Rolling Thunder 2011

Having lived in Northern Virginia for 13 years, one thing has come to symbolize Memorial Day for me even more than potato salad or the American flag: motorcycles.

Every year, hundreds of bikers come to the nation's capital to honor American veterans. Many of them are vets themselves, usually from the Vietnam War. They are mostly men, but probably about a quarter of them are women - probably wives or widows of veterans.

You can see them along highways leading into the city, on Constitution Avenue, and even at the Wolf Trap Motel in downtown Vienna, near where I live. It's a dive - an expensive dive - but every year there's a lineup of bikes out front for the weekend.

These bikers were snapped on Constitution Avenue, as I sat at the red light for 15th Street. They parked between the Washington Monument and the White House. That's several blocks from the Vietnam Memorial, which is where most of the activity is - there's usually a few vendors set up and other things going on. When I drove by the area this morning, there was already a line of bikes, but I didn't have a red light to let me take a picture.