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  #41  
Old 10-05-2009, 12:37 AM
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Default Update 10/04/2009

Well the weather decided to play against us yesterday with cold and rain but the die-hard bikers surprised everyone and we had well over 200 people turn out to take demo rides despite the cold and wet. I was reluctant to let the bikes go out because of the wet and cold pavement making for less than ideal traction but after all we went through to get here I made the decision to let them ride. Turned out to be a geat choice, the dealer sold 4 of the bikes I had on the truck and took deposits/orders for 2 more customs. So I guess having to stop at a car wash this week and wash 8 bikes will be worth the effort.

I must say that I was shocked at how hard core these people are. In Salt Lake City a while back there was a chance of light rain and in fact it only drizzled a tiny bit but no one came out. Same story at many other demo events but in Quebec, these people don't care, they ride no matter what the weather.

I'm starting to decypher some of the menu items in the restaurants, still don't understand a word they are saying but I can make it through the menu well enough to get close to what I want to eat.

Here's a few shots of the demo rides at the dealership. All together we had 64 rides in 4 1/2 hours.








You know it's a good party when the local police show up. (Guess we had too much of the street blocked with all the cars)


Sunday morning the owner of the dealership called me and asked me to join a group of them for a ride up to a mountain village for lunch. I wanted to sleep but in the interest of customer relations I went along. The trees are in full fall color and the ride was outstanding. We went to a little mountain village, Saint-Donat-de-Montcalm and it was great. We stopped alongside the road at a lake to take a smoke break and it was a picure right out of a magazine. Sometimes it sucks to have to work on a Sunday but I can't say this was one of them!









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  #42  
Old 10-12-2009, 07:17 PM
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Default Update 10/12/2009

Not much of an exciting trip coming out of Quebec, had some issues at customs but that’s to be expected since terrorists are bald, white, over 40 and drive big red semi trucks loaded with custom motorcycles. Got to spend most of Monday in the US customs yard at Champlain while they went through absolutely everything. Oh well.

I made it back to home late Wednesday night, done a bunch of laundry then was at the factory early Thursday morning. I wound up being there most of the day, I had one of the choppers that had given us some problems while in Quebec so I took it over to engineering to have it checked out and they went through it completely but couldn't find the primary drive noise. After all was said and done, they had it up on the lift running with 4 people standing around it looking for the source of the noise and it turned out to be a loose bolt in the rear fender bracket. A 30 second fix that cost 8 hours of mechanics time to find. Oh well, it got a new clutch, new front primary drive and a full service.

I made it to the Hilton Anatole near the Dallas Market at about 9:30pm Thursday night. When I left Kansas it was all of 50 degrees but somewhere near Ardmore, OK the temp jumped almost 30 degrees and by the time I got to Dallas it was 78 and humid as hell. Well my suitcase was inside the trailer with the cold bikes so as soon as I opened the side door the humidity condensates on everything inside the trailer and it looked like it was raining. Now I had 20 bikes that were going to have to be cleaned and polished again!

Friday morning I woke to the cold front that I had run out of and it was back down in the low 50's and raining. Thankfully I hadn't spent the money getting the truck washed. I headed over to Strokers to get positioned and start setting up but the rain never stopped so I just parked the truck, got my personal bike out and went right back to the hotel.

Saturday the weatherman said was supposed to be partly cloudy and 70, well he lied, it wound up being cloudy all day and the temp never made it above 58. Usually Strokers draws 5,000+ people for this party and by the time I put the bikes back in the trailer Saturday evening there may have been 500 throughout the entire day.

Sunday the weatherman said was supposed to be mostly cloudy, cold and drizzle all day. We hoped he was wrong just like he was wrong on Saturday but this time he got it right so the turn out was maybe 300 for the entire day. Then about 5:00 just as they were getting ready to start the Bikini Contest, it started raining so I got to miss the contest and try to get all the bikes loaded ASAP. I had help so I was rolling out of the deserted parking lot by 6:00 and back in my room by 6:30.

