Wow,
hard to believe I have not updated this since early May – at that time Spring was in full bloom, and now, snow lays upon the ground..
Luckily, all of the excitement and drama occurred during the first month of the year, the rest of the year has been pretty uneventful.
The last checkup/XRAY for my foot went very well back in May, and I was riding the Goldwing again around Memorial Day!
Julie and I again this year made plans such as going to the Islands and riding to the neighboring states which we failed to keep. There is always next year – and this time, we’re going to do it, damn it! 🙂
We did do something different this past summer, for the first time in over 10 years, we made it back to Cedar Point! My, has the place changed. Some very new and impressive rides – and rides that I probably would not be able to handle if I was 20 years younger…
I did enjoy watching “Top Thrill Dragster” from a safe distance, the rate it accelerates at is probably the closest most folks will get to experiencing what it is like to drive one of those 300mph rocketships on wheels down the 1/4 mile strip…
I was happy to see that my favorite roller coasters were still around – such as Gemini and Blue Streak. As long as I can remember, the first ride at the park for me has always been the Blue Streak. Unfortunately, the official second ride, “The Pirate Ride” is long gone.
Kids this day and age just are not interested in the old time rides any more – where a car would go along the tracks at just over a walking pace, banging through doors and having buildings fall onto you… Yes – I can remember the San Francisco Earthquake ride – that was probably gone in the late 70s. I remember it being next to the Funhouse – the house built upside down with
a yard that hung above you as you walked beside it…
Oh well – enough reminiscing about rides long past, this past trip to Cedar Point was a memorial
one in that I managed to get Julie to ride with me on Magnum – and she actually liked it!
We’re in the 2nd row of the picture here, wearing our matching T-Shirts. Definitely not the best picture we have ever taken – but considering the circumstances – it came out pretty good!
It seemed appropriate, this year was our 20th anniversary, and as you can see, the Magnum was also celebrating its 20th also. My, how time flies….
Our nephews (and their girl friends) went with us that day – and some of the rides they went on, I doubt I could have handled them when I was their age. Maybe if I had not eaten for a day or two in advance – then maybe, just maybe, I’d have been able to handle it.
I hope to have another action photo to add here next year – and maybe one from Millennium too! I just need to convince Julie to give that one a try…
The summer ended pretty much the way it began, w/out much excitement or drama – in other words, it was a good summer, but it was over way too quickly.
During this past year, we discovered that our interests are diverging from other members of our GWRRA Chapter, and we found ourselves attending meetings in a hit-or-miss fashion, something we had never done in before in years previous. The real clincher was when a motorcycle ride was announced at a meeting in September. We had not been on any organized rides all year, and we were available that Saturday – so we figured – what the heck.
The ride, called “The Ride for the Red” was a benefit ride for the Summit County Red Cross and it had multiple starting or staging areas – each at a different Harley Davidson dealer.
The Saturday of the ride, we rode up to a local HD dealership, signed up for the ride and made our donations. (Got some nice shirts) Since we had time to kill due to us arriving early, we decided to wander into the dealership and look around.
Until this day, I don’t think I have EVER been in a Harley dealership before in my life.
We gravitated towards a display of their touring models (Electra Glides) and just for fun, sat down on a couple to see how they felt.
This was the first Harley I had ever been on in my life, and it fit me like a glove.
That really started the wheels in my mind a spinning…
Hopping off the bike, we bought a couple tee-shirts from the dealership (first Harley shirts ever) and Julie tried some hats on, including a nice pink one – but decided not to buy it.
Later in that week after the ride, under the pretense of going to buy that hat for Julie, we headed back to that same dealership, and submitted the required paperwork to be able to take one of their bikes for a test ride.
Unfortunately, their test ride rules forbid taking any passengers – but we managed to convince the salesman to take Julie on the back of his during the test ride. We figured that no matter how much I liked it – if Julie did not like the passenger accommodations, that was a deal breaker.
The test ride of maybe 5 miles or so went very well – and the only real difficulty I had was the HD turn signals – they were quite different than what I was used to.
Oh – we did get the pink hat for Julie to – the real purpose of the visit 🙂
At this point, it was time to start shopping around at the local dealerships for what I really wanted – the “Ultra Limited”. Unfortunately, as we found out, the “Limited” really meant it – if a dealership did not have it on the floor, they most likely already sold their allocation.
Out of the blue, one of the dealerships that we visited called us back. Turns out, by sheer co-incidence, they were in the process of uncrating an “Ultra Limited” in exactly the color I wanted. I took off work and we visited the dealership the very next day – and went to their service center where they were still assembling it after taking it out of the crate.
The pictures in the brochure had not done it justice – it looked gorgeous!
We told the salesguy and ourselves that we’d go home and think about it – but it was inevitable.
I’m even willing to bet the salesguy knew he had a sale before we even left the dealership.
It took approximately 2 hours and we called back and put $500 down on the bike to hold it while we arranged financing. Before we knew it – we rode the Goldwing to the dealership one last time and traded it in on the Harley. A childhood dream had come true – I owned a Harley!
This meant of course that we felt even more out of touch with our GWRRA chapter than we did before – we didn’t even own the marquee bike of the organization any more.
This past November we renewed our membership for one more season, next year will be our 8th year as members, and also our last.
It is time to move on – time to look for other roads to ride, and other people to ride them with.