Each week the Lycos 50 team looks over all the queries that come into the Lycos search engine, and we look for anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes the best fun is when we find a search that leads into a subculture on the Internet that we had never thought about before.

When we were looking over the queries from last week, we noticed the term Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder wasn't anywhere near the Lycos 50, but it did get as many searches as the rock band Weezer or Star Wars star Ewan McGregor. So what is Rolling Thunder?

It turns out that Rolling Thunder is a motorcycle ride from California to Washington D.C. over Memorial Day weekend to raise awareness of Vietnam veterans' issues. The ride ends with a rally on the Mall in Washington. This was the largest Rolling Thunder rally ever, thanks to increased patriotism since September 11. Organizers estimated the number of motorcycles at 300,000 to 350,000.

That led us into the world of the bike rally. Rolling Thunder isn't the only motorcycle event to get searches online. The motorcycle enthusiasts' calendar is filled with big events all year long, and the biggest ones garner a ton of Lycos searches.

The biggest bike event is the Sturgis Bike Rally in South Dakota, which takes place each August. Looking at searches from 2001, Sturgis received more searches than any other motorcycle event, about 50 percent more than Daytona Beach Bike Week. Last year, Sturgis peaked at #63 on the Lycos 50 during the week ending August 11. Sturgis is so big that it has spawned another event called Little Sturgis, which takes place in Kentucky in July.

Daytona Beach Bike Week, which takes place in March, was the #2 most-searched motorcycle event of 2001. Daytona has become such a biker destination that it holds two events each year; the other one, Biketoberfest, takes place each (duh) October and was the #5 most-searched event.

The #3 most-searched motorcycle event in 2001 was the late April Laughlin River Run in Laughlin, Nevada. Laughlin is popular every year but received even more searches in 2002 for a not-so-good reason. The event made the news when a rivalry between the Hell's Angels and Mongols biker gangs led to two shooting deaths and a stabbing death during a fight at the Harrah's Laughlin casino.

Myrtle Beach, always a highly-searched destination online, also hosts two popular motorcycle rallies. Myrtle Beach Bike Week took place from May 10 to 19 this year, and Myrtle Beach also hosts Black Bike Week over Memorial Day weekend every year. Black Bike Week, which was the #4 most-searched bike event in 2001, actually gets more searches each year than Myrtle Beach Bike Week does.

Two other biker events also made waves online, at least in 2001, and we would expect them to show up this year as well. They are Laconia Bike Week, this weekend in New Hampshire, and the Four Corners Iron Horse Rally, Labor Day weekend in Colorado.

You can search for any of these rallies, or any other term we mention on the Lycos 50, with the new search box at the top of the page. Just click on "the web" to search the whole Internet, or click "Lycos 50 archives" to see if we've written about a subject in the past.

MONDAY: The good book.