Harleys Thorough the Heartland
HARLEYS thorough the heartland
100TH ANNIVERSARY OPEN ROAD TOUR
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YEARS AGO ON A KENTUCKY BACKROAD I’D SPENT ABOUT 15 minutes barely hanging onto a roaring Harley Sportster. But this was different. This was a 1000-mile ride on Harley-Davidson’s 2003 models, bikes that no one had even seen on the road yet, in celebration of an anniversary that most companies never see.
I haven’t owned a motorcycle or even ridden much since the Seventies. But when Cycle World asked me to strap my sketchbook to the back of a Harley for the Open Road Tour, what better reason to re-mint my long-dormant motorcycle license than experiencing what has to be the greatest celebration of American motorcycling in history? Besides, I’d owed my lifelong partner Lynne a honeymoon since our marriage in 1980.
One hundred years ago in a 10 x 15-foot Wisconsin shed, three Davidson brothers and William Harley handcrafted their first motorcycle. From those humble beginnings have evolved these iconic machines that are as much works of industrial art as they are transportation, glistening amalgamations of rolling steel coveted by people the world over.
Nearly 40 motojoumalists from around the globe had been invited to ride from the Harley factory in Milwaukee south to Atlanta, where Harley’s big 100-year anniversary Open Road Tour would begin. The event, which travels to Baltimore, Los Angeles,
Toronto, Dallas, Mexico City, Sydney, Tokyo, Barcelona and Hamburg, covers the space of six football fields and has countless multimedia exhibits, demo rides, historical displays, entertainers and two full-blown music stages. After circling the globe, the party culminates with a bang back in Milwaukee, August of ’03.
Our first hot and humid day in Wisconsin was filled with meeting Willie G. Davidson and his son Bill, VP of Product Development, as well as touring the powertrain factory and the trade show that displayed all the 2003 bikes and hundreds of examples of other products sporting the H-D logo. The list seemed endless-furniture, clothes, jewelry, shoes, boots, tents, fine art, even pet clothes! Sales of all this (including the bikes) amounted to a staggering $3.3 billion in 2001 !
Imagine if you will, all the millions of people around the world, globally wishing for and dreaming of one day owning a legendary Harley. Surely there must be some sort of huge harmonic convergence going on here. What else could have propelled the oncefoundering company into the elite Fortune 500 league of upper crusty success?
That night, we stood there on the edge of the prairie in a warm Wisconsin wind. A bus arrived and we were driven to Miller Stadium for a Brewers game. We got to know some of the other press people during the ball game. One couple from Australia was planning to ride to Las Vegas from Atlanta to be married by an Elvis impersonator. I also spent some time trying to explain the game of baseball to two Brits after drinking several beers. No luck!
DAY ONE the ride
Feeling a lot like one of those homeless folks at a mission who suffer through endless sermons before getting to eat, I was extremely anxious to get on the bikes and go riding. As the sun rose like a gigantic orange in the east, we boarded another bus headed for another factory, where we would finally begin our 1000-mile ride through the heartland on a hundred years of history.
Ride-leader (and former editor of CW’s Big Twin) Beau Pacheco told us, “Go at your own speed, choose your own routes, stop whenever you’d like, get married, get divorced, it’s your tour, have funT
Soon, Lynne and I were wandering through the long row of bikes, licking our chops like hyenas at a fresh kill. “Which one should we ride?” we kept asking each other. We answered with a gorgeous Heritage Softail sporting big leather saddlebags and tall windscreen. We turned the key, hit the start button and blam, she came to life with a guttural rumble.
The entire group took off in a long line and roared through town and onto the freeway. Free at last, thank God A’mighty, we were free at last!
Ninety miles south we pulled into the oldest family-owned H-D dealership in the U.S., Kegels’ Harley-Davidson, for breakfast. We ate our pancakes and syrup, thinking about how the bike had cut through all that traffic so effortlessly. It just doesn’t get any better, does it? Riding Harleys through the heartland, not a terrorist in sight.
Later that night, I heard Beau explaining to a French rider that if he’d purchased Harley stock back in 1985 instead of that dam bike, he’d be a millionaire now.
Milwaukee, Wl to Indianapolis, IN (approx. 370 miles)
DAY TWO the ride
I was up at 6 a.m. looking in the bathroom mirror. A strange stare was developing in my eyes. A sort of savage leering, a raw animal-like manifestation. All I could think was, “Where are those bikes and which one will we ride today?” Heh-heh.
Speeding through the Indianapolis traffic on our new Fat Boy, we headed down Hwy. 65 all the way to Louisville, home of The Slugger.
It felt good to be alone and going at our own speed. We dove off the interstate at Horse Cave, Kentucky, and headed east to Glasgow, a small town where we’d lived back in the early ’80s. We floated past rising tobacco patches and ivy-covered bams, while a bright butterfly joined us at a rest stop halfway there.
