An increasingly busy life, an in part a selection of other bikes to ride, has seen my Harley-Davidson® Road King® gathering a little too much dust in the garage for the last 5 weeks or so, but today I was down to lead a local HOG Chapter new members ride and I was really looking forward to it. The first thing though, was a pre-emptive strike at a flat battery, plugging it in to the trickle charger a couple of hours before I was due to leave. I would have preferred to have remembered last night!
Anyhow I got ready for the ride and about an hour and a half before I was due at the local dealership I crossed my fingers and pushed the electric start on the Road King. It turned over a few times, farted, popped and didn't start. I had another go and it started on about the third turn. No being too keen to push my luck I threw the helmet on and went for a 60 - 70km out and back up the freeway to try to get some charge into the bike and warm it up. I didn't like the thought of having a bunch of bikes behind me waiting to take them on a ride and suffering the embarrassment of the bike not running.
With the cobwebs blown out I dropped home to say goodbye to the family and rode down the the local dealership for some socialising, sausage sangas and to see who had turned up for the ride. There were about 14 starters and 2 new members, nice.
The ride briefing done we lined up and I led off, with @officerhardass the rear road captain for the trip. Usually the new members ride heads in a direction and stops some distance from the start where refreshments are taken and people ride home in smaller groups to finish off the k's. Today I had decided to do a longer lap and finish near the starting point.
So from the dealership the 2 lines of Harley-Davidson motorcycles headed out onto the freeway south for about 35kms, took a left on to a back road and rode through some quite pretty countryside. Dark cloud were about and some wettish roads but the rain held off. Another 25k's or so south we truned back onto the freeway to head north, left it again to take advantage of some nice bends south of Swansea and then into some medium traffic until we arrived at a hotel only 3 or 4 k's from the dealership. The round trip was only 138kms and it took a little under 2 hours.
When we arrived at the hotel there was a noticeable absence of bar staff. A little too long later a guy arrived in shorts and a t-shirt and sheepishly asked if we were "1%'ers" I said "Why, do we get a 1% discount?" He said that the girl behind the bar had gone to get him because she was worried about bikers arriving and they had a rule that 1%'s weren't allowed in the hotel wearing their colours. It was quite hilarious and soon after that we were talking to the same guy about his own Harley-Davidson after he was assured that he had nothing to worry about from us.
We lost one rider on a trike who was concerned about a gearbox noise and another left the group as we passed near their home. All in all the ride was incident free and a really nice time. Many of the rides on my Harley-Davidson lately have been very long and by myself, so it was nice to be back in a group again for a while and to have the opportunity to chat with other HOG members.
