On June 18, the Blue Knights of New Jersey hosted their 21st annual Gooch’s Garlic Run.
The run, which takes bikers on a police escorted ride from Rockaway, NJ to Little Italy in New York City, benefits local children in need of medical treatment. The 2007 run raised over $50,000 for four families and had approximately 3,000 bikes participating.
This year’s run was hampered by rain, but not halted. Registration started at 4 p.m. and was still going strong when we arrived at 6:30. Don picked me up from work and we left as the clouds were getting thicker and darker. We had looked over the route we would be taking to get there and had figured on just a little over an hour. We were wrong. Traffic on Interstate 80 was almost at a standstill and the rain started coming down pretty steadily.
Several other bikes, their owners not in raingear, had whizzed by us earlier and we began to catch up to them, finally stopping with them under an overpass. As far as we could see, traffic simply wasn’t moving and it was looking like we’d miss the run. The strangers we were with regrouped and we, too, decided to keep going. We followed them as they used the shoulder the rest of the way, bypassing the poor souls sitting in an unmoving line of metal boxes and made it to the starting point with time to spare.
The rain was letting up as we pulled into a most amazing sight. What later would be counted as 1200 bikes awaited us, lined up in several rows behind traffic cones. Volunteers stood at the head of each line and waved us out, a small group at a time. Outhouses were supplied, and I wasted no time in taking advantage before we got into one of the lines. Patience is necessary, but the line was smooth and we didn’t have to wait more than 15 minutes before moving out.
Directed by local police, we pulled onto Interstate 80, which was closed just for us.
Now, if you know anything about New Jersey, you know it is not lacking for drivers and that commuting is a religion. When I told my husband that they would be closing I-80 for this, he was insistent that could not happen. I wish he could have seen just how wrong he was. We pulled onto the highway and were greeted by people who had staked spots along the road’s edge to wave, take pictures and enjoy the spectacle. The only cars on the road were those of the police officers.
When I ride, I keep my camera around my neck, shooting all around me, even behind me. As far as the eye could see, all there was were bikes. As I was shooting, I was directed by Don to look up and saw a rainbow hovering overhead, as if it was guiding us. I thought I wasn’t able to capture it, but when I looked at my images later that night, there it was.
The ride is leisurely and, because of the huge number of bikes and the fact that it is a Blue Knight event, it was completely guided by law enforcement officers from every town we passed through. Approaching the Holland Tunnel, there is a sign directing drivers to stay to the right and give the motorcycles the left lane. Of course, there were the usual few who either cannot read or just hate bikes and attempted to go to the left, but they failed. Once in the tunnel, the roar of the bikes was simply awesome. One or two just had to over-rev for the heck of it, which just added to the echoing sound. We had passed one minor incident and I can assume everyone made it safely into New York.
We arrived in Manhattan about an hour after we headed out and 1200 bikes parked around Foley Square in front of the Manhattan Supreme Court building. It was, quite simply, an amazing sight. If it had two wheels and an engine, it was parked in Foley Square that night. Choppers, customs, sport bikes, cruisers and some that probably shouldn’t have left their driveway, all converged into one place. Once parked, everyone went their own ways. We started out walking into Chinatown (primarily because we didn’t know where we were going), then asked a couple of patrol officers where Little Italy was and once we had it figured out, had our dinner at a little restaurant after being accosted by a very friendly maitre’d.
For a June evening, it was pretty cold, but the rain, by now long gone, had given us a crystal clear night. People who made the ride in were starting to head home, a little tired, their stomachs satisfied and in a great mood. We joked and talked with a few fellow riders as we headed back to our own ride, now almost alone on the street, which made it much easier to find, I must say.
Gooch’s Garlic Run is one of the largest runs on the east coast. This year, due to the weather, it broke no records for attendance, but the Blue Knights did raise over $40,000 for four families in need. The entire ride covers about 35 miles and takes about an hour to complete. I can’t think of a better reason or a finer way to visit Manhattan.
By Louise Reeves
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