Parting Ways and New Beginnings

I parted ways with an good friend yesterday.

We had only been together for a little more than six years.

It may be a sign of how tightly I firewalled my professional life from my personal life that when we first became acquainted many people seized on the relationship as part of my identity.

Or was it just that people found us seemingly such an odd couple, a community marketer and a biker.

My departed friend is a Harley-Davidson Cross Bones.

I had always wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle so at the age of 61 I went at it with purpose, learning to ride and enjoy what are called heavy bikes.

The curb weight of a Cross Bones when outfitted like mine is just north of 750 pounds.  That means with my weight and gear and occasionally a passenger, I had to learn to balance and maneuver as much a half ton.

The urge to learn to ride was instilled while riding behind a close boyhood friend on his mini-Honda Trail 50 in the early 1960s.

Having said goodbye to the “Bones,” we have a new challenge now, or better said an old one.

It is a well-maintained 1985 Century Mustang II inboard-outboard bow-rider roundabout boat that we keep at the nearby lake where we spend a few days each week.

When I was about 9, I first learned to water ski behind an old plywood boat that was powered by a little 35 horse power Evinrude.  The one we have now is closer to the one my parents had in the late-1970s.

It came to me while writing this bit of memoir that I often left activities behind during my career.

I don’t know about you but I’ve often wondered about the seeming association of activities such as this with place and time and why we leave some behind and take up others.

For instance, I left downhill skiing skiing, tennis and water skiing behind when I moved from Spokane to Anchorage in 1978 although there was ample opportunity for both in each city.

Downhill and Nordic skiing were actually more accessible in Anchorage with several areas right in the municipality including Alyeska, a resort 40 miles from downtown that has been ranked among the top 25 destinations.

Big Lake lies a few miles across Knik Arm from downtown Anchorage but 60 minutes by highway skirting that waterway.  The “bridge to nowhere,” would have actually had a destination.

Similarly I carried on a love of nature photography when I moved from Spokane to Anchorage but then left it behind when I moved to Durham in 1989.

Part of the reason, I guess, could be that a person’s career tends to intensify over time, at least the way I went about mine.   Or is it just that our leisure pursuits become more ambitious?

Another reason is that my job in community marketing meant that when I wasn’t showcasing activities such as these, I was spending my time thinking about how to do it better.

But about five years before I retired when I gave notice to my governing board and the community, my mind opened to what I would be able to do when that time came.

I started going down the list of what I had been postponing doing such as learning to ride a motorcycle, learning to fly an airplane, digging into family history and researching and writing essays such as these.

During my four decade career and into retirement has been the overarching dream of spending time lakeside.

Now that that time has come, for as long as I’m able my leisure, physical and intellectual activities will revolve around the lake, which is just fine with me.

I can always rent a bike from time to time.

Two Wheel Calculus

I happened onto an accident scene two weeks ago at the base of the ridgeline where I live in Durham, North Carolina.  Moments before I headed down to grab lunch, a car had turned right in front of a scooter, giving no time to react.

As I drove my Jeep slowly past the scene, a paramedic seemed to shake his head almost imperceptibly.   Later I learned that the rider, a cook and a young Durham native in his prime, did not survive.  The driver was charged for not yielding the right of way and misdemeanor death by vehicle.

I returned home and took my much heavier Harley-Davidson Cross Bones out for a spin to shake off the effects from seeing that fatal accident scene and to remind myself how defensively you must ride, anticipating that drivers don’t see you or may do the unexpected at anytime.

Raw statistics show fatalities on motorcycles are 30 times that of cars but that drops 48% by not speeding, another 42% by avoiding alcohol and 37% more if you have antilock brakes.   That puts it far below the average for cars, especially for riders in my age group and when you religiously practice defensive driving.

Also wearing a helmet, especially when it is full face, helps a great deal.  Any DOT-approved helmet helps.  Research shows that riders without a helmet are 40% more likely to suffer a fatal head injury in a crash, 60% of which are the fault of drivers not riders.

Texas gave into special interests who successfully argued for repeal of that state’s helmet law and by doing so validated the research with lives when that state saw a 31% increase in motorcycle fatalities.

Accidents happened in the blink of an eye and ones such as the one near my house may not be avoidable no matter what you do, even if you are in a car.  It is a reminder to live every minute as though it was your last.

