Norm
Wizard
I took the C14 from Port St. Lucie to Estero, 300 miles round trip to visit my goos friend Ed (Helix owner that graciously lent it to me for the summer for Jake to learn to ride. I covered all kinds of roads but 90% was two way with broken yellow passing regions much of the way. I kept a brisk pace, as you would have guessed. It seemed like the whole state of Florida is filled with Harleys.
Sooo, I'm movin' along and come to my first badass Harley guy: shorts hairy legs and arms, long hair, unruly beard, and even sporting the very much desired option of tattoos. Now normally when I come up to another single rider I let the guy/woman in front choose a car tire track and I take the other so that together we have a staggered formation, just as if we had started the ride together. Most times the bikers seem to follow this unspoken custom. Now this guy is riding 5 feet behind a small car and bobbing back and forth looking for his chance to pass. He also keeps changing positions from outside to inside and I get tired of switching so I take my favored position close to the yellow line.
5 minutes elapse with a failure to launch, presumably because his bike doesn't have the guts with the small spaces provided by the oncoming traffic. So I drop down 2 gears from overdrive to 4th. The front end of Optimus Prime lightens and we blast past the Harley and the car in what must have been two and a half seconds or less. The Harley rider and car become a blur and when I finally see him passing the car a half mile behind me and I could actually hear the beast and watched as it took him a good 7-10 seconds to get by and barely made it back in his lane before the oncoming cars closed the gap.
A little later a decent appearing 60ish man on a small Harley is doing about 55 in a 65 MPH zone. Naturally I'm going a bit faster than that. He glances in his mirror and sees me closing the gap rapidly and practically thrusts his bike nearly onto the shoulder, as if I'm going to ride over him. I move to the opposing traffic lane and pass him. I don't pass strangers in the same lane. My friends and I do this sometimes when we're fooling around but I don't think it's right otherwise.
And finally, on the ride home A Harley dude on a bigass Cruiser with bigass noisy as heck pipes pulls out not far in front of me. He checks his mirror and decides he won't let me pass him. Problem is he didn't discuss that plan with me. The wild thing roared his terrible roar and gnashed his terrible teeth and rolled his terrible eyes and showed his terrible claws but Optimus Prime was not intimidated. I dropped one gear and passed him so fast he gave up immediately. Silly Harley. Tricks are for...well anything but a Harley I guess.
Sooo, I'm movin' along and come to my first badass Harley guy: shorts hairy legs and arms, long hair, unruly beard, and even sporting the very much desired option of tattoos. Now normally when I come up to another single rider I let the guy/woman in front choose a car tire track and I take the other so that together we have a staggered formation, just as if we had started the ride together. Most times the bikers seem to follow this unspoken custom. Now this guy is riding 5 feet behind a small car and bobbing back and forth looking for his chance to pass. He also keeps changing positions from outside to inside and I get tired of switching so I take my favored position close to the yellow line.
5 minutes elapse with a failure to launch, presumably because his bike doesn't have the guts with the small spaces provided by the oncoming traffic. So I drop down 2 gears from overdrive to 4th. The front end of Optimus Prime lightens and we blast past the Harley and the car in what must have been two and a half seconds or less. The Harley rider and car become a blur and when I finally see him passing the car a half mile behind me and I could actually hear the beast and watched as it took him a good 7-10 seconds to get by and barely made it back in his lane before the oncoming cars closed the gap.
A little later a decent appearing 60ish man on a small Harley is doing about 55 in a 65 MPH zone. Naturally I'm going a bit faster than that. He glances in his mirror and sees me closing the gap rapidly and practically thrusts his bike nearly onto the shoulder, as if I'm going to ride over him. I move to the opposing traffic lane and pass him. I don't pass strangers in the same lane. My friends and I do this sometimes when we're fooling around but I don't think it's right otherwise.
And finally, on the ride home A Harley dude on a bigass Cruiser with bigass noisy as heck pipes pulls out not far in front of me. He checks his mirror and decides he won't let me pass him. Problem is he didn't discuss that plan with me. The wild thing roared his terrible roar and gnashed his terrible teeth and rolled his terrible eyes and showed his terrible claws but Optimus Prime was not intimidated. I dropped one gear and passed him so fast he gave up immediately. Silly Harley. Tricks are for...well anything but a Harley I guess.
