the day started out heading down to the dealership for the charity ride. i ended up going down there early because i wanted to claim some warrenty work on my bike. i have some chrome chipping off one of the pipe endcaps. i wasn't going to claim it, but after talking to a qa guy from harley, he said it was contamination in the chroming process. soooo, i decided to talk to someone at the dealership to see what they could/would do about it. turns out the guy is going to file a warrenty claim for it - i'm not holding out much hope. even after talking to someone else who said harley hardly ever turns down a warrenty claim. i'll wait and see what happens.
after taking care of that business, it was time to wait around for the charity ride to begin. and after waiting, it did begin... it was a nice day for a ride - clear, sunny skies. the morning was a little cool, but by the time the ride started, it was perfect weather for riding. the charity ride was to support the united way - bikers seem to want to support charities. i actually think it just gives us another excuse to ride - like we really need one!!
it terms of time, the charity ride was a couple hours. in terms of stops, it was short - only two stops. well worth it, though. the first stop was harris wholesale - our local budweiser distributor. they were offering free drink, of the non-alcoholic variety. the closest they came to beer was o'doules. so i downed a monster drink that was pretty tasty - can't rightly recall what it was offhand. i think they were scraping the bottom of the barrel to make us feel welcome:
after giving us a quick thank you speech, it was time to hop back onto the bikes and head for the local caterpillar plant. this was pretty cool - of course it was more like big toys for big boys. while we were there, they gave us a demo of some of the equipment they manufacture at the plant - digging holes, moving holes, filling holes up... it was pretty cool - but you probably had to be there to really enjoy it. or at least be me!!! a couple of pics from the demo...
after being entertained at caterpillar, it was time for the ride back to the dealership. a couple notes/thoughts about the ride... fisrt, we had over two hundred bikes on the ride. i was kinda of in the first third of the pack. while i saw the beginning of the line several times, i never did see the end. this as easily the largest ride i've been on so far.
speaking of large groups of bikes - it's amazing how many highway drivers have a disregard for motorcycles - even when we're being escorted by police. i was suprised at the number of cars that would just pull into our lane - despite having bikes there. it was crazy. i guess they figured they had to get into the lane on the opposite side of us and just pulled on over. i'm sure that if we, as riders, hadn't been on the look out, some cage would have caused an accident. it amazes me how many cages don't pay attention to motorcycles on the highways. but haven't a group of two hundred bikes?? how can you miss that??
okay - enough about the charity ride. we did all make it back in one group and no one was wiped out - as least as far as i know.
while killing some time at the dealership, waiting to ride into the rally to kick it off, the occ caterpillar bike showed up. not really surprising since they had the bike made and they were also sponsoring the rally. while i can honestly say that i'm not really a fan of occ's, i do watch their show and seeing the bike was pretty neat. they do put some thought and detail into the bikes they build.
after killing time looking at the bike and snapping pics, it was time to ride into the rally to kick it off. kinda uneventful really. more or less stop and go riding - and not really that far. once i got there, i walked around for a bit before starting my stint volunteering. since our local hog club is sponsored by ray price, and he/they're really the ones putting on the event, they asked for volunteers. being the sucker that i am - i worked friday night. i ended up hanging out at one of the entrances - killing four hours.
didn't see much of the rally friday night, but went again saturday. there was more of a crowd saturday andi imagine saturday night was very festive - although i didn't stick around for that...
i think i've run of of things to day - or at least i don't feel like saying any more right now...
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