As a young boy I learned to ride Honda 50s and 125s across range and farmland.  But I first learned to ride defensively 46-years-ago last week when I purchased a 1967 VeloSolex 3800 from Cycles Pithioud (ad in image below) in what is now yuppified Voltaire quarter of Lyon, France.

Solex was launched in 1946 and I bought No. 4,111,740.  Lyon is a city in east-central France that was founded by Romans in 43 BC.

The dealership in that location which now sells Hondas was about five minutes from the incredible Renaissance and Gothic-laden Vieux Lyon district across the bridges over the Saone and Rhone rivers where they straddle a narrow peninsula through the city where I lived a week or so.

The VeloSolex dealer was also 8 minutes down the Saone from another one of the places where I stayed for a few weeks overlooking the Place du Marechal Lyautey and midway down to where the two rivers merge.

My new Solex was essentially a bicycle powered by a 49 cc engine that you lowered onto the tire where a ceramic roller then powered the front tire through friction.

It was a very cool way to tool around town even given the hard-earned craziness of French drivers, who nonetheless always seemed aware of those of us on two wheels.

My favorite jaunts were over the rivers to the Cathedral of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in historic section or up the hill there to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, places where this Idaho-ranch-boy would regularly sneak in to listen quietly in the near darkness to incredible music.

The little Solex would also chug its way up just northwest of town onto the nearly 300,000-acre Les Dombes.  This is where ancient fish farmers and then later Trappist Monks sculpted 1,500 ponds and lakes out of wetlands.  The rain-filled ponds would also be regularly drained and the clay bottoms mined for bricks or sediment planted with crops and then allowed to refill.

Today Les Dombes is an incredible sanctuary for migratory birds.  It was also easy enough to truck north or south 20 miles through quaint villages to wine vineyards villages.

But the little Solex was certainly not sufficient to get me the two hours up into the gorges of the Alps such as those around Grenoble which hosted the Winter Olympics a few months after my time there and were dominated by the unorthodox Jean-Claude Killy.

A Harley such as I ride today, would have been perfect for the Alps.  In fact, federal Gendarmes, a unit originated at 15th century cavalry, patrolled French highways on huge motorcycles by 1967.

I was never able to master the French-bump method of skiing moguls that Killy popularized.  However, my bother-in-law Rick is a master.  Leaning over and carving around moguls, which is called sculling, was too ingrained in me by then.

By contrast, a “bump” skier like Rick stays just as low but not as far forward and much more relaxed.  Instead of sculling the mogul, “bump” skiers ski the tops, pulling up their knees to absorb it and then using their knees to pivot off.

It was very radical at the time.  Seventeen years after my visit to the Alps along the French border with Italy, as a community marketer for Anchorage, I was part of a small group that won that city the honor as America’s choice to host the 1992 Winter Games.

We lost out to Albertville, France in that same part of the Alps.  Anchorage tried again and lost the bid to host in 1994.  Now a similar committee there is exploring a bid for the 2026 Winter Games.

I prefer to ride a Harley sitting back and relaxed and shifting with my heel rather than crouched forward and toe-shifting as many riders do on other styles of motorcycles.  Young riders may see my style as old-fashioned or traditional.  But hell, what is riding a Harley all about if it is not tradition.

VeloSolex is still manufactured and sold on that same street in Lyon, a nine minute walk from where I bought the one in 1967.  But today they have sleek designs by Pininfarina, a famous Italian industrial design firm that has also collaborate with Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Fiat and Maserati to create many classic sports car designs.

They even have a very cool fold-up version and an electric version.  Unfortunately, lawmakers have failed to pass legislation to make this type of vehicle safer in North Carolina leaving it possible for people as young as 16 to ride them without a license or insurance.

One dealer who opposed the bill was quoted as saying that he thinks “everybody should be responsible for their own actions…I really think they just can’t demand it all of a sudden and take everybody as a group and make them pay.”

I understand that conservatives worry about losing various liberties.  As a moderate Independent, so do I.  But it astonishes me that they seem to fail to grasp that requirements like carrying insurance etc. whether on a two-wheeler or for personal healthcare isn’t about losing freedom.

Requirements such as these are to prevent the costs of our actions and/or our accidents from being shifted onto other taxpayers and consumers.

The damage to vehicles and to lives is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to full-cost accounting for accidents.  There is also the cost to families, the cost of investigation, the cost of adjudication as well as the costs to other consumers left by the uninsured.

