About Life & Motorcycles

I was at the intersection of 7th Street and Morton, preparing to head east when the light turned green. Officer Engrasias, of the Bloomington city Police department, was on the other side of the light, preparing to turn right. The light turned green, I took off slowly, and noticed that as soon as he turned right, he took notice of my expired plates and pulled into the first place he could to come back after me. The chase was on (here is where the stupid continued). I rode like a flat track rider with a new bike to pay for who hadn't won any races yet. I didn't really stop to notice any stop signs, or one-way streets. I was just trying to put more distance between myself and "The Copper." My timing has never been what you would call great. It just happened to be time for the work shift change for the police departments. Yes I said departments. Not only the city police, but the county police as well were all around me. Some were coming into work, and some were just heading home and I was right in the middle of the hornet's nest. Lights everywhere. It looked like a movie chase scene stunt, except this was real! I was a scared little rabbit at this point and for some stupid reason, felt compelled to work even harder at evasion. Well, a few right, right, left, right turns later, I thought I had lost them all and as I rounded a turn, I happened to notice a garage door open at someone's house whom I didn't even know, but I swooped right up into the garage and quickly turned off my bike.

One day, the folks at Harley Davidson made an ingenious two pronged attack on my desire center without their knowing that I would get both punches at the same time. The first punch was a well thought out commercial on TV where Grandpa was sitting on a porch swing, looking down at his grandkids and holding a model toy of a Harley entertaining the kids with stories of "the good old days," when one of the children asked him, "Grandpa! You owned a Harley?" A sad look came over his face and he relented, "No, I spent the money on aluminum siding for the house." The kids promptly got up and showing a little sense of shame on their faces, walked off and said, "Let's go see what Grandma's doing." Of course, much effort is spent by businesses researching their potential customer base and that turned out to be money well spent in my case. I was of course seeing myself as Grandpa in the later years and looking back at my life just as I had described earlier. A true bull's-eye on their part. I was staggering, but not yet down for the count. After the left jab came the right hook. The very next day, I was thumbing through a magazine and out popped an insert with a picture of the prettiest little blue Sportster on it with a caption that described just how little it would cost to own a Harley. Having never owned a Harley and always wondering what I might be missing, I realized that this was the knockout punch. All of the sudden, I was determined to own one, and I was down for the count. Suddenly I was justifying my reasons why this had to become a reality for me. I realized that I had missed out on many years of potential enjoyment. I had to go out and buy myself a new Harley.