As some of you may know, I took a handful of my SWE girls from UWM out to Oak Creek, to the House of Harley on Layton Avenue. H-D was hosting a "garage party" or social gathering for women only. Local engineering women from UWM, Marquette, and MSOE were invited, as well as female employees of Harley, that may work in more clerical or administrative departments of H-D, and needed a better taste of what products their employer was representing and standing by.
All in all, it was a blast. I am floored by how thorough Harley-Davidson is: they were professional, but laid back, all in the same instance. They catered in pizza and these brownie-dessert cupcake things, gave us oodles of door prizes, and let us touch anything we wanted to, hee hee. ;)
(I walked out of there with a pen, two note-pad thingies, two bag clips, a newspaper, a brochure on renting specs, and a 2007 mini-booklet of the H-D lineup...I was like that creepy and slovenly homeless guy you might see on the streets of a big city somewhere, that shows up to a carnvial and hoards all the free shit because he wants to go swim in it or something. But really! This time, I was just doubling up and making sure I got lots of cool knick-knacks for Trusko, my Harley Twin over there. If it says "House of Harley" on it, I wondered if he might like it, so I snapped it up for him.)
The whole night ran from 5:30 to 9:30, and it sure was a jam-packed four hours! It turned out to be more like a night class, with all the women divided up into four groups. Each of those groups were stationed at one department at the House, learning about H-D goodies. After a given half hour or so, the stations rotated. As you can figure, by the end of the night each group had gotten to each station.
There was the "Motor Gear" section, where you sit and listen to why you need to buy only Harley-name-brand jackets, shoes, gloves, helmets, chaps, chap-stick, sunglasses, etc., in order to be a certified, authentic, appropriate rider. After listening to the shpeal you got to have your Polaroid picture taken of you sitting on a Harley, wearing some of the gear:
Me, wearing the insulating liner to an FLH Sport Jacket.
There was the parts department, where you sit and listen to all the after-market custom jobbers you can get done on your bike. (This station included one very pretty bike that was customized with chrome up the wahzoo!)
There was the service department, where you actually went down into their service garage where they do custom paint jobs, oil changes, and winterization and storage of private bicycles for various loyal customers. There, you got to learn how to pick up a bike that might have been knocked over, whether it be from an accident or in your garage while trying to back it in to its stall, and it falls over onto the Toro riding lawnmower (Dad!). ;)
We used a Buell Blast! for this exercise, and I was feeling pretty cautious about doing this, since you go one at a time while the whole class watches you. Intense.
Anyway, one particular girl went, and struggled a little bit, so I knew I could go after her and look just as bad (c'mon, don't we all do that?! Wait for someone else to start the trend of screwing up, to show it's okay?)
As soon as she stood the Buell up, and huffed and puffed back to her seat, I stood up, announced I was going to give it a try, and made my swooping move in. I bent down, backed my tushie into the seat of the bike that was laying on its right side, placed my left hand on the handlebar to squeeze the brake, and my right hand on the fiberglass wheel-well of the rear tire. I pushed backwards with my legs, and whomp! the puppy stood right up, it was amazing.
I backed away, the class clapped, and the salesguy looked at me with a gaping mouth and said, "Christ, you are like a tractor!" HA ha ha ha, that was awesome, and I will take that as a compliment, because I do pride myself in being quite the little motorboat that gets things done. :)
The last station is the one my group actually started out at: the Sales Department. It was basically my favorite station, where you got to explore the showroom floor, touch, poke, sit on, and stand up, the most polished and pretty bikes that I, nor my pocketbook, will ever see again. :)
They had a salesman there for every woman within that group, I was impressed (even though I could see right through them and realize they were being all slime-backed and trying to up their own sales by conning more women into their demographic of customers...I was just in it for the engineering and manufacturing tactics!). Anyway, each salesman commanded one of the bikes, and one of each bike from each of the five classes was available. I made sure to sit on every one of them, as well as trying to stand them up.