It seems like requirements like insurance are to preserve freedom, not take it away.  Just sayin’.

I’ll stick with my the Harley, but you won’t hear me whining about requirements to carry insurance, get a license and wear a helmet.  It is as much for others as it is for me.

Resurrection On Spirit Lake

Tucked into the mountains and forests of the upper Idaho Panhandle is Spirit Lake, about 25 miles from a lake where I rendezvous with family each year.  One of 76 lakes within a 50-mile radius of Spokane, it too was one of my favorites when I helped jump-start the community-destination marketing organization (DMO) there in the 1970s.

A construction detour stopped me from seeing another Spirit Lake on one of my cross-country trips but now I have another reason to there.

That beautiful, glacier-sculpted section of the northern edge of Iowa, another “I” state, is now the home of Indian Motorcycles, which along with Victory Motorcycles is now owned by snowmobile-rooted Polaris Industries.

Spirit Lake, Iowa is roughly midway between Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Clear Lake, Iowa which was made famous by Don McLean’s song American Pie as the place The Day The Music Died in 1959, six months after my tenth birthday.

That’s the night when rock and roll pioneers Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and “The Big Bopper” Richardson were all killed in a light plane crash shortly after take-off in white out conditions when a wing tip caught the ground.

Coincidentally, two other personal favorites have connections to that tragedy.  Country-music legend Waylon Jennings played bass at the time for Holly and the other groups including Dion on the tour.  He gave up his seat on the plane to Richardson who was sick.

They were replaced on stage the following night by Bobby Vee, who as a 15 year-old was put on stage as a replacement at the next stop on the tour in Fargo, North Dakota along with a band of school-boys deemed The Shadows.

The Surf Ballroom where Holly, Valens and the “Bopper” had performed in Clear Lake the night they died held 1,100 for performances.  It was similar to three ballrooms frequented by and triangulating where my friend Harvey Schmitt grew up about an hour east.

Even seven years later, hugely-popular rock and roll bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Standells performed in ballrooms not much larger than the one in Clear Lake when I traveled from Idaho to northern Utah to see them at the Lagoon Patio Gardens on July 23, 1966.

I first became intrigued with Indian Motorcycles in the early 1980s when I completed the start-up process for another DMO, in Anchorage, Alaska.  There were stories that crates of unassembled P-36 fighter planes had been found in a ravine there after the war.

Even more intriguing, the friend who was the source of that information, Ken Taylor, had been one of the few to get off the ground in a fighter plane to defend against the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

He also told me of a story that a crate of unassembled Indian motorcycles had been discovered in a cave on the Aleutian Islands many years after they had been hidden away during Japanese occupation during the war.

People often assume I take my frequent cross-country road-trips on my Harley-Davidson Cross Bones.  There are several reasons I don’t, the most significant of which is that I would miss the company of Mugsy, my English Bulldog.

It certainly isn’t out of the question, though.  In 1914, “Cannon Ball” Baker went coast to coast on an Indian motorcycle in 11 days to set a record at the time.  I can’t imagine doing more than 300 miles a day even on today’s roads but “Cannon Ball” was half my current age at the time.

Harley-Davidson has 55% of the heavyweight motorcycle market today compared to 5% for Indian and Victory combined.  Harley’s and Indians both date their heritage to 1901 when William S. Harley first drew up plans for a motorcycle, but Indian already had a prototype that same year.

However, neither was first.  That honor belongs to Daimer in 1885 with its gasoline powered Reitwagen, but Indians were already popular in Europe before and during World War I.  The US Army had used Harley’s in pursuit of Poncho Villa and used them extensively in World Wars I and II.

Indian motorcycles gradually became extinct after WWII while Harley became iconic.  British motorcycles were rebadged as Indians for a time.  And the use of motorcycles overall went into decline from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

Harley-Davidson found its way again and the brand took off in the 1990s.  The Indian brand was resurrected in North Carolina in the mid 2000s before being sold to Polaris in 2011.  It is good for Harley to have some “made in America” competition.

Indian has a historic edge when it comes to styling.  But for me, my preference for Harley is in its very distinctive sound.

Gun-Loving, Tree-Hugging, HOG-Driving and Flag-Waving

I love guns, so imagine my surprise last Friday when the Governor of Texas labeled me as among those “who hate guns, hate gun owners.”  It reminded me of a time shortly after I moved to Durham, North Carolina to jumpstart the community’s destination marketing organization.

