Monday, March 5, 2018

Goodbye to my last Harley


Anne and I went to a play up in Everett last weekend called "the Gin Game".   WE have season tickets; it's  small theater with productions of often unknown works.   True to the title the play was about a gin game between a man and a women in an old folks home.   Over the game they talked about old folks home issues like their belongings being stolen...what small amount of their treasures they had left were walking away.   Kind of depressing really.

Back in 2005 i got on a motorcycle kick.   This came about after a bad trip on some drugs a dental surgeon gave me to have wisdom teeth extracted.   I had the most paranoid tripping night of my life, and in the morning got up, went to breakfast, and bought a Honda at the local Harley dealership.    Well, I got bit by the bug and before you know it I traded the Honda in on not one but TWO brand new Harleys, a soft-tail "Fat Boy" and a VROD. 

The Vrod was an awesome bike (they both were), but it was special because it was co-designed with Porsche.    I loved that thing.

I didn't have a lot of time riding the bikes; my eyes were already starting to go, not that riding motorcycles isn't dicey enough as is.    I was able to ride for about 3 years.   Never achieved my dream of a big cross-country ride, but still enjoyed riding to work and around the area.    Second childhood stuff.

I sold the VRod back in 2007 to a young man from Iran.   His father paid for it with a big wad of sweaty bills.   

I could never bring myself to sell the Fat Boy, but I finally have.   I don't know, there was just something about it that felt like a line I was crossing.  I haven't driven or ridden for at least 8 years, so it's not like I'm "giving up" riding.

I guess that's part of the process as you get older (not that I am), but you give things up, have to let them go, and your world kind of gets smaller and smaller.   We all end up with some set of issues of our own - for me, it's my eyesight - but whatever it is (even simple old age) you can't keep doing everything you were able to do in younger days.

There's plenty to look forward to, I would say that being in a geiatric care facility waiting for my stuff to walk off would not be one of them.

An interesting sub-story:

I ad not licensed the Harley Fat Boy (sub sub story:  I bought the Fat Boy not only because I loved it but because I thought it was the Terminator bike; it wasn't - that was actually a Honda) since 2009 - about 8 years.    In all the house moves, I'd also managed to lose the title.

Well, in turns out in trying to get a title to the bike that the state of Washington only stores vehicle records for 7 years.    After that, if you lose your title, you can be in a situation they call "ownership in doubt".   If you land in this mini-hell, you have to jump through a lot of hoops and then you can't register or sell your vehicle for 3 years.

The state said "we can't store those records in our computers forever", like we're still e]dealing with PC's from the 80's that only have 20mb storage.   Pointing out to the state that the cost of data storage has decreased by 10000% over those same 7 years does not get you far by the way.

At any rate, the problem turned out to be mistaking an 8 for an X in the VIN number, so the "tier 2" folks at the DoT were able to find my records - and my last Harley is gone.


Depressing play, depressing blog post.    I think I'll take the proceeds and buy a new guitar.

Adios friends!

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