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Beauty and the Bike
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August 17, 2009 at 4:01 am #3305owlieParticipant
Today was an absolute blast. I spent most of the afternoon at the Harley dealership participating in an event they call “Beauty and the Bike.” This is an event that they use to introduce women to motorcycles and give them an opportunity to ask all of those questions about motorcycles that we always wanted to ask but never have.
Yes, I know, there is no reason to not ask questions, but yes, even women don’t want to ask questions. Despite all the grief that we give you guys about this, when it comes to “guy” things, we really don’t like to make ourselves look any more ignorant than we already feel like we are.
But, I digress.
As I was saying, I had a great time. Yes, it was a blatant marketing gimick, but it was also very informative. We got to see and sit on the whole lineup of Harleys, from the Sporties to the monster-sized touring bikes. (Elwood, I now understand exactly what you were saying about the stock seat on the Sporties.) They spent some time talking about riding gear (which was the only real low-point in the day, the guy spent more time talking about how they had three different quality levels of gear than he did about why you would want real gear). I missed the section on the Rider’s Edge course since I was scheduled to ride the Dyno then. That was a bummer because I didn’t realize until too late that they were doing a live demo of picking up a motorcycle.
The best part about the day though was riding the dyno. Basically, it is a diagnostic tool that they use that allows them to run the motorcycle in place. They put a fat boy up on it and let us ride it. We got to play around with the clutch and shift up and down through the gears. I was able to take the bike up to about 110 mph. Yah, I know that you aren’t leaning into the corners, but it was fun to feel the roar of the engine. I really got to play around with the gear shifter and get a feel for the clutch, without having to think about anything but the sound and feel of the bike.
No sales pressure, and lots of good conversation with other women who are just thinking about getting into riding too. I had a blast.
Owlie
August 17, 2009 at 4:53 am #21665MunchParticipantVery nice!! glad you had a ball!
August 18, 2009 at 2:09 am #21741owlieParticipantI have to agree on the “experience” part. The dealership has the kind of feel where they would be happy to have you just come in and hang out, have a cup of coffee and sit on bikes for a while. The other places I have gone are friendly, but not quite as laid back.
As for the Sporty, I think that if I hadn’t sat on that Suzuki S40, I probably would have loved it. But like most of the other V-twins that I have sat on, it just feels big and heavy (though not nearly so much as the V-Star). It felt easier to stand up, so I think it must have a lower CoG than the V-Star or the Vulcan. The other thing was that I was distracted by the other women around me so I didn’t really get to focus on the bikes as much as I would have liked to. I’ll definitely try it again after I have a couple years of riding under my butt.
I will say that I really didn’t care for the Dynas. The two that they had for us to look at had forward pegs, and there was something about the position of the air intake in relationship to my knee that was awkward. I felt off balance because my left leg was differently positioned relative to the bike than my right. Might be fixable with the mid pegs.
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