Part of my job was to defend Durham, which I did every day.  Not long after I got here, I received word from a colleague that a law enforcement official in a nearby county noted that I had best careful if ever traveling through there.  Gulp!

Guns were a part of life where I was born.  I spent my early years on a horse and cattle ranch along the Henry’s Fork on the Idaho side of the Tetons, but it wasn’t my grandfathers or even my rancher father who first taught me to shoot.

They all viewed guns as useful tools around ranch and farmland to protect livestock or occasionally to harvest a head as food, usually including one or two for neighbors or friends.  Occasionally they would hunt with friends, but my father who was a 35th Tank Battalion veteran, always seemed ambivalent about firearms.

It was my substitute 4th grade teacher who first taught me to handle a rifle and enjoy target shooting, along with her son and our mutual best friend.

Similarly, I learned that my proud Roosevelt Democrat great-grandfather would famously stop the school bus he drove for years along the route out to Cedar Fort, Utah and teach the kids how to handle and shoot a rifle.  Earlier in life he had been a sharpshooter atop trains transporting gold from the mines at nearby Mercur.

My brush with a kindler, gentler and far more reasonable and collaborative NRA was while obtaining a marksmanship merit badge on my way to earning Eagle Scout in the years before that organization was hijacked by the gun hardliners.

With all due respect to Governor Perry and the NRA, a lot of people who love guns also believe that more thorough background checks are reasonable and won’t “take them out of the hands of those who use them properly and legally” as he threatens.

Based on the views of my 84-year-old conservative Republican mom who sees the universal background checks as reasonable, maybe the Governor was just playing to the narrative to which his NRA audience has been restricted.

My mom could easily ascertain that the checks were designed not to enable a registry which the legislation prohibited or to stop criminals but to make illicit sales more difficult and illegal trade in firearms easier to trace.  We are both among the 86% of Americans who support the extension of background checks to those buying online and at gun shows.

To be fair, one should listen to the Governor’s speech in context.  He and his audience are equally well-advised to read the now-tabled legislation and its failed bi-partisan amendment rather than rely on paid lobbyists and special interests.

As a political independent, I’m disgusted when people pander to any ideology at the expense of good policy, regardless of their party affiliation or where they fall on the political spectrum.

I lose patience for those who want to make it harder to vote but easier to have firearms.  Or those who want safety-net recipients checked for drug use but want to protect the illicit gun trade or those who resent federal interference but make every attempt to override democracy at the local level.

There are reasonable arguments for all of these each issues but this inconsistency and hypocrisy undermines them.

It is easy to demonize opposing views as many speakers have at the recent NRA event.  To better understand both gun “lovers” and “haters,” I recommend a humorous new book entitled Gun Guys: A Road Trip, by journalist and gun guy Dan Baum.

My gun guy cred is limited to family keepsakes but I found that Baum put a more human face on people involved with guns than does the NRA.  He also gives a much better perspective on views across the ideological spectrum on the issue.

Unfortunately though, it seems that far too many on the right are now making decisions not in the tradition of intellectual curiosity championed by the late William F. Buckley Jr., but on semantics.

A just-published study co-authored by Dr. Rick Larrick at the Duke Fuqua School of Business here in Durham, reveals that many conservatives reject projects marketed as “green” merely because they see it as a liberal agenda.

Really?  Of course, along with being a gun-lover, you can count me as a tree-hugger. While you’re at it count me also a card-carrying, HOG-driving, Eagles-for-Equality, trout-protecting, flag-waving all-American who supports better regulatory management of firearms.

Mapping a Cross Bones Rediscovery of My Roots

Last week I looked into the eyes of tomorrow’s community-destination marketing (DMO) executives and the future is very promising indeed.

Old enough to be the grandfather of most of these students, I had several reasons for jumping at the invitation to drive up to Appalachian State University (ASU) to share the background that shaped my understanding of community marketing and what I see as the future.

I’ll blog more about my observations from that presentation in the future, but during my drive, it struck me that before I was recruited to jumpstart Durham, North Carolina’s DMO in 1989, I had little awareness of this part of the country nor to my knowledge did I have any roots here.

I was born and spent my early years in the Yellowstone-Teton nook of Idaho, and by then had lived and worked in five other states.  However, I had never lived east of the Great Divide until I moved to Durham, unless you count a month or so in 1967 along the French Alps, the southwestern tip of Switzerland and Provence.

