RACINE - It wasn't thunder; it was the parade of Harley-Davidson motorcycles which you may have heard just after 9 a.m. on Saturday rumbling east on Washington Avenue.

Darlene and John Foreman had a nice seat for it, right on the northwestern corner of highways 31 and 20 and away from all the crowds. The other spectators lined the south side of the road a bit farther east.

"Our son and daughter-in-law ride," Darlene said.

"And two grandsons are going to be coming past here," John added.

"There they are!" Darlene said about 15 minutes into the parade, as two motorcycles passed with small children in helmets waving from the rear seats.

After that, it was another day of events Downtown for the 2007 state rally of the Harley Owners Group. People were still being registered on Saturday evening, so there was no final attendance, but rally coordinator Jim Reid said attendance easily surpassed 3,500 people.

All you had to do, to see the scope of the attraction, was read the jackets and T-shirts of people walking around the Festival Hall grounds on Saturday. The Southeastern Wisconsin Racine chapter was represented, of course, as were West Bend, Milwaukee, Kettle Morraine, La Crosse and northeastern Iowa, and Raymond, Minn.

Keeping safe

After the parade arrived and the motorcycles were parked in shiny rows all around Festival Hall, a bunch of people in leather and denim filled the bleachers to listen to a couple of law enforcement officers.

Scott Geyer of the Mount Pleasant Police Department has been teaching safe motorcycle operation for seven to eight years, mostly to members of his own department.

"One of the most common causes of motorcycle accidents is improper braking," he told his audience. Rear brakes are just 5 to 10 percent effective, he said; most of a motorcycle's power resides in the front brake.

Racine County Sheriff's Department Deputy Kyle Poelmann did some quick accelerations and brakings with different combinations of front and rear, each time trying to stop before he passed a pair of orange cones representing a car which had backed out or turned in front of him. Good braking, Geyer said, is the

difference between calling a cop to complain about an accident, and calling 911 for paramedics. He showed off the ability's of his own police bike, a 2007 with antilock brakes which he said are a great safety aid.

He and Poelmann also demonstrated how to ride over a 4-inch-thick board on the pavement. Obstacles can be crossed safely, Geyer said, yet many cyclists put themselves in danger while trying to avoid an object in the road.

"I recommend that anyone who rides motorcycles, if you haven't, do a class," Geyer said.

The training required for a motorcycle license is really minimal, Geyer said after the demonstration. According to the state Department of Transportation, in 2004 the most common cause of a motorcycle accident was the cyclist losing control.

On almost any day when the weather permits, Mount Pleasant officers are out on motorcycles, Geyer said. Except for the obvious, such as red and blue lights, their bikes are standard Road Kings, he said. "The seat's a little bit different because of the amount of time we spend on it."

The advantage of a motorcycle is that an officer has much more maneuverability in traffic, he said: "We can get places where squad cars can't." Lower fuel and maintenance costs for motorcycles also don't hurt, he said.

Slip-on tough

At the vendor tents set up next to Festival Hall, you could buy seat covers for a cooler ride, short-range helmet radio systems for communication on the road, a set of LED lights for decoration, or the product which drew curious stares at the tent of T.S. Customs from Waterford. It was a full-arm tattoo pattern printed on a background of sheer fabric. Tough thus becomes a matter of slipping your preferred pattern on like a glove.

They were developed in California by a person who does temporary tattoos for movie stars, said Jeff Smikowski, who took a break from putting a 100th anniversary logo on a white Harley.

"The women like it probably even more so than the guys because they don't have to go through the pain," he said. "Businessmen use it a lot. The thing that's neat is it's a quick and easy tough-guy look and not have to be."

So is our society going soft, or, depending on your point of view, softer? No, Smikowski said, people who want the real tattoos will still get them.

Young demographic

Look around the rally, or at almost any group of Harley riders, and what strikes you is that gray hair is a common accompaniment to leather vests. That does not explain Brad Flagge, who turned 38 on Saturday and came down from Oak Creek with his 8-year-old daughter, Katie. It also doesn't explain his 10-year history with Harleys.

At the events he attends, he said, the age mix is typically 20 to 25 percent younger people. He said the noticeably higher average age of Harley riders is a combination of time and money - income to afford the motorcycle and time to take it out. Yet it's more than that, he said after a few moments.

"Ten years ago when I started, (guys) were into the fast, light-speed bikes," he said. "Harley-Davidsons, they're more cruisers.

"It's not how fast you can get there anymore, at least for the crowd that I'm in. And how I like to ride is it's the ride itself. It's the miles that you put on and the scenery that you see.

"A lot of those crotch rockets, if you will, it's about how fast you can go, and everything is just a blur. It's also, I think, a taste in riding.

"You've got to have this type of taste to be able to really just enjoy the scenery and watch the ribbon of the road."