zRides - the reboot

Time passes. Things change. Again.

[ I understand if you don't want to read all of this, there are a couple pics at the bottom of this post

Also, I need to check all of the links in older posts as they could have expired years ago]

Well, it seems the title of the prior post turned out to be quite prescient, considering the 10 year gap. I have decided that as I begin another decade (2020 didn't really count, right?)  and a new phase in my life, that I am going to try adding this blog back into my routine, and I hope to return to a bit of digital photography which has also languished. 

I've had a couple of bikes come and go over the past 10 years, and my riding dropped off considerably due to personal reasons and activities, and spirit-crushing freakin' work schedules. I have resolved most of those problems now, so I'M BACK !

For over 30 years I rode only sport bikes. Need for speed and all of that. I had a very narrow focus on what I considered a viable motorcycle to be, within that paradigm. If you want a quick look into where I was at that time, read any of my Americade entries.

Over time I found that some of the things I had been chasing (...) lost their attraction for me. Things I had thought were not important previously, came more into focus. I leaned away (I can't help it...) from corner carving and started to dwell more on riding. I began to look at motorcycling differently. I began to think about taking long rides out in the mountains that surround this area. I actually started to read the American Motorcyclist magazine I'd been receiving for 35 years...

And what I decided I wanted most NOW was not the endless quest for carving the next corner, but to slow down enough to see was was passing in-between them. I wanted some peace and calm back in my life. What I wanted above all else was the sense of wonder of motorcycling that I felt as a young boy when I'd stop playing to look up and watch a bike roll by; the sensation of the first rides I took when I was 10 years old on a Montgomery Wards mini-bike, the ones with a lawnmower engine, pull-start and rear scrub brake; the first time when as a teenager I mastered shifting on a KE100 while orbiting a small dirt track. I want that feeling again.

For some reason I do not now remember, at the 2016 Americade I spotted a Victory Cross Country and it held my attention. 

I got the nerve to take it out -- public opinion be damned! I was the only rider in head-to-toe full gear -- and found to my disbelief that I enjoyed it. I took it out again and again and again that week. One day it rained as we rode to Americade, the entire day we spent there and all the way home, and I took that bike out repeatedly. 

I will admit that this advertising pic from Victory for the CC, particularly in Suede Nuclear Sunset Orange, added a bit to my desire for this bike:

I put on over 700 miles of 20 min demo rides that week on that bike. Don't remember if I rode anything else. Followed that up with a Demo Truck Day at our local dealer a month later. I decided I was going to buy a Victory CC the following spring. And then, that winter Polaris pulled the plug on Victory and after a couple months of pouting, I moved on.

At the IMS at Javitts that I've attended a lot of the past 30 years, I came across a 2019 Harley Davidson Road King Special. I didn't even know what model it was as I came up behind it; guess I had not seen the Special before. I thought it was black but it was really Midnight Blue over the blacked out bike. I spent the next year thinking that would be the bike I would get next. Money kept getting reallocated and no bike was purchased. Then this year was finally my year.

After months of researching over the winter and changing my mind dozens of times, I started searching online for an FLHR, as while the Special is gorgeous, the Road King Classic has a better stock ride and that was a bigger priority for me if I am going to sit in that position. At first, with the massive inflation that happened with 2021, I was searching 2016/2017 models. I'd take the final Rushmore but wanted the M8, though I did fear a first year release. One day in frustration I expanded my search up to 2019 and immediately found a bike that was posted 2 days earlier and was not 1000 miles away, but a 45 minute drive. I went, I saw, I put a deposit down.

Original owner had some bad luck and had only put 266 miles on the clock, then it sat for a year. While I have no delusions of zigzagging the country, I will be using this bike extensively in search of that feeling.