I'm spending the day today taking my 34 restart (I was at a 4.5 hour deficit this morning) at the hotel. I still need to load my bike and get a few things taken care of with the trailer before heading to California but I have all afternoon to get to it.

Here are a couple pictures from Strokers. Unfortunately I was busy putting bikes away Saturday during the Wet T Shirt contest and Sunday during the Bikini Contest so I didn't get any pictures of those. I'll try harder in California. Oh and don't mind the date on the pictures, my camera was confused and off a day. They were taken on Saturday the 10th.







Tomorrow morning I hit I-30 headed towards (hopefully) sunny Southern California
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  #43  
Old 03-17-2010, 11:31 PM
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Default Update 03/17/2010

Sorry for not keeping up with this thread/blog.

Not much has been going on since last October. I spent a month living at the Hilton in Costa Mesa, CA while working at our factory dealership. Was tough duty having to work 9 to 5 Tuesday thru Saturday and go home to an 18th floor suite on the Pacific ocean every night. We were there pretending to help the management out and get some sales going when in reality the big boss had sent us to fire everyone and close the dealership. Not a fun thing to do and I'm glad I'm not an HR person.

Spent the winter delivering a few bikes around the country, took 5 weeks of vacation over Christmas and New Years, got back into flying giant scale aerobatic competetions and was generally lazy.

The new year so far has had a pretty dim outlook for the bike business, we haven't built a bike since October and I'm headed to Lac Saint Jean Quebec right now with a load to deliver and stick around for the weekend for a show.

The owner of the company has put it up for sale which had me really worried but he told me I'm in the "core 6" which means as long as there's 6 employees I have a job. That helped but we still aren't back to building any bikes. We are down to less than 20 bikes available throughout the entire company so we are going to have to get busy soon. The bankers from Chicago have been at the factory darn near weekly with potential buyers but no news yet. We are supposed to be building a run of 40 bikes right now but those are all sold with most of them going to Dubai and Belgium so that still means not much for me to do.

Since coming back from vacation, I have made 1 trip out west making deliveries (more on that in a minute), 2 trips out east and am on my third and worked the dealer expo in Indianapolis. When I haven't been deliverring bikes they have had me working as a test rider for the R&D department. Thats fun till you wake up at 6:00am in a motel in New Mexico and it's snowing and 30 degrees but you still have to put the required 750 miles on for the day. SUCKS!!!

Anyway, while coming home from making my final delivery to Burlington, WA I got into a pissing match with a DOT officer in Umatilla, OR. Needless to say I got my first ticket in 14 years for not having the "required" reflective tape on my trailer. I got in touch with the Judge and after several phone conversations with her she dismissed the ticket. On a side note, she did tell me that the officer who wrote me was famous for writing tickets to out of state trucks for very obscure rules and that 95% of the time she just dismisses them because she doesn't have time to study every single regulation.

So now I'm sitting at the Pilot in Eaton, OH checking my e-mail and eating my dinner then off to Akron, OH to drop off 5 bikes then head to Champlain, NY to start the whole customs process and on up into the waaaaay north woods of Lac Saint Jean.
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Old 03-18-2010, 12:45 AM
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Sorry for the owners misfortune.

On the bright side though, with the CDL in your back pocket, you never have to worry about not having a job.

Good luck Hand. =)
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Old 03-18-2010, 01:13 AM
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I'm on my way up to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia and am in the same area you are as I write this. I smell a drag race to the border!
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Old 03-19-2010, 12:56 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BanditsCousin View Post
I'm on my way up to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia and am in the same area you are as I write this. I smell a drag race to the border!
I'm at the border. I pulled in to US Export Control Champlain, NY at 8:39pm EDT, who won???
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Old 03-19-2010, 02:26 AM
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Thta'd be you, sir
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