I had hoped to ride the Cross Bones up to ASU, but that didn’t work out for this trip.  I was invited to come back, so the next time I plan to motorcycle this route:

• Cut north for an hour from Durham, North Carolina where I live via NC 86 to Danville, Virginia (e.g. “Virgil Caine is the name and I drove on the Danville train.”)

 

• I’ll be tempted to shoot across US Route 58 along the Virginia-North Carolina border past Martinsville to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

 

• But I want to see more of Henry County. which I know from family history research that one of my maternal great x 5 grandparents named Shelton had petitioned to create in the fall of 1776. One of our ancestors in that line had paid for the legendary Patrick Henry’s schooling.

 

• To see that part of my heritage I’ll cut up US 220 skirting Martinsville (of NASCAR fame,) then across the Faireystone Park Highway skirting Philpott Lake, then down the Wolverine Highway, turning west again on the J.E.B. Stuart Highway (US Route 58.)

 

• In less than 14 miles, I’ll pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway heading southwest and ride it a little over 100 miles down to Boone, North Carolina, the home of ASU.  On my right as I ride will be valleys I know now were settled by another set of maternal great x 5 grandparents named Messersmith.

Overall the mileage on this route won’t be that much more than driving Interstates.  However, this scenic route with personal connections will take twice as long.  If I leave by 7 a.m. I can still be at ASU by noon with time to stop for breakfast.

On the way home, I  may drop down through Blowing Rock along two national forests to NC Highway 228 where I will take the 29 mile ride crisscrossing the origins of the Yadkin River, the state’s longest and past W. Scott Kerr Reservoir before heading east again.

My route home will continue northeast past Hanging Rock and then dip down to Guilford Courthouse where my paternal great x 4 and 5 grandfathers settled in 1776 after emigrating from Northern Ireland through Baltimore.  They immediately enlisted in North Carolina units to fight in the American Revolutionary War.

Different than when I moved here nearly 25 years ago, I now realize that a significant part of my roots had been here all along.  Maybe that is why this part of the country remains home even in retirement.

Why Does Harley Kill The Things Riders Love?

As many people are aware, I ride a Harley-Davidson Cross Bones and fall is the perfect time of year to take extended excursions.  There are many reasons people ride motorcycles including the fact that bikes such as mine get 45 miles to the gallon, but none more important than the rider’s proximity to scenery and nature.

There are 25 million motorcyclists in the US including 6 million women as of 2008.  According to a new study released last month 9.7% of the nation’s adult population use motorcycles to take 244.6 million trips along roadways (not including off-road) solely for outdoor recreation, predominantly scenery.

So why is it that Harley-Davidson’s 635 full-service dealers across the nation are among the most frequent users of roadside billboards that desecrate the very reasons people take these trips? It seems to me that their primarily is just to signal they are available to provide services if needed.

Motorcyclists were among the earliest adopters of navigation systems such as one that is glove-friendly by Garmin that comes pre-loaded with the locations of Harley dealerships.  Far more motorcyclists have adopted Smartphone apps for the same purpose (my fav is CoPilot) which make it possible to similarly access directions and business locations via Bluetooth connections and hear them through speakers in the rider’s helmet.

So is this just a rare instance in which the otherwise incredibly disciplined Harley-Davidson has fallen out of step?  Statistics show that these roadside monstrosities are now used by just 1 in 12 consumers over the course of an entire year, but even at that the fact remains that deliberate distractions are something no motorcyclist needs.

Or is it just that, like so many other organizations, Harley’s sustainable business strategy, which was so highly touted this spring, or its environmental policy, or perhaps both, have failed to dictate the use of only advertising media that doesn’t harm the planet by destroying trees and vegetation so critical to cleaning the air and storm water along roadsides.

Outdoor cruising by motorcycle is a huge business now.  For this purpose alone, riders and passengers spend $14.3 billion on bikes and accessories and another $52.6 billion on trip-related expenditures.

Direct spending alone generates an economic contribution which includes 410,972 jobs, $20.8 billion in personal income and $5.5 billion in tax revenue - $2.6 billion of which funds state and local services.

There have to be far less destructive ways to reap a share of this economic impact.  Other motorcycle manufacturers have found a way to do this without bringing harm to their riders who are the life-blood of their business.

