Why did you sell them?

I sold the first 3 when I lost my job in 2016. I was out of work for 18 months, so it was sell the bikes or cash in some retirement funds. Made more sense to sell the bikes. I just sold the FLP because I had more into it than I felt comfortable with and our dollar dropped compared to the US dollar, so I could get out with only losing $1,000. I may hang up my helmet as I really don’t ride much because I live in the city and there are too many a-holes on the roads not paying attention! That said, I am keeping an eye out for another mint 90 Fat Boy for some garage art ��

Distracted drivers have become a HUGE issue to MC riders in the last decade & was a factor in me hanging up my helmet. I had become increasingly concerned about being ghosted by a 17-yo girl that might be texting “LMFAO” to a girlfriend with me in the wrong place/wrong time.

My cousin has 6 bikes and lives on a farm in the middle of the country. He rarely rides anyplace with traffic for this reason. He likes deserted two lanes in the middle of nowhere these days and by comparison twenty years ago he used to ride all over the country. Not any more.

You had some nice putters there Mark. I love the old FLH's and I'm a sucker for Knuckle's, Pan's, and Shovels. My buddy has a nice 66 FLH that looks similar to yours, and he has a few other early bikes including a 36 which is Uber rare.

Myself, I live 10 miles outside the nearest city, so for me, there are no traffic lights around. Hang a couple of lefts or a couple of rights and my face is in the wind. If I head 20 miles SW of my place, I'm entering the Rocky Mountains here in western Canada. Hwy 40 through Kananaskis is gorgeous and there aren't many places that give you that feeling of freedom as you head up to the pass at 7200' and down the other side on a 175-mile loop. Gotta keep your head on a pivot nowadays, and when you're not watching out for cars, your watching for animals cause they'll wreck you just as bad when you're cruising through their domain. Still fun to get out and ride...just have to use enough common sense to out-think all the lick-tards around us. That and I avoid city riding for the most part. Here are a couple of my rides...former and current. The first shot is from a ride we did in the fall of 2019 to Waterton Parks. About 90 minutes south of my place.

https://i.ibb.co/Lx35JPg/IMG-6315.jpg
Waterton Parks 2019. 103" Stage 3 Sleeper

https://i.ibb.co/nmmjcjb/Road-Trip-Day-3-4-099.jpg
Trip down the west coast back in 2009. 120" Performance Bagger

https://i.ibb.co/bPPrvWL/Misc-200.jpg
My old hot rod. 124" of pure nastynous. Would smoke the tires for 150' anytime / anywhere

If you know Harley's and the engine performance side of things, you see a common denominator on the 3 bikes I posted pictures of. Each of them has a D&D pipe on them, the first sign of the bike not being stock as these are the best 2 into 1 header pipes made for those who love big cams, high compression, and ported heads. The flamed bagger was 124" R&R stroker and made 132 hp with 124 ft-lbs of tire-shredding torque. I could keep up to Gixxer's with that bike and topped it out more than a few times at an undisclosed mph where the needle would be buried. I have a thing for horsepower and often enough have trouble leaving anything stock.

I've always ridden under the assumption that someone was trying to hit me.

The old bikes are tough to beat Graeme and you can have 2 or 3 for the price of one muscle car! I bought a Kendon trailer to tow my bike outside of the city to ride, but it is a pain in the ass to have to drive an hour each way just to go for a short scoot.

OK that’s it stop all the bike talk or I’ll make a beeline to the Harley dealer! Love the stories good stuff and also gets me thinking about summer which is just around the corner.

You definitely want to be more careful. You'll get lost in a pothole around the "D". Motor City and it has the worst roads in the nation. Ugh... :hmmm:

Was cubed up with a couple of former CVO engineers at Harley. Once asked them about factory performance exhaust. Meeting federal noise regs was a challenge until the gubmint said the fine would be $10k per bike/per day.

Scratch one very profitable product line.