Bruce and Calvin's ride

[jurassic]

tired of the mystique

having worked in a harley service department for 10 years,its easy to get past all this harley "mystique". 100 years is a great accomplishment,and i love harleys,and still own quite a few and spend more money on harleys and parts than i want to admit.but the more harley riders i meet and the more newer bikes i actually ride and work on,the more i realize that they are not anywhere near state of the art,and never were.its all about the harley / biker lifestyle crap ,although alot of riders ride for the sake of the ride,alot ride to pose as most of you know. you know i also own a ford pickup, but i dont have ford tatooed on my arm and i dont own one ford t shirt,and have never been to a ford rally,if they even exist. its true the factory hasn't got a clue,just look at the new dyna glides,but their target audience is the wannabe ,bandanna/leather jacket/removable tattoo yuppies .heck the dealership in my town doesn't even have actual motorcycles in it, but you can buy baby diapers with little panheads on them. i guess i dont have much of a piont here,but wanted my 2 cents worth,as this is valid subject matter.and when i spoke to bruce a davenport,i just wished it could have been me. instead i celebrated harleys 100th,and went down and bought a brand new BMW.

[Hrdly-Dangrs]

Aw shucks Pete.....Now you went ahead and made me feel bad.....well ok, I'll give H-D the benefit of doubt. I guess H-D just overlooked their, (Bruce and Calvins') admireable feat because of all the other 1905 H-D motorcycles that were going to ride 500 miles to their EVO Celebration!! Ha Ha!... Hrdly-Dangrs

[B. Rodencal]

only so many hours in a day.

Consider this.... how many people work in the Harley Davidson Archives? How many requests do they get on a daily basis? from outside sources? How many internal questions do they field on a daily basis? If the Archives were open to any legitimate person who wanted to paw through everything, (or crackpot for that matter), what time would that consume? That's like saying the Smithsonian wouldn't let me in to fondle Lindberg's flight plan, because I wanted too! I do believe there will be a time when the history will displayed for the public and I feel Harley-Davidson is committed to this Concept. Because they didn't recognize one event that was created by an individual who is not associated with the Motor company is not really grounds for condeming them. If you actually did attend the 100th (as I did) and are merely not criticizing it based on heresay, you would probably agree that Harley-Davidson had a pretty full plate to deal with as it was. Things most certainly were left out, but all in all it was a better 100th than Indian had. FatDog

[Hrdly-Dangrs]

Sorry FatDog, but like most H-D (H.O.G.) events today, just too many YUPS!, RUBS! Hell I get enough crap from the FASHION MATCHING FRINGE LEATHER POSERS waiting on their LATEST/BESTEST EVOs to get their oil changed at the local H-D Show Palace..... Boy oh boy, I must think who-I-am to show up with my old kickstart XLCH 'Sporty'!! "YOU SHOULD TRADE THAT IN FOR A FULL SIZE HARLEY" says the NEWEST Best Dressed BIG BIKER among the group of '100 Year' Classic H-D Owners!! (TRUE STORY)....God (VISA-MASTERCARD) help them if their electric push button doesn't work!! Last time I had to go to H-D Palace was for a front fork tube seal. The Taiwan made fork seal lasted all of 1 day before it leaked worse then the old dried out original H-D seal that I replaced it with!! Nope, far as I'm concerned, H-D ought to spend more time on finding American Companys to replace their "Taiwian Made' products!! HEY H-D....BRING THE WORK BACK TO AMERICA....PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!!....WHO THE HELL CARES HOW THEY DO IT OVERSEAS!!....WE NEED WORK....MAKE YOUR NEW SLOGAN "100% AMERICAN MADE"!! HELL, IF YOU GET STARTED TODAY, YOU MIGHT ACHIEVE IT BY YOUR REAL 100th BIRTHDAY........ Hrdly-Dangrs

[Tommo]

Hi there Pete and others,
Harley knew about our tour in 1998 and I had been in regular contact with certain heads of departments with regard to our tour from early in 1997 and right up until just days before we left New Zealand.
One of the things that hurt the most was that our group booked beds for 200 in a major Milwaukee downtown hotel in August 1998 so we could be sure of our accommodation and be in walking distance of the lakefront events.
Somewhere in early to mid 2002 Harley went to this hotel to make bookings and found some yokels from down under had beaten them to it.
The long and the short of it is that they exerted their corporate pressure on this hotel and succeeded in getting our reservations cancelled and effectively putting us out on the street and it was only because we had booked a second hotel about 20 minutes north of downtown as a back-up that we were not in serious trouble.
The hotel apoligised profusely but honestly admitted to us that Harley spent a lot of dollars with them and they couldn't afford to upset them.
As of June 2002 my wife and I produced a monthly newsletter with regard to this tour and copies of this were sent monthly to the N.Z. Harley distributor in Australia and to contacts at the factory so they knew exactly what we had planned.
Deeleys in Vancouver put on an excellent reception for us and one of the members of the board of Harley was present at this function and was so impressed with what we were doing he assured us he would be making the full board of directors aware of the details of our trip.
The point I'm making here is to say that H.D. weren't aware of what we were doing is not correct and even if they didn't know, it seems strange that we generated enough publicity on the way across America to make our Prime Minister back here in N.Z. aware of what was happening and to instruct the N.Z. Ambassador in Washington to go down to our hotel in Milwaukee and to congratulate us on the exposure we were generating for N.Z. He put on a real good evening for us.
Don't get me wrong I'm still going to be a Harley owner (currently own 30 plus Harleys) but I do really think Harley were more concerned as to how big the M.D.A. check was going to be at the end of the festivities than they were with the people and bikes that had got them to being able to celebrate a milestone like this.
Jennifer and I were at the 95th and other than the parade on Saturday that event was a thousand times better than the 100th and I think a very homemade banner across the interstate south on sunday morning said it all.

THANK'S FOR COMING
SORRY ABOUT ELTON.

Where was Springsteen singing Born in the U.S.A.

[Hrdly-Dangrs]

Hey Tommo, sorry to hear that you guys were inconvenienced to such an extent!! Damned Corporate types are all alike!! This is the same tripe thats been going on with Harley since back to the so called Outlaw Biker image of the sixties!! H-D Big-Wigs only care about the bottom line....MONEY, same as any other big corporation!! Yes there are some individual Dealers that reflect the 'Old School' values of business and motorcycling and cater to us 'Old Timers' with equal enthusiasm...for the love of the Sport of Motorcycling and the Harley-Davidson motorcycle itself. Otherwise Harley the Company is just about EVOs and RUBS and YUPS....It is simply just another NEW VEHICLE MANUFACTURER...PERIOD!! They may be beating on their chests about the volumes of great OLD 'Heritage'... but they're not adding any NEW pages to it by pulling crap like this!!... ....Hrdly-Dangrs ......Oh by the way...I'm from New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen STINKS!! He left for California!! Ha! Ha!.....Real New Jersey Rockers listen to Allman Bros, The Who, Stones, Led Zep, Ramones, AC/DC, Ozzie...right on down the line!!!!

[LouieMCman]

Remember....you meet the nicest people on a Honda......

Louie

[Hrdly-Dangrs]

No Thanks!!....Make mine a Harley.....just keep all that phoney PR stuff out of the mix!!.... ...Hrdly-Dangrs