Hello everybody,
just want say hello to the street-glide riders in the US.
I am a native Austrian who moved to Hamburg, Germany shortly after the Berlin Wall finally came down in 1990.
Started my motorcycle career in 1992 with a BMW R100 GS/PD, then moved to another Boxer, a RS 1100 RS.
Drove this till 1997 and then went on a kind of "sabbatical", because my wife was not really interested in joining me on tours.
This period lasted for more then ten years - I got rid of my BMW in 1999, and then split with my wife in 2007.
In the end of 2008 my current girlfriend entered my life - she was riding a Yamaha Virago herself and one of her first statements was: "Be aware that I am riding a bike - and there is no chance of me giving this up!"
She started dragging me to motorcycling exhibitions within weeks into our relationship - after 4 months (Feb 2009) I purchased a BMW K1200 GT - had a little more horsepower than the previous BMWs (about 160 US/HP).
The new girlfriend was happy - I was happy. But she was ready for "phase II" - I was presented with nice pictures of Harley Davidson Irons, Softails and was dragged to the local Harley Dealer.
In may 2009 I became "convinced" that I had to give one of these "Heaps of Iron" a try - drove a 883 Iron. I was - let me put it politely - "not impressed". But the dealer offered me a ride on a XL1200N Nightster, which even looked nicer thant the iron - and it had a little more "Punch" than the iron (at least when not compared to the 130nm/160hp BMW).
I purchased the Nightster two days later - having this idea in the back of my had that it would also be a nice bike for the girl.
Unfortunately she absolutely refused to ride it - too heavy, too big. Now it was my turn to do a litte "convincing".
We started the familiarization phase with "Just sitting on the nighster", moved to "driving around on the parking lot" to "grabbing a cup of coffee at the airport".
In June 2009 the Harley Days in Hamburg came up - and my girlfriend was thinking of "Just riding the nightster to the fairgrounds and back". Since then the Nightster "lives" no longer in my garage - but in hers.
I was stuck with the BMW - and decided that although it is a nice bike for traveling long distances (especially from Hamburg to Flensburg where my girlfriend lives, which is a distance of about 100miles with almost no speed limits) it is not the right bike for accompanying a good looking woman on a Harley.
So I got myself a FatBob at Ebay - and my life started changing. If anybody would have told me before that Harley drivers form a special kind of community I would have at least lifted an eyebrow - but now I know that this is true.
There even is a quite active FatBob Community in germany (all organized in an internet forum like this one), where we found we lots of new acquaintances, many of them became friends, some became good friends or even brothers (and sisters).
In 2013 I took the next - and final step: As the FXDF FatBob does not really look nice with luggage system and some of the FatBob Forum Members were "upgrading" to the final stage, I sold my FatBob and got myself a FLHX 13 in Black Denim. Did some mods, like exhaust (Remus ECS - noise abatement is a big issue in Germany, SE BigSucker, SE SuperTuner, ....) and cannot imagine driving something else (except perhaps sometimes in the far future a newer StreetGlide )
I hope I can contribute a little bit to the tons of information I found in this forum - and perhaps even visit the States with my loving girlfriend and explore your country in the saddle of a bike from "the company".
Regards from Hamburg,
Dieter
just want say hello to the street-glide riders in the US.
I am a native Austrian who moved to Hamburg, Germany shortly after the Berlin Wall finally came down in 1990.
Started my motorcycle career in 1992 with a BMW R100 GS/PD, then moved to another Boxer, a RS 1100 RS.
Drove this till 1997 and then went on a kind of "sabbatical", because my wife was not really interested in joining me on tours.
This period lasted for more then ten years - I got rid of my BMW in 1999, and then split with my wife in 2007.
In the end of 2008 my current girlfriend entered my life - she was riding a Yamaha Virago herself and one of her first statements was: "Be aware that I am riding a bike - and there is no chance of me giving this up!"
She started dragging me to motorcycling exhibitions within weeks into our relationship - after 4 months (Feb 2009) I purchased a BMW K1200 GT - had a little more horsepower than the previous BMWs (about 160 US/HP).
The new girlfriend was happy - I was happy. But she was ready for "phase II" - I was presented with nice pictures of Harley Davidson Irons, Softails and was dragged to the local Harley Dealer.
In may 2009 I became "convinced" that I had to give one of these "Heaps of Iron" a try - drove a 883 Iron. I was - let me put it politely - "not impressed". But the dealer offered me a ride on a XL1200N Nightster, which even looked nicer thant the iron - and it had a little more "Punch" than the iron (at least when not compared to the 130nm/160hp BMW).
I purchased the Nightster two days later - having this idea in the back of my had that it would also be a nice bike for the girl.
Unfortunately she absolutely refused to ride it - too heavy, too big. Now it was my turn to do a litte "convincing".
We started the familiarization phase with "Just sitting on the nighster", moved to "driving around on the parking lot" to "grabbing a cup of coffee at the airport".
In June 2009 the Harley Days in Hamburg came up - and my girlfriend was thinking of "Just riding the nightster to the fairgrounds and back". Since then the Nightster "lives" no longer in my garage - but in hers.
I was stuck with the BMW - and decided that although it is a nice bike for traveling long distances (especially from Hamburg to Flensburg where my girlfriend lives, which is a distance of about 100miles with almost no speed limits) it is not the right bike for accompanying a good looking woman on a Harley.
So I got myself a FatBob at Ebay - and my life started changing. If anybody would have told me before that Harley drivers form a special kind of community I would have at least lifted an eyebrow - but now I know that this is true.
There even is a quite active FatBob Community in germany (all organized in an internet forum like this one), where we found we lots of new acquaintances, many of them became friends, some became good friends or even brothers (and sisters).
In 2013 I took the next - and final step: As the FXDF FatBob does not really look nice with luggage system and some of the FatBob Forum Members were "upgrading" to the final stage, I sold my FatBob and got myself a FLHX 13 in Black Denim. Did some mods, like exhaust (Remus ECS - noise abatement is a big issue in Germany, SE BigSucker, SE SuperTuner, ....) and cannot imagine driving something else (except perhaps sometimes in the far future a newer StreetGlide )
I hope I can contribute a little bit to the tons of information I found in this forum - and perhaps even visit the States with my loving girlfriend and explore your country in the saddle of a bike from "the company".
Regards from Hamburg,
Dieter
