January 2014 Hogwash

January 2014 Hogwash

 I had been trying to get into the “Harley Dream Experience” in Milwaukee for a couple of years now. This is a program offered to Harley-Davidson museum members and is limited to twenty people, so the odds of replying to the e-mail before nineteen or so other Harley enthusiasts nationwide got the chance was pretty remote. This time however I was sitting at my computer one morning and it popped up, so there I was.

The Harley Dream Experience is held twice year, once during the holiday season, and the other around May 1^st. I always wanted to do the Christmas experience but since I’d never been to Milwaukee during the winter, I knew that I was taking a chance with the weather. Turns out, the weather in Dallas was worse than Harley-Davidson’s hometown and I had a downed tree in my front yard to prove it.

Once we were in Milwaukee, Bill Davidson, the son of legendary Willie G. Davidson met us at the Harley-Davidson museum. He was a nice guy and totally open for questions and the usual bike rider banter. The other eighteen or so people that got into the museum experience were from all over the country. The good thing is that no one knew the other, so there was not the usual group of five or six that had known each other before and took off by themselves so everyone had a good time getting to know each other.

 After lunch again with Bill at the museum’s restaurant we were introduced to our tour guide for the H-D archives. I’ve been to the museum a few times before but tourists could only go so far. We were led through the so-called gates into an area that only H-D employees of the museum, and then only those with authorization, get into. There were racks and racks of bikes, which moved by rails side to side to gain access to bikes in the rear of the large, carnivorous warehouse. We saw Arnold’s “Fatboy” that he rode in one of the “Terminator” movies and John Travolta’s “Wideglide” he rode in “Wild Hogs.” There were also rare racing bikes like the VR-1000 superbike that was the test bed at Daytona for the V-Rod back in the late nineties. There was also a Can-Am style bike, you know the one with the two wheels in front, sitting in a prominent area. The bike had a V-Rod engine I believe, and the tour guide said only that it was a prototype. Who knows?

Later that night we attended a cooking with fuel, that being “alcohol” by the chefs at the museum restaurant called “Motor.” After this we went back to the “Iron Horse Hotel” where we were put up by the company. It’s right across from the museum and I had always wanted to stay there during the every five years anniversary celebrations that I’ve attended over the years. This boutique hotel is super expensive during the big rallies in Milwaukee even if you could get a room. It was built by a wealthy Harley loving guy that has covered motorcycle parking in front. The hotels bar was the scene that first night as the group exchanged the tpical war stories of days in the saddle, what kind of bikes you owned, marriages you’ve had, the usual biker conversations…

Next day we were led on a “steel toe tour” of the engine plant on Pilgrim Road. It was an interesting tour that included lunch with a bunch of H-D engineers. The questions to them ranged from the problems with the clutch with the 2014’s, the overflow problems…with the 2014’s.All is well they said, just teething problems that were bound to come up during real world riding. Later we were given a tour of the H-D University at the old Juneau plant. Tourists are never given a tour of this facility we were told. No pictures were allowed at most of the facilities we toured by the way. The University was were H-D employees go to be trained anything from marketing to working on new motorcycles. What was particularly interesting were the two floors dedicated to troubleshooting bikes. One floor was for mechanics, the other electronics. Dealerships send their techs to this school to learn how to work on new models, this of course being the 2014’s. There were twenty or so new motorcycles on each floor, the challenge was for the techs to determine what was wrong with each one in a limited amount of time.

That Friday night, our group and about six hundred of your new closest friends were invited to the big Christmas party at the “campus” that included the museum and other buildings that made up the facility. It was a fun time and Bill Davidson showed up as well. Once again he was a fun guy that was agreeable to all these people with cameras wanting a picture with him. A limo took us back to the Iron Horse that night and the group once again hung out at the bar. All pretty much agreed that the “Dream Experience” was well worth the time and money. A toast was given and of course all agreed to get together at another time, in another place.

But you know how that goes.