Thank you for the kind words, Elmer. I will take what you have said as what amounts to a compliment, given your somewhat limited capacity for reasoning. You speak of me being ‘narrow minded’, but what would you call someone who has their buying habits controlled by the stereotypical aspect of "I ain’t gonna buy no Jap crap!"? I think that my views come from being wonderfully open minded instead, of seeing past all of the corporate hype and BS, of choosing not to be a sheep to be cloned over and over again by the redneck scientists that have their primitive lab in Milwaukee. If being ‘narrow minded’ means I don’t get taken to the cleaners by a bunch of three tooth hill scoggins in Milwaukee, that I’m not considered to be one of the flock of sheep that bleat out the tired old mantra of Harley Davidson, then I embrace narrow mindedness to its fullest!

You talk of Harley Davidson going to a considerable amount of trouble to maintain their heritage and of meeting the demands of the marketplace. I read between the lines to mean that Harley Davidson has done nothing innovative since the 1940’s with their technology and that the only real demands of the marketplace encountered by Harley Davidson is how to figure out the best way to sell 60 year old technology when only an idiot would pay top dollar for it.  Their first problem is to define a large share of the market composed of nothing but idiots.  In this aspect, they have had the most critical luck in doing so.

You know, Elmer, rocks reflect well on their predecessors.   In fact, rocks are pretty much the key role model for Harley Davidson, 'strength without change'.  Rocks haven't advanced since they cooled and got hard, which is coincidentally what Milwaukee did decades ago.  This is all exactly what I said in my ‘rant’, what Milwaukee sells today is no different than what they sold 60 years ago, except that they want modern prices for out dated and obsolete antediluvian hardware. Thank you for making that more clear to me in the language that a Harley owner might be able to understand. Harley Davidson is behind the times in technology and manufacturing, so they have to pander their out of date merchandise to fools, and the key to that is marketing.

Marketing.

Marketing.

Marketing.

How else do you explain a company that makes more off of T-shirts and Teddy bears than they do actually from selling motorcycles?

Now THERE is an engineering feat! Last time that I checked, all import bikes met these criteria, you mean that Harley is having a problem with this? Must be because they are using outdated technology. You can’t expect 60 year old technology to tackle the problems of the modern day. That is why we have MODERN technology, to handle MODERN problems. It doesn't take an engineer to figure that out.

No, but I know a lot of people who will rush out to buy a exact copy of a '60's era Harley at 20 times the price it sold back then and there isn't very much difference in materials or build quality in what you got in 1960 and what you are getting for your money today.

Those people are called "Harley riders".

There are CBR400s in Japan and Europe (only) that go for about seven times what a CB350 sold for in the ‘60’s, and trust me, they, unlike the Harley, are worth every single penny. Unlike a Harley, these motorcycles represent today’s evolution of a tried and true design, not merely a tired old copy of a decades old design that is cranked out year after year with only a different choice of color and perhaps a new style of leather saddlebag as an option. These bikes represent the evolution, not the stagnation, of a successful design, as it has advanced through research and marketing, through trial and error, throughout the decades since its introduction. These bikes sell for their performance and stamina, from the image that they have earned, not due to some artificially inflated perception of their real worth or a image that is the culmination of a hired team of marketing experts instead of real world experience. These bikes are ultra-refined race ready street bikes designed of ultra modern materials (titanium, aluminum, carbon fiber, etc.), not copies of 60 year old technology that was (barely) adequate for its own day, let alone the modern era. You can ride these bikes from your house down to the store, or across the country, and if you find a race track along the way, you can go there too. How many Harleys do you know that pull any other kind of service other than what the average pack mule could be expected to perform?

You pay modern prices for modern hardware, you don’t pay modern prices for ancient hardware unless you are an absolute fool. How many armies in the world do you know who would pay the asking price for a modern day M1A2 Abrams main battle tank when all they were getting is something comparable to a World War II Sherman tank? Only a fool would do that. The same comparison holds true for Harley Davidson. What do you get for all of your hard spent money? A 60 year old motorcycle design. Not a lot of return, other than some bragging rights and the ability to fit in with the other bleating sheep in the world.

But where there are fools with money, there are smart people ready to take that money from those fools, which brings us to the next point of our discussion.

Man, are you oh-blivious!  I’m afraid it really IS marketing strategy, Elmer. People are sheep, and they'll buy anything you shove down their throats.  You really can sell anyone anything, Harley proves that over and over again. Stuff like the Pet Rock™ back in the ‘70’s, Chia pets™ in the '80's, and crap like Brittany Spears, N-Sync, and the Backstreet Boyz (the last two being clear cut examples of commercial and market engineered groups of latent homo erotic pansy ass clowns if there ever were any groups of latent homo erotic pansy ass clowns) proves over and over again that the average American is one of the dumbest, commercially driven pathetic creatures in existence on this planet.

The only identity we have is what we can afford to buy.

We are what we wear.  We are what we own.  Our sum total greatness of our life is marked by the importance of the brand name we slather our bodies with.  Think about it.  How can you be an individual when you are paying to wear someone else's clothes?

You’re going to pay money for a pet ROCK? How dumb are you?  Rocks are FREE! Walk out in your yard and adopt one!  Adopt any one you find.   Hell, adopt the whole frigging yard full of rocks if you're that frigging lonely! They don’t need any food or water, leave them where they are.   Nature will take care of them while you are on vacation.  Nature has taken care of rocks forever. Name them if it makes you feel better, pick them up and stroke them.

Pet Rock™.

