Leather Barn gives $10,000 to rally

By Jonathan Riley

Digby Courier

NovaNewsNow.com

The Wharf Rat Rally organizers are feeling the love these days.

The Leather Barn in Annapolis has just stepped forward as a signature sponsor and donated $10,000 to the cause. And Digby town council has agreed to a long list of requests including shelling out $5,000.

“Council has always been supportive,” says rally chair Peter Robertson. “But this money allows us to go ahead and put deposits down for the big acts.”

The 3rd Wharf Rat Rally bills itself as Atlantic Canada’s fastest growing motorcycle rally. It is scheduled for the Labour Day weekend, Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. Last year 20,000 people came to Digby for the event.

Council approved an expanded street closure this year – Montague Row and Water Street will be “motorcycles only” from Mount Street to Prince William on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 1 and 2 from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. both days.

And council has agreed to let the rally use Centre Stage by the marina again this year and additionally they will use the bandstand near the Information Centre, the Digby Arena parking lot for some events and the baseball field for the Highland games.

The rally committee is doing some of its own fundraising – they are selling tickets (only 3,000) on a Honda Shadow spirit to be drawn on Sunday, Sept. 2.

New shows

One of the biggest shows this year will be a seadoo stunt team, the World Freestyle Watercraft Alliance. Eric Malone is the stunt group’s leader and eight-time world pro freestyle champ – he won the 2006 championship by landing three consecutive back flips.

His show centres around flips and barrel rolls off a floating 12-foot ramp but he also does a flip from a dead stop. Videos on his webpage also show him going completely under water on his “personal watercraft.”

Malone received a commendation from U.S. president Bill Clinton for saving eight people stranded by a flooded river in Pennsylvania in 1996.

The seadoo team will do at least two shows – one Saturday and one Sunday and may be involved with the Sunday evening show.

Street Punishment will be back again this year with all the wheelies you’ve seen before and a few new tricks to boot. Plus they are doing three shows instead of just one this year to spread out the crowds – their performances will be in the Digby Arena parking lot.

There is also talk again this year, if the Digby wharf is in public hands by that time, that a rider with Street Punishment will jump off the wharf.

The Highland Heavyweight games (men in kilts throwing rocks and logs) is another new event this year.

Organizers are hoping to run two motorcycle tours – one to Bridgetown on Saturday and one to Westport on Friday.

There are even plans underway for a wedding “biker-style” at the Information Centre bandstand on Saturday.

With five months to go before the rally, organizers are still chasing down celebrity names and acts to appear at the rally. Although nothing is yet official or even close to settled, organizers have been “headhunting” in Kentucky for one popular country act.

A tentative schedule and other announcements are available on the rally’s revamped webpage – wharfratrally.com.

Organizers are shy to predict numbers with so many unknown factors including weather. They have been hinting that the advertising they’ve done in American biker publications could push the bike numbers up to 10,000 and overall attendance to as much as 40,000.