A couple of H-D's

I know nothing about Harleys except they are loud, have lots of chrome and you have to wear a beanie and leather clothes in order to ride one. I don't know if I could ride one because of the forward controls and the legs out front posture. I would imagine that the tremendous torque of the large v-twin would win me over if I ever ventured a test ride, especially a certain Arlen Ness custom red model that recently won best of show at the last Ace Cafe Harley Night . I think I would even be afraid to sit on it for fear of making an unintended mark, or heavens forbid if it should go to sleep if my foot slipped.

Back to reality. On the way home I noticed this biker directly in front of me. A single rider, alone, navigating their way through our mess of urban traffic.



Doesn't look like your usual macho rider. No patches, No leather, No chrome but had the distinctive loud mufflers. Upon closer inspection . . .



you would have noticed the pony tail sticking out of the helmet, and the slightly elevated low heels . The handlebars were slightly higher than normal but appeared manageable. As is the norm with most Harley riders, she did the duck walk while doing her slow maneuvers.



Here we are heading towards New Westminster, known as the Royal City as it was once the capital of British Columbia for a short time. That is the Pattullo Bridge in the background which spans the Fraser River towards Surrey. I followed her a bit until I turned off onto Front Street on my mission to record some video

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During the past couple of days I had been doing some very strenuous outdoor work, like cutting the lawn. I usually perform these duties on a weekday so as to leave the weekend free for other activies and make time for riding. I feel guilty if there are chores to do and I don't do them. After work Tuesday I cut the front lawn and Wednesday I finished off the back yard lawn. Well, it must be my bad form as somehow I wrenched my back and can hardly straighten up. I think I have acquired the Jack rIEPE syndrome . I can hardly swing my leg over my bike, yet I still rode to work. Short story long I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up some Advil. I was told that this would cut down the swelling in my back. As I pulled into a parking stall this Harley pulled beside me



As I was removing my helmet I spoke briefly to the rider and mentioned that if I had known he was going to share the space then I could have moved over a bit. It is my normal practice to park on a diagonal near the mouth of the space.



I think this Harley looks good in white with blue accents. Originally when he pulled beside me I thought that perhaps I had been going to fast and he followed me into the parking lot but he did not have his flashers on



I always imagined that H-D's were large heavy machines, but as you can see, my Wee appears larger. Perhaps it is just a trick with colours, one being black and the other white



for a bike that is used all year around, it is very clean. Even the chrome shines and I really liked that large horn



Do you notice the ingenious helmet lock. Just a pair of handcuffs looped through the helmet strap loop and over the mirror stem. It didn't appear very secure but I examined it closely and it was as secure as it could be without either cutting the strap off or breaking the mirror, but who is going to vandalize this bike anyway. You would have the heat of the law on your back



There is a police decal on the rear fender



The gauges are very utilitarian; Speedometer, Tachometer (cause you got to know your RPM's) and a petrol indicator. It also has lots of red and blue lights which flash at the most inopportune times.



I didn't notice the Drill Team decal until I was about to enter the store. I was hoping to purchase my medication and come back to speak to him, but by the time I was finished, he was already gone. As a member of the Vancouver Police Motorcycle Drill team, he would have been trained to do complex maneuvers

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Recently I was thinking of upgrading my digital dSLR. I've been looking at the Nikon D300, D90 and perhaps the Canon T2i but I am having so much fun doing video that I purchased a Panasonic HDC TM55 1080HD camcorder instead. It is capable of producing AVCHD up to 17 Mbps, but I recorded this footage at 13 Mbps and downsized the bitrate to 8 Mpbs for youtube upload. This is the first time I have rendered to H.264 format instead of MPEG, so I am still doing a bit of experimentation.

This video has some scenes around the Vancouver area and closes with a video of laundry hanging on a clothes line from our next door neighbour. I hope your internet connection can handle the 1080HD bitrate without pausing.