Ride White Lines ~ Stories from the Road: Death of an old Friend leads to the Birth of a New One: On the Road to Sturgis Again

Harley_Davidson_Model_FLHTCUI - Not my bike - but this is how it looked when I bought it... You can see mine on the right sidebar of this page

The last time I posted about the '99 Sturgis trip, and I know it's been a while, my buddy and I were on our way in to Monarch Harley Davidson in Orem, Utah. I still hate that ride in, you'd figure that I'd be over it by now - you know - move on already... nope. I hate riding "bitch" - my guess is that it's a control issue, maybe someday I'll take it up in therapy - but then again, when is the last time you saw a motorcycle parked in front of a therapist office? Motorcycles are therapy.

We arrived at Monarch Harley Davidson just prior to opening so we waited, not long, for the staff to arrive. When they arrived the immediately knew I was the guy they had spoken to last night - I don't know, maybe it was the "I'm riding out of here one of two ways - on my own bike or in a cab" look that I had on my face that told them. They greeted us, welcomed us in, poured us coffee and listened to our tale. Of course they did, hell, they wanted to make a sale didn't they. I would have stood on my head, ran to McDonald's and sang karaoke if I was going to get a sure fire commission first thing in the morning.

I looked at a couple of bikes that they had on their showroom floor; A 93 Police Cruiser in powder blue, a Black and Red Sportster (no way the wife was going for that one!), and a couple of others that didn't really suite our immediate need and then I came across the back that was to be affectionately named "The Grandpa Bike" by my buddy's wife. It was perfect - not what I wanted to go bar-hopping on but it was a great touring bike and that's what we were doing - touring.

A 1995 FLHTCUI (FLH Ultra Classic) Bike number 303 of a limited edition series. The first year that Harley had put fuel injection into this model. It was black and burgundy (look at the right side of your screen - that's it after I modified it a bit), hard side locking saddle backs, over padded saddle, AM/FM Cassette player with front and back speakers, Raised Trunk, arm rests with speakers built in, highway bars and pegs, custom foot(floor)boards, CB Radio with built in passenger to driver communications ports - it was perfect, albeit not my ideal bike - but I would grow to love "Grandpa" in a short period of time.

I had found the bike that would take us the rest of the way to Sturgis and back. Let's start the deal. It was a used bike, 3 years old, it had 13,000 miles on it and the price was $12k. Not bad, lets start the paperwork.

The rest of the group got to the dealership about an hour after the shop opened, the timing was perfect. We had time to look at all the bikes, talk about the work that I wanted done to the bike once we had purchased it, and get all of the paperwork completed except for my wife's signature. The dealership had everything lined up, the work orders were already submitted, the parts department (what? you can't buy a motorcycle and not put some of your own touches on it!) had all of the parts in stock and pulled and the numbers had already been run.

I showed my wife the two bikes that I had narrowed it down to, talked about the pro's and con's, as I saw them, of both bikes and told her which one I liked. She agreed completely; personally I think the padded arm rest, stereo and extra storage convinced her more than I ever could.

We signed the papers and the dealers wheeled my bike to the shop; brakes, fluids, some chrome adds, remove some of the baffle, fuel it up and we'll be off.

All of this should take about two hours.... if you've been reading this story from the beginning... guess what :)