A Rebel Sportster

I haven't been getting out as much as I'd like, because it seems like there is too much to keep track of and get done. And when I do have free time, I seem to spend it winding down. We've recently gone to a four day work week because of gas prices, so I have Fridays off. I usually spend the first part of the day pacing around the house going "wtf just happened this week?!" Plus, after the 70 hour work weeks I had been pulling for basically two years, there's a part of my brain that just shuts down the machinery when it sees the chance to do so. I guess to rebuild or restore or something healthy and stupid like that. So I was really grateful when D/B hauled me over to the Harley-Davidson ladies night.

I'll just let you build an image of whatever you might think that looks like. Because everybody came with their own version of what it was going to look like, and nobody was right. I'll give you a minute.

What would you choose to wear to such an event? That was a stumper. I have the leather stuff if needed, but that seemed like overkill. So I decided on what made me comfortable and a tad dressy at the same time. Clothes you could move around in just in case you needed to duck a beer bottle or something. D/B came dressed in her camouflage shorts and she was flecked with paint where she'd been painting one of her rentals. She still doesn't understand why butch lesbians hit on her. Or why people think I'm her bitch when we go places. I've tried to explain that it starts with the shorts and ends with the tool box on her truck, but she really is just that thick, and now it's just funny. So she basically came dressed to continue her stereotype, as usual.

We get there and there weren't as many cars as I thought there would be. And no bikes, but it was supposed to rain, so that was really the wiser choice. For some reason, ladies' night events are just not well attended by women. They are well attended by me, but I don't understand why more ladies don't do it. It's not like the family couldn't figure out how to make a bologna sandwich one night out of the year or something. The same kind of turnout happened at the male stripper show we went to, but turns out the women who stayed home were the smarter ones. Anyhoo. There were probably about 30 women there. That sucks for this area. We came in and registered and were told to wear name tags. I hate name tags. So does D/B. So we put them in the trash. The dressed up blondes who were registering us looked alarmed and surprised. Which alarmed and surprised me considering they work in a Harley shop. How many of their customers would likely wear name tags? The second question was "Where's the beer?" Turns out there's no beer at this event. Just wine. Because it's ladies night.

So right back out the door we go over to the BP station and come back with our Miller lite pack. More surprised and alarmed looks.

The night really just went downhill from there. The women who were here fell into three categories. There were a small minority of women who actually owned and rode their own bikes. There were a small minority of women who had been dragged along by their biker friend in case this ladies' night thing was full of horseshit and they needed a drinking buddy. There were two of us, counting me. The vast majority of the women were the ones that rode "bitch" on the bike. And the whole point of this event was to give them some skirt to get one of their own (and the cash that would generate for the store, obviously.) The whole event was obviously pitched at the girly-girls on the back of the bike. We were told when we came in that everything in the store was 10% off. "Including bikes?" I asked. "Um. No. The clothes." The store is mostly made up of bikes, so that seemed weird. They had a fashion show of all the Harley gear you could wear. Mostly silly stuff. When the lone male "model" came out, there were some hoots from the minority to strip, take it off, show us your ass, etc. I'll leave you to figure out who may have been behind that. But I can report that at the end of the show, he came back down the runway and dropped down to his boxers.

Most of the women seemed to be drinking Pepsi. We finished our Miller and went on to their wine. We took two bottles of it home with us afterward. The rest of the event was broken into stations where we were taken to different bikes and encouraged to sit on them and start them. One of us tipped one over, because she thought it was heavier than it turned out to be. I'll leave you to speculate about that person, but it was the same one drinking Miller and hooting at male models. In general it was pretty boring. Those who already rode didn't get anything out of it, and the ones who were supposed to sit on the bike for themselves and start it didn't.

I did fall in love with a bike, though.



It's a Harley-Davidson Sportster, and about as much bike as I could handle anyway. I've always loved bikes, and I'd love to have one. I've just never had the time or the money to do anything about it. I was a single mom at 19, and any extra money usually went to paying off bills or buying books for college. I didn't dare waste it on a luxury. But you know, I just might revisit that. Soon.

I'd start off on this, of course:



It's a Honda Rebel, and basically the "starter" bike. Until I figured out how not to skin up the good one.

Afterwards, we went to the bar next door to talk about bikes. And about how our favorite bar is going wa-ay downhill. But that's next time's post.
-- Virgil