Went down to the mall today to watch, and listen, to Rolling Thunder.  Left with my buddy at 0845 and went up to Patriot Harley-Davidson in Fairfax.   Watched the groups of riders leave from there, then went down rt-66 into DC.  Took a bunch of pictures of bikes and monuments. Here are some of the pictures, there are a few more on image station if you want to check them out.  
[url]www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291786731
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[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p495b7965c36cb2a8c28385c2dc751e51/fdb47380.jpg[/img]
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p409344ab97722bb629bc71a004fd15e5/fdb47344.jpg[/img]
Selector on Full…
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/pd5a69170984ad1e7ed9e3f48e4e9f252/fdb47379.jpg[/img]
Cool airbrush picture on a Valkarie
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p7084d28b35ec93f0379a044f5a6e78b6/fdb47368.jpg[/img]
RT-50 in Fairfax @ Patriot Harley Davidson, 0910
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p5dfd844907b723cccdb96d5cde178cf6/fdb47358.jpg[/img]
Constitution Avenue
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p4f20dc6895c0b637589d7a52fd4c0583/fdb47354.jpg[/img]
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p7e910c375fd203e33753082988b20293/fdb47339.jpg[/img]
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/pe2f44feb8a8812f1d5c782bdfba7d6e1/fdb47335.jpg[/img]
Got to love the Duce and a half!  
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/pca69b0590678d7bfba32553b72e2dde5/fdb47316.jpg[/img]
Current Construction of the WWII memorial

For those of you who have never been to Rolling Thunder it is a very cool experience.  I have gone down for three of the past four years and look forward to going again.  Hope you like the pics.

Corrected links:

[url]http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4291786731[/url]

you had one to many "http://" in all your links and apparently this site doesn't allow hotlinking images either.


Edited to add: [red][b]Oh just frag it!! that site just crashed my browser when I went to it.[/b][/red]

Thanks for the pictures.

Got it all fixed up, sorry for the mess before.  I tried to slap the pictures up from image station and I had not done that before, and then did not have time to fix it.  

A few more images.
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p8977fab169f516070a10dd36104c79bd/fdb47238.jpg[/img]
[img]www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/pba1c54bf6832266c5124f960bafd46d2/fdb47320.jpg[/img]
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This line up at patriot filled the parking lot and went way over the hill, It took 22 minutes for this group alone to go by.  

Rolling Thunder is really awesome. I have watched and recorded the whole thing on CSPAN the past three years. Their coverage really blowed this year though, they didn't show much of anything.

The statue in your photograph was done by Frederick Hart.  It was eventually included in the memorial because many vets thought the wall was impersonal and did not depict the human element.

An interesting story about the sculpture is in a book of short stories by Thom Wolfe, "Hooking Up".  In it he relates a meeting between Hart and Maya Lin, the designer of the wall.  She asks Hart how he got the casts to make such beautiful and realistic sculptures. She thinks he had real people covered in plaster to form molds.  He tells her he did not cast, but sculpted the figures, like someone would carve a decoy.  She was disbelieving that anyone had the kind of talent and ability to achieve the realism of his work.  No wonder.  She designed and supervised and was declared a great artist for her work.  Hart, despite being the most prolific of American sculptors is still not regarded highly in the "art" world, which is, of course, New York City.  They still have never reviewed a piece of his work.