Finding Myself In Gateway Park Surrounded By Thousands Of Bikers At The 2013 North Texas Toy Run

A Few Of The Thousands Of Bikes & Bikers

Every year since I moved to my current location, at some point in time during the Christmas Holiday Season time of the year I seem to manage to find myself accidentally experiencing the Annual Great North Texas Toy Run with its thousands of bikers on thousands of motorbikes.

This annual Toy Run is a spectacle to behold, the likes of which I certainly never experienced during my years of living in the sedate Pacific Northwest.

I suspect the reason I find myself surrounded by bikers year after year is that this event occurs on a Saturday, with the event staged in Gateway Park, with me finding myself, pretty much every Saturday, at Town Talk, a location right in the path of the thousands of bikers.

Today on my way to Town Talk I wanted to visit Gateway Park to get new photos of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's Gateway Park Master Plan signage. For blogging purposes.

Well.

A phalanx of Fort Worth police were stopping vehicular traffic from entering the north entrance to Gateway Park, due to that area being the aforementioned Great North Texas Toy Run's staging area. I was informed I needed to make a U-Turn and was advised that the west entry to Gateway Park was not being blocked by bikers or Fort Worth police.

So, I headed to the west entrance, parked, got my photos of the Gateway Park Master Plan signage and then walked to the Toy Run staging area, drawn was I by the roar of the motorbikes and rock music blaring.

I walked amongst the assembled bikers whilst running my video camera. You can view the resulting video below.

Stuck In A Toy Run Roadblock

Even though the air was heated to somewhere in the 40s, the wind and lack of direct solar radiation, and insufficient outerwear coverage, quickly made  me colder than I like to be when no hot tub escape is in the near vicinity.

It was a quick escape from Gateway Park to the significantly warmer Town Talk where all I got was rabbit and monkey food in the form of broccoli, lettuce, carrots and bananas.

I wanted to be out of Town Talk and heading east on Randol Mill Road well before the departure, at one, from Gateway Park of the thousands of Toy Run bikers.

I missed that goal by about a minute, and so got stuck in a police roadblock  for about 20 minutes while all the bikers made their way down the road to their Interstate 30 destination and the throngs of onlookers seeking candy tossed by passing bikers.