Dee and I went to our first big bike rally at Myrtle Beach in 2004. At the time, we didn't even have a bike, but her brother and her brother's
father-in-law were Harley riders. So, we showed up for a couple of nights and saw the sights, hung out, and hit the bars.
When Myrtle Beach Spring Rally 2005 started to roll near, I was hit with the shockingly unexpected statement from Dee that, "Wouldn't it be
cool if we had a bike for Bike Week this year?" You see, the last time I was on a bike before that sentence was approximately thirteen yrs past
when I went down, t-boned by an oncoming car to the tune of sixty stiches to my right leg and a totalled bike. It was one of those things where
you can do everything right and still some idiot comes along and ruins your next thirteen biking years for you. The fact that I would have bought
a bike the very next day if given the opportunity did nothing for the fact that the little misses would have flipped out over it. So, no bike.
Thirteen years go by, no bike.
"Don't even joke like that," says I, "cause you know I'll get one in a heartbeat." So, later that weekend my Suburban just sort of steers itself
right into a local Metric dealer, you know, one of those every Japanese bike under one roof places, Kawasaki, Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and we look
at a bunch of models. And that's when I got the second shocking statement from Dee. "That bike is way too small for you," she says as I'm sitting
on a few different models. What? Can this be true? My loving 'wife of the no bike under any circumstances for thirteen years' is talking me up to
a bigger bike? "Yep, you just look more like you should be on that one," she says as I sit on a Vulcan 1500 classic. I pinch myself. I must be asleep.