Maybe these other manufacturers are aware of polls such as one taken in North Carolina, where I live, which show that 78% of Independent voters, 70% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans hold the view that billboards detract from the appearance of their communities and more than 80% oppose removing more trees so billboards can be seen from even long distances.

Do the math.  Isn’t it high time for Harley-Davidson to update its marketing practices?

A Hazard To Passions

I have a lot of passions but one of them isn’t outdoor billboards.

I blog in objection to billboards because I have a passion for “places” and the things that make them scenic and unique. I saw first hand during the near decade I lived in Alaska just how much better it is without outdoor billboards which were banned there in 1959, almost immediately after achieving statehood.

I also have a passion for riding a Harley-Davidson Cross Bones where you see first hand how distracted motorists can be in general, without something like outdoor billboards which are put in place for the sole purpose of pulling your eyes away from where they should be.

Looking away from the roadway is responsible for 70-90% of unsafe driving events such as drifting, swerving etc. In fact, ten percent of drivers are responsible for 50% of the crash risks and things that distract drivers from keeping their eyes on the roadway are among the highest causes.

Studies show that a two-second distraction doubles your risk of an accident. A study by the Outdoor Billboard industry showed that even in daylight, digital billboards draw your eyes away from the road for two seconds or more twice as often as regular billboards or no billboards at all.

It is no wonder they elected not to do a night time analysis.

Spokesmen for the current bills in the North Carolina legislature argue they are just trying to modernize and that they know of no other business prevented from doing so.

The fact is, even without modernization, these structures are safety hazards and there are tons of examples where public safety trumps this type of so-called improvement. According to scientific opinion polls seven out of every ten North Carolina voters agree and eight out of 10 oppose them.

North Carolina must reject these bills, not just because they will line our roadways with up to seven digital billboards per mile and swath away tree screens from public roadways but more importantly because they override local control and are a purposeful and unnecessary hazard to public safety.

The people working in or representing outdoor billboard companies are not demons nor any more flawed than the rest of us. From what I know of them personally, they are honorable people. But they are wrong and according to an interview in Planning Journal, the courts have ruled for many years that outdoor billboards do not derive their value from private land.

They fall under the what courts term the “parasite principal.” Billboards derive their value from the publicly built and maintained roadways and the public has a right to determine if and where they exist.

Judging by the value of their absence to Alaska, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii and thousands of cities and towns, in North Carolina, the debate needs to be whether we can afford to have them at all, let alone turn our roadways into a drive through yellow pages as the proposed bills allow.

Scientific polls show that 78% of Independent voters, 70% of Democratic voters and 68% of Republican voters all agree that outdoor billboards detract from community appearance.

To quote from a recent interview, “these entire states and thousands of cities and towns and counties have found that beauty and place-making are good for business; ugliness and excessive commercialism are not.”

For more information on the bills before the General Assembly, click here.

Gen Y Are Going All Harley!

People subject to stereotyping may think that I’m a typical Harley-Davidson rider since I’m nearly 63 years old even though I didn’t take up motorcycling until two years ago.

Even most H-D enthusiasts are under the out-dated impression that enthusiasts of this American icon are older and getting older.

Not so anymore.  Matt King, the editor of HOG magazine (Harley Owners Group,) writes this month that beginning in 2008, Harley-Davidson took over the top spot in sales of new bikes of all engine sizes to the age group 18-36, or Generation Y.

Harley-Davidson is more popular with Gen Y than it was even to Baby Boomers when they were that age based on total sales.  Signaling the power of the brand, 94% of Gen Y riders who start with previously-owned Harley’s indicate that when they buy a new bike, it will be a Harley-Davidson.  The next most popular brand appeals to 15%.

Now what about that cross-country on the Cross Bones that I keep toying with?  For inspiration, I’ve been reading about Bessie Stringfield, an African-American woman who made eight solo long distance rides in the ‘30s and ‘40s covering every state.  And that’s during a period when roads weren’t as safe, nor was much of the country for an African-American.

She rode, according to a brief by Charles Plueddeman in HOG, for 63 years, owning 27 Harley-Davidsons after she switched from the 1928 Indian Scout she learned to ride on at age 16.  Ms Stringfield died in 1993 at the age of 82.

I think I can do it…now about that Liberty sidecar so Mugs can come along, “pink” doggles and all???  Sweet!

Somewhere to clear my head, Somewhere that I can feel free….

I can’t believe I only discovered riding 19 months ago