Category Archives: Cruiser

The Cruiser started its life as a 1992 Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic, which in the Harley alphabet soup carries the designation FLSTC. It’s been modified and rebuilt quite a few times over the years but still has a few of its original parts.

Cruiser, Nightowl, Philosophy, Status Updates, Vector

Head vs Heart: Selecting Your Next Motorcycle

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While there are many factors that can drive the process of selecting your first motorcycle, the ultimate selection is often driven by your heart rather than your head. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been pining away for years over a specific Bike or you find yourself gobsmacked with lust over some newly-announced model.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of… –Blaise Pascal

For most people, the heart vs head battle gets inverted by the time it’s time to buy a second (or third, or fourteenth) motorcycle. The more your ride, the more you learn about how you like to ride and what you like, love, and loathe about one bike versus another. Continue reading Head vs Heart: Selecting Your Next Motorcycle →

Cruiser, Road Tales

Turnpike alternatives and traffic stops

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One of the annual Netscum gatherings that I attend is the annual MAMMARY run. (No, it has very little to do with female breasts; search this blog for MAMMARY label for a definition.) Since the gathering is centered in the Chesapeake Bay area southeast of Washington DC, which isn’t that great a distance from the home garage in Michigan, I tend to minimize the vacation days expended to get there. That means the route to/from MAMMARY usually consists the necessary evil of turnpikes. Continue reading Turnpike alternatives and traffic stops →

Cruiser, Road Tales

Night Riding with Yo and Mr. Fun

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Sometime during the recent MAMMARY run, Yo Adrian proclaimed that he and his friend Scott (Mr. Fun) would be stopping at my place on their way to Butch and Pam’s farm for the gathering called Meet in the Middle. So it came to be that Yo and Mr. Fun showed up in my driveway about 8:30pm with plans to pick me up and ride on to Anderson, IN… another four hours away.
Continue reading Night Riding with Yo and Mr. Fun →

Cruiser, Road Tales

Improving weather at Bar Harbor

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After the monsoon-like conditions of the previous day, we went to sleep relieved by the weather forecast that the rain would be gone in the morning. It was with some consternation then, that we awoke to find that a light rain was still falling. A quick check of the weather radar revealed that we could be dealing with a light rain for most, if not all, of the day’s trip out to Bar Harbor, Maine. Yuck.
Continue reading Improving weather at Bar Harbor →

Cruiser, Road Tales

Lifestyle dichotomy on the Cape

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After a great evening with Barb Freeman, we headed off down the back roads to Cape Cod. We crossed at the Bourne Bridge, noting the horrendous traffic in the opposite direction from all those weekenders heading back to the mainland. Yuck.

Now on the Cape, we headed up the coast of the canal until we reached the Sagamore bridge, where we found route 6A and headed down the coast of the bay.
Continue reading Lifestyle dichotomy on the Cape →

Cruiser, Road Tales

You know you’re lucky when…

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You hit reserve (remember, the Cruiser is an old-school Harley with a carburetor and a gas valve) with the next service plaza on the Thruway 19 miles away and you know you can get 20 miles on reserve.

So, we cruise along with no real worries until the engine starts to stall again. I know the bottom of the tanks are curved and trap usable gas, so I yank on the brakes to slosh some more gas down to the carburetor. A sign for the service plaza appears ahead. Hallelujah! But wait, the sign says the plaza is still one mile ahead. Arrrgh!

We repeat the sputter-brake-run sequence another 15 or so times and glide into the service plaza and directly to an available gas pump as the engine quietly stalls.

We were laughing our asses off.

Lucky. Very lucky.