i'M bACK

Alright, things are working today! So Sunday I had my 2005 HD 1200 XL Roadster parked out in front of my house all day. I tucked it in the garage about 9 or 10 p.m. and when I went back out to the garage the next day it had disappeared. I really couldn't believe it at first, and my mind was racing trying to figure out where the hell it was. We've been having problems in my little old foothills hood with tweakers creeping around at night and siphoning gas out of old cars, stealing small stuff and generally giving good reason to keep the fire power loaded and within easy reach. Even with the scumbag activities I wasn't worrying about my stuff that much. I never thought they'd go big like this. The bike was the only non-Triumph I have ever owned and the only bike I ever bought brand new. I didn't have any Triumph's that were even close to running at the time I bought it and had sold a neat, mostly stock 1971 Trophy a couple years before that, so had been ride-less for too long. Not too long after buying the bike I ran into a couple of the first guys that would be some of the founding members of DTMC. The HD Roadster was essential during this time, and I would not have had my part in founding the club without it. The pictures above are the only I could find of it. It took me to the 2nd EDR, the two first Smoke Outs in AZ, Up and up and down California on our first runs, and even though most the time I was riding it I was wishing I was on a older bike, it was a real nice motorcycle to have. Great torque, and great brakes, a little prone to getting hot under hard riding and a annoying high speed wobble usually at about 90 MPH and above that always bugged the hell out of me. Recently it was getting hard to go back and forth between the 2005 HD and the 1948 Triumph chopper. I've been mostly riding the Truimph and the chararistics were so drastically different between the two bikes it was kinda dangerous. The body gets used to how one machine works and wants to do the same stuff when you hop on something else. The bad news for HD is that I think the 1948 stretched rigid frame Triumph with the 4" over front end handled better than the 2005 Sportster, the lack of any real braking ability on the Triumph being its weak point. The bizarre thing is that a friend of a friend had come over on Sunday to look at it and we shook hands on a sale. He had gone home and started financing work on his computer and called me back to say we had a deal for shure. He's not a suspect and was super bummed when I told him what happened the next day. Now I have a pain in the ass insurance claim to deal with and the hoops to jump through associated with it, as well as the grim thought of the bike turning up somewhere thrashed, beat to shit and thrown back into my lap. The good news is my Triumph was over in my Dad's garage and the rest of my projects still look like old junk or are stashed in other places. No Triumph stuff stolen! That's it for modern bikes and probably HD's as well for me. Next club bike will be another rigid Pre-unit, but with a set of 800cc Routt barrells and lotsa other good stuff...