So now I've had my Sportster for 9 days, so I'll tell you what I think of it.

So far, I've put about 700 miles on it and fed it about 10 gallons of fuel, which is pretty good in my book. I've also had it up to 90 with a really bad crosswind: it buffets, but is stable. I also did this in fifth w/o shifting down. This thing also passes trucks with no problem (some warned me of that).

We all know that Harley's vibrate, but you become oblivious to it after the first 5 miles of ownership.


Here are my adventures so far:

The first day was kinda dull. I bought it and took the long way home.

Day two was July 4, and I inavertently ended up following a group of about 30 Harleys into a 4th of July parade. I really didn't know what was going on untill I asked one of the guys why we were stopped. He said "aren't you with our group." I said no and told him that I followed because one of them signaled me to do so.

Somewhere around this time, I learned the Harley Wave. I'm beginning to feel cooler and more bad-ass than yesterday!

I think it was on Sunday that I decided to follow HWY32 all the way to the state line and then head west to Lake Geneva. This day was nice because it remained 80 degrees well past midnight. unfortunately, I noticed lightning off in the distance while heading down hwy 50 to Lake Geneva, so I headed north to Waukesha. By the time I made it there, storms managed to pop up in all directions. I shot down 94 to downtown with about 10 minutes to spare before the sky let loose.

The next few days were kinda modest in that I rode about 100 miles a day for all but one day.

Then there was Thursday. This day was nice and warm, but we had some scattered storms out there. On my way up to Cedarburg, I found myself tailing a storm and I had to stop a few times to give it some distance. My pants got a bit wet, but I was alright. I ended up spending about 10 hours in Cedarburg working on stuff. I delayed my time coming home because i felt that I could allow the storms to pass by.

Around 2 AM, all looked clear on the Weather channel, so I headed out. It was still nice out with a nice lightning show to the south. I could also see stars out at that time. The nice continued till county line road, where within about 2 seconds, the rain began. A few seconds after that, I heared tapping on my helmet and something stinging my knees...this was hail! The hail didn't last long, but the heavy rain continued till I made it home about 30 minutes later (went 20-25 mph).

One funny incident about this storm is that when I stopped at a gas station so that I could transfer my phone to my backpack, there were two really chewed-up old HD guys there (real mean lookin guy). As I got ready to head back out into the rain, one guy stopped my to say "yep...yer tough." I'm going to let that one go to my head.

One last thing: when I got home that night, I dumped the water out of my shoes. I was soaking!