, in turn each name is acknowledged as “still missing”.

Channel 8 was there interviewing people and they had a nice mention of the group and what they are doing on the news at noon.  Greg and I were shown in the newscast, standing in the background, but it’s doubtful anyone but us could have picked us out since we were just a couple of 100 plus people standing around in sunglasses, hats and black vests.

I tried to get pictures of individual bikes as they left, but the only one that turned out very good was one of our good friends Dick and Linda.  We wish them and the entire group safe travels.

We came home this afternoon and took a nap sitting outside in the nice weather.

This evening we treated our friends Mike and Susan to supper at Bonges.  They graciously loaned us a car for a month or so when we had to come home early to Indiana.  We certainly appreciate good friends.

The weather is just now getting nice enough to be able to do all of our traveling on the bike.  If our planned return to Indiana in mid-May had worked out we would have been fine.  However, sometimes the plan just doesn’t work out.

Indiana, Anderson - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - Timberline Valley RV Resort

We attended the monthly meeting for Indiana Rolling Thunder Chapter One today.  They are getting ready to participate in the 27^th Ride to the Wall over the Memorial Day weekend.  We’ve participated in this ride for the last four years and will miss going with them this year, it just doesn’t fit into the budget since we had some unexpected repairs on the RV this year.  We are now living on a fixed income and getting along very well, but we just can’t afford to jeopardize the budget.

Today we took over our past duties of quartermasters.  That spot hasn’t been filled yet so we were glad to help out.  Greg is holding down the fort while I take a few pictures.

 

There was a really good turnout today, looks like there will be about 70 bikes leaving from Indianapolis headed to Washington, D.C.

The Ride to the Wall promotes involvement in POW/MIA issues.  Our group addresses and actively lobbies our congress men and women on issues that impact the future policies of the U.S. Government and U.S. Military.  This directly relates to its handling of those service men and women that become missing or captured during a time of war.

The ride isn’t a parade, it is a protest demonstration to draw attention to the fact that we still have POW/MIAs that have not been brought home.

If you are a relative, close or distant, of an unaccounted-for Indiana service member from our nation’s past conflicts, our chapter would like to hear from you.  We are hoping to get more DNA samples to add to the Department of Defense database which will be used to try to identify remains of unidentified service members.  For more information check out www.indianarollingthunder.com

This is us on last year’s ride.  It was really cold!!

 

The chapter dedicated a POW/MIA flag at our hotel stop in Athens, OH.  That’s us  in front.