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Getting rolling at Bike Week

Daytona brings out something special in everybody, whether you're rolling down Main St. on a custom chopper or riding a Honda CRF70 inside a giant ball of steel.

Starting with a bang

It's 10 a.m. Monday morning on the first day of Bike Week in Daytona Beach. Time for Preston Landers and Bo Gonzales to go to work.

So they fire up their Honda minibikes and ride into a 14-foot steel ball in front of a Bike Week crowd outside the Ocean Center. Within seconds, they're circulating within inches of each other in a high-stakes ride that puts them sideways, upside down and pulling a few too many Gs in a few too many directions.

Just another day in the life of a professional Ball of Steel rider, apparently.

"It just takes a lot of practice, is all," Landers says. "Once you go around a few times and get used to the G-forces, it's not too difficult."

The pair loop within inches of one another, race each other—complete with passes—and even one stunt that involves the announcer standing in the center of the cage while Landers and Gonzales circle around him sideways, taking turns plucking off his hat and putting it back on.

"I tell you what," Gonzales says afterward, laughing. "I'd sure rather be riding than standing in there like that."

Fries with that?

A few blocks over on Main St. the crowd is just starting to build. As every year, it's not easy to stand out from the crowd at a place like Main Street during Bike Week.

That is, unless you're "Hamburger Harry," the guy riding the fiberglass hamburger motorcycle and grinning from ear-to-ear. A German-born rider now living in Florida, he admits his obsession with hamburgers has led to him creating what he claims is the world's only hamburger museum in a room of his house.

A staple on the streets of Daytona, the hamburger bike started life as a 1987 Harley-Davidson Sportster.

"I wanted to create something that combined two American icons—the hamburger and Harley-Davidson," he says. After three years of work, his creation was complete.

"I built it myself," he says. "But I had some hamburger helpers."

Whole lotta love

Later that evening, with the sun just about to set on the biggest biker party on Earth right now, Bruce Reger is explaining why he loves Daytona Beach so much that the business owner from Akron, Ohio, will never leave—well, eventually, anyhow.

Reger, who has come to Bike Week every year for the last dozen years finally made the ultimate commitment, buying a second home here. He plans to move to it for good within a couple years.

"I just love it here and riding bikes. I've been riding since I could get on them. I have 12 bikes now," says Reger, who was showing off his well-lit 10th anniversary Iron Horse custom chopper (above) on Main Street. "I love the beach and I love the people. That's why I bought a retirement house here when I'm not even retired yet."

Charles and Alicia Zalesny (left), who live in Jacksonville, Florida, had a lot less farther to travel than Reger, but they're in no less love with Daytona Beach.

"I've been coming off and on for 20 years," Charles says. "People come here from everywhere. But what I like best is the new bikes. Every year, there're always new bikes to look at."

Adds Alicia: "And the weather is great."