Rolling Thunder, Memorial Day Weekend, and 9/11 Pentagon Memorial

Well, we spent the weekend in Washington D.C. We stayed with some friends of ours; a BIG thanks to Kevin and Zach for the great hospitality. They took us to an awesome restaraunt called Georgia Browns in D.C. I was able to try fried green tomatoes for the very first time, and they were very good.


Saturday, we met up with Ben's motorcycle club, the Green Knights. You have to have a military ID card to be a member and any Air Force base can have a chapter. We went on a really nice ride down in Southern Maryland with the club and 3 other chapters. All together, we had 17 bikes. We had lunch in St. George's Island and it was a great day. Really, it wasn't even too hot!

On Sunday, we all got together along with some additional chapters for our ride with "Rolling Thunder". There were 29 bikes in our group and we all rode together to claim our spot at the north parking lot of the Pentagon to wait for our time to go. It was so cool and there were so many bikes.

While waiting for Rolling Thunder to start at noon, three of the guys, including Ben, took us on a very nice tour of the Pentagon. We spent a couple of hours in there and were able to see and learn a lot about 9/11. I had only been in the Pentagon one other time before this, so seeing the 9/11 memorials was really touching, especially on this Memorial Day weekend. One of the guys giving us the tour was actually in the building, on the same wing, and just a couple of floors up from where the plane hit. He gave a very touching recollection of that day and his memories of all the people that lost their lives that day. No photos are allowed inside the Pentagon, but I will tell you that there are cases and cases or memorabillia from that day. There are beautiful quilts hanging all over that were made by many different people, schools, or other organizations to show their support. There is also a map of that part of the building showing the path that the plane took on that horrible day. It showed the location of all of the people in that part of the building and if they died, were injured, or not at their desk that day. There really are no words to describe the overwhelming feelings you get from actually being there and seeing all of these things that are such a reminder of that day. They have built a beautiful chapel commemorating those who lost their lives that day. There is also a gorgeous outdoors memorial for 9/11. We didn't visit on this day, but have since. Here are some photos of our more recent visit.

If you notice, the benches are facing in different directions. Each bench has the name of a person on it that died that day. This bench with end showing (and all of them facing in this same direction) has a name on it of someone that was in the building. The benches facing in the other direction represent the people that were on the plane. The benches are in rows of the year of birth of the person. The rows are in order from the youngest person to the oldest person. The benches also are in the direction of the path of the plane and this is the side of the building that the plane hit. This was very well thought out and and is a very nice tribute to those who lost their lives that day.

This is with my back to the Pentagon facing the Air Force Memorial. That is the three pointy things in the background.

This is one of the original stones from the building when it was damaged by the plane. It is darker than all of the new stones and they ingraved it.

So, Rolling Thunder kicked off at noon, and we didn't leave the parking lot until 1:45pm. It was such a great experience and I can't wait to be a part of it again. Here is a photo of us exiting the parking lot.

Ben and I were on the last bike of 29 in our group.

We first rode over the Memorial Bridge going into DC from Arlinton. You can see the signs here. At the beginning of the bridge, there stood an Army soldier, saluting, for four hours. We headed into DC and passed the Lincoln Memorial.

We rode all through DC and at one point, there was a Marine standing in uniform, saluting as well. There were tons of people cheering us and thanking us. They would stand on the side of the road and hold their hands out for us to smack! Ben would ride by and high five them! It was too cool and such an awesome experience that we were thrilled to be a part of.