I started out on the Buell Blast!, the typical beginner's bike, and liked it. It felt pretty comfortable, very very manageable for a little stick-figure girl like myself.
Then, I hopped on the 883L-class Sportser, and that felt even better! It was a low-rider (as denoted by the 'L' in the name), so it sat low to the ground and I felt like I had great footing. I liked the look, instead of the wannabe scooter/lawnmower look the Blast! can give off at certain angles.
I sat on a 1200-class Sporster after that, and then a bunch of Dynas, Softails, and then the lone and single black V-rod they had there! I ended with the Baggers (Touring bikes), and those felt awkwardly large to me. My hat is off to my dad for caressing the Goldwing for all these years, because that is a big-ass bike.
I managed to stand those touring mammoths up, though! I actually got every single bike to stand up, except for that damn V-Rod! I was so pissed at myself, that son-of-a-gun is a heavy lil twerp! I asked Ivan, or Goran, or Ishduku, whatever the foreign-exchange employee's name was (can't remember) that was helping me, how much it weighed, and he said 700ish pounds. Christ, I grunted, and spun, and spat, with my feet sliding, but I just could not stand 'er up. I admire Chris Gabryszek for commanding one of those suckers (he's got a black VRSCA), because damn, they look nice, and have a lot of meat on their bones. Ivan-Goran-Ishduku-Blah ended up standing it up for me, while I was sitting on it, meekly looking down at my crotch. I felt about as strong as a shred of popcorn, ha ha. I think the rake on the V-Rod must just be too wide for me, I need a steeper/skinnier angle. I mean, the Touring ones weighed 800ish pounds, and those popped right up, because once you turn the wheel from the left, all the way to the right, it basically stands itself up! Center of Gravity, you perplex me at times.
I had vowed to myself to go and try to sit on that V-rod again after the class was over with, but I never got back to it! Damnit.
I did hunt down this girl named Patti, though, to get my name on the waiting list for the Harley-Davidson Rider's Edge course! I think I'm maybe the 21st person on the list. Classes start in late March or early April (yeah, they try to maximize their weekends here in 'Sconsin), and each class has a cap of 12 students. Soooo, I would think I'm set to get my license in April?? WHOOOOO HOOOO!!!! That leaves all summer long to get in some prime riding time with Scott, Dad, and Grandpa. Wheee, I'm excited! (P.S.: At the end of the night, they raffled off one free lesson for Rider's Edge! Some Harley employee actually won it, but that means that she gets her class, a $364 value, for free, compliments of Harley!! OOOOOooooh, she is so lucky, and she didn't even act like she enjoyed it all that much when she heard her name get called off. I hope she makes good use of it, there are starving people two tables down from her that would LOVE to have had won that!)
In conclusion, I guess I like the Softails, Sporsters, and Buells the most. Softails are apparently the class that all the female-riders out there go to, and I can tell why. Lower seating, a skinnier seat so we don't have to ride Spread-Eagle, and solid footboards on most models, instead of pegs. Plus the handlebars are not out-there too wide.
I wouldn't mind getting myself a little Buell, though, as a starter bike. Just to tool around with, and learn the power of myself on a bicycle, and how gingerly to act with the gyroscope. (A Blast! is what you are trained on, in the Rider's Edge course.)
Ever since all of this, I've been looking up motorcycles online all day, even in the middle of my comp-sci lab, trying to figure out what's best for me. It is addicting!
Ahem, anyway, here are pictures of the group I was with last night. Note the pearly-white, freakishly wide smile on my face in both pictures. I was a happy gal, and I couldn't close my mouth. It was like I had a hanger jammed in there or something!
The entire Milwaukee SWE section: UWM, Marquette, and MSOE. I'm the one on the bike!!
Just UW-Milwaukee's SWE members in attendance. We're a good bunch.
----- The End. :) -----
No comments:
Post a Comment