First ride of the year

We took the first official ride of the year on Saturday. It was a beautiful day for a ride. I remembered to put sunscreen on my face but forgot about my hands so they got sunburned.

We stopped at Harley in Appleton to get some air in my tires then headed off to a Taste of the Windy City for some lunch. I had the meatball sandwich and it was delicious. Our next stop was Scoops in Chilton where we had sundaes.

We headed back along the south end of Lake Winnebago and back home. It was a little breezy but plenty of sunshine. All in all a great ride!

I turned over 12,000 miles on my bike (finally) and hope to put many more on this year. I have a longer drive to work now so that will help.

The riding bug is biting me!

Ah, it is finally March. According to the calendar, it will be spring in about 2 weeks. We're supposed to have a late winter storm tomorrow - rain, sleet, ice, snow. Damn you Mother Nature! I am really yearning to get the bike out and go. I saw someone on a crotch rocket in the parking lot at work today, it didn't even reach 40 here.

I am looking forward to the sale at Harley Davidson in Appleton next week! The sale runs from the 14th through the 20th. I have to get a new helmet because mine makes my forehead hurt really, really bad, and if we are going to ride to Florida, there is no way I can wear that thing all day, I actually get a bruise from it. Ed needs new boots too so we are going to take advantage of the awesome 20% off all things Harley sale. They have some cool new tank tops too, but I can't bring myself to pay $50 for a tank top, although, I do have that gift card from Christmas...

My bike

So, here is my bike. I left it stock, for now, except I added (all detachable) a luggage rack, sissy bar, windshield and saddle bags, and I added an engine guard, just in case I lose my balance. Can't be getting stuck under that great big bike you know. The most frustrating thing was that I was absolutely in love with this bike, but for some reason Harley decided it would be cool to put the license plate off the side off the bike so I also had to buy a license plate relocation kit to move the plate to the back of the bike. Did they really think that no one would want to put bags on this bike?

My first purchase to change out a component of the bike is the levers on the handlebars- I found some satin black with chrome flames to compliment the paint job. I'm not going to attempt putting them on myself though - when it comes time for the 1000 mile fluid swap, I'm going to let them do it for me. I've already decided that the ability to stop and shift are good and I want to be able to keep doing that.

Oh - and I bought it from the best Harley store H-D Appleton!