Finding the rural routes much more enjoyable, we downed a sandwich, pumped a few rootbeers and stuck to Hwy. 3 IE all the way to the Opryland Hotel outside Nashville. At one point we hit rain, which felt at 60 mph like being sprayed with a Gatling gun. So we steered under a funeral home awning to dry out. Checking the time, we paid our respects to the recently departed in the parlor and headed south with steam rising like ghosts off the hot pavement.
In the rush of it all we decided that the worst kind of travel, especially on bikes, is destinationand time-driven. As if clocks even matter when you’re living in the moment, life rushing toward you on the rolling road. Each evening, our group tried to meet up by 5 p.m. for dinner and other activities, but everyone came straggling in at odd hours, either having spent the day totally, happily lost or too tired to give a damn.
Anyway, that night at the Opryland Hotel (amazing place; 2883 rooms and a beautiftil garden conservatory) we got all spmced up and were whisked away to the Gibson guitar factory where we enjoyed a hearty Southern meal and a stompin’ good live concert.
DAY THREE the ride
It was 5 a.m., Lynne was sleeping like a happy baby and I was up staring in the mirror again. I had made a date with one of the luxurious V-Rods, Harley’s 110-horsepower musclebike that cruised out onto the freeway, then blasted my skinny little self to 90 mph in mere seconds!
Our one-hour assault on the downtown streets in Nashville was the ultimate high of the entire trip. Speeding here and there with so much power caused this country boy’s mind to do some major cognition rearrangement.
“How much do one of those things cost anyway?” I asked Lynne back at the hotel. “About $5000 more than we paid for our first house,” she admonished, “so don’t go gettin’ any big ideas!” She said it was time to eat. I wasn’t hungry. Not for food, anyway. Let’s see, just me and my V-Rod. I saw us making the Florida coast by nightfall, nobody would miss us for at least a day...
Lynne held my hand and led me to a fully decked-out Tour Glide in order to give her a nice big seat, and to calm me down. We’d end up putting 300 conservative miles on it. On the way to the tour’s next waypoint, the Jack Daniel’s Distillery, a monologue ran through my head: “You gotta understand, guys dream all winter long about the upcoming riding season. The bike sits in the lonely garage all polished and pampered, dreamed about and occasionally fired up. They buy some Harley stuff, then some more Harley stuff!
And I already told you how much The
(Motor enormous ing. A very Company make-money-then-consume real disease.” sells in a Jeez, year, don’t right? you So thing. wish it’s Never just you this had endbought some stock? Or do you wish you’d bought a bike?
A funny thing happened today: Seems that nearly everyone made it to Jack Daniel’s on time! Hmmm...
O Unfortunately, it lies smack dab in the middle of a dry county, meaning you can take all the tours you want but f—•* you won’t be tasting a drop. After lunch we all went in dif, ferent directions. Lynne and I took Hwy. 50, a rolling, beautifully curved two-laner through the Tennessee hills.
At one point, the humidity and the Glide’s almost carlike ride practically lulled us to sleep. That’s when Pastor CSà James Wilson jolted the both of us awake with his hardhitting radio sermon. “All you men out there get down on ' yer knees and beg forgiveness from your wives in God ’s name, Amen!” Lynne loved that. “Andyou wives, you need to repent for being rebellious women.”
“Hallelujah!” I added.
Tired as two rutting bucks, we coasted into Atlanta and checked into the Westin Hotel near the airport. We ¿ enjoyed a quiet dinner, then retired our bones on the altar of recuperation.
Nashville, TN to Atlanta, GA (approx. 280 miles) Depart Opryland Hotel, follow signs to 1-40 via Briley Pkwy.
DAY FOUR the ride
Fully over my V-Rod Fever and resigned to comfortable partner accommodations, I quietly picked out a Heritage Springer. We putted into Atlanta and had breakfast at the Bluebird Café. While poking at our overcooked eggs, we discussed our last-day-separationanxiety-we-may-never-again-in-our-whole-entire-lives-ride-aHarley feelings. “Maybe there’s some way we could buy one,” I mumbled. “Maybe there’s some way we could buy Avo!” Lynne added.
For us, having ridden more than 1000 miles of open road, thrumming through the countryside or witnessing the vastness of the heartland on one of the great interstates, the big Road Show was interesting, but certainly not as engaging as the road itself. Cruising back to the hotel from Atlanta Motor Speedway late that night, we reveled in the way all the lights reflected off the bike’s chrome. We motored along through the warm darkness, dreaming that someday, somehow. The party was good, sure, but the real celebration for HarleyDavidson is ongoing, taking place one ride at a time.