Bwahahahahaha! Some guy got RICH, and I mean filthy RICH off of picking up rocks, putting them in a cardboard box, and selling them to people dumber than he was.

People are truly sheep, and they're getting dumber all the time, thanks to the endless brain and individuality destroying media stream that we subject ourselves to on a hourly basis.

The same thing with Harley Davidson. You have to be smarter than your customers to survive in the business world or either you have to understand how to sell really crappy products to people who are dumb enough to buy them.  Harley has never been very smart, so in order to survive, they had to learn how to sell their products, at elevated prices, to people who were even dumber than they were.  How did they do this?

Marketing.

They tricked you into thinking that you absolutely had to own a Harley sometime in your life or when you died, you might as well have never been born because without riding a Harley, everything else that you did in life was just for show.  And people buy into this, with reckless and gleeful abandon!

Don’t you know anything about doing business, Elmer? To be as old as you are, you don’t seem very wise or business savvy. Milwaukee knows a hell of a lot more about selling worthless scrap metal junk for the going price of solid gold than you ever will be privy to. While you are selling these sheep this gold painted turd, telling them that it is really gold through and through, you have to make those people think that they are getting the best damn thing in the world at a price that they will be happy to afford, even if it means going dangerously into debt.  Once you have them hooked and convinced, you can ask any damn price that you want and the people (who are far dumber than the seller) will pay dearly for it, because you have them convinced that what they are buying has NO equal, it has NO peer, and they just have to belong to something, anything, greater than what they have now.

They need to buy into a brotherhood of individuals who dress out of the same catalog.  The need to buy into the image of tough, stand alone individuals, lone-wolf bikers who feel the need to gather in large flocks and groups to ride and pose.  Sheep are not individuals, they travel around in a big flock, they go with the flow, all day long, doing nothing impressive other than being a large group of sheep.

Harley riders are sheep, one big flock of like minded individuals who have to buy an identity from a mail order catalog or a dealer showroom because they are too lame to make one out for their own selves.

You have to be smarter than what you ride or buy. Owning a Harley has never required any amount of brains, just lots of money, and a willingness to join one of the largest flocks of bleating timid sheep the world has known. Individual my ass. When was the last time you saw a sheep stand up and go "I’m an individual!". Same thing with Harley riders. You subscribe, via money, to an image, a false image, and it shows everywhere you go.

You see, Elmer, Harley Davidson is a corporate image, not a motorcycle company. It is a media icon that is rolling along, oiled by the countless dollars fed to grease the corporate wheel. Harley stopped making motorcycles, GOOD motorcycles, a long, long time ago. When it found out that it couldn’t compete on a quality or quantity basis with the rapidly advancing imports, when it was begging the governments of both the federal and state levels to help bail it out, it sought refuge in the only thing left open to it, to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing, to walk loudly and carry a small stick. Harley began marketing its hollow image as something of vast substance, something worth having, something desirable.

Nostalgia!

Freedom!

Tradition!

Rugged Individualism!

Each one of those terms has a tiny trademark (tm) symbol behind it.  It is no longer an ideal in Milwaukee, it is a purchasable quality that can be bought by those who don't have a clue how to get each of those ideals for free.   The only problem is, only sheep would be dumb enough to buy into the whole convoluted scheme.

Harley Davidson… baaaaaaa.

There are people out there with Harley Davidson paraphernalia that will NEVER own a HD bike in their lives, but they bought the T-shirt, or they bought the bumper sticker, because they buy into a misplaced concept, that Harley is an ‘American’ bike because it is ‘cool’ to ride a Harley. Well, I don’t know when being a ‘American’ meant that you were loud, fat, dumb, and slow, but obviously, Milwaukee is putting that off to be the ‘American’ motorcycle, all noise, no muscle. Glitter and leather, big, like an ox, and just as dumb and loud. Heavy, because they don’t have the technology to build anything more compact or powerful. I laugh at Milwaukee’s most powerful engine when my Ninja ZX-6R, with a 599cc motor, had almost thirty percent more power than Harley’s biggest and best EVO engine. Thirty percent more power in almost one-third the volume.

Big and dumb, loud and slow, bow up and pose, a tough image with a hollow facade.

Yeah, that's American(tm), but it's not American.  Not by a long shot.  Not from what I remember being taught that America was all about and what she stood for.

Harley’s aren’t ‘American’ motorcycles, they are two wheeled representations of cattle, they are motorized wheelchairs for posers and wannabes who would rather buy a reputation than actually earn it. And that is the beauty of marketing, Elmer. Only those who resist the temptation to take the easy way out can actually see the trap for what it is. You can’t see the walls of your own cage, little bird.

No. You will never sell the aforementioned 1960’s era technology CB350 for what a brand new CB350 would retail for, unless you were selling it to a true motorcycle historian or collector. You’d be a fool to try, unless you had a large market segment of sheep that you could pull the wool over their eyes (no pun intended). The CB series is a long, long lived and highly successful series from Honda, evolving into two separate breeds so far, the CB (which included the awesome six cylinder CBX, which incidentally has three times the cylinders that a Harley has) and the CB-R or just CBR which is one of the best sport bikes in the world. So, would someone pay seven times the price for a 1960’s CB350? Maybe to a collector. Would someone pay seven times the price of a 1960’s era CB350 that had evolved into the ultra-modern, ultra-powerful, ultra-compact, ultra-light super streetable ready to race from the show room floor CBR400?  Yes.  Most assuredly so.

Technology demands value.  Stagnation implies both ignorance and a willingness not to learn.

A CB350 in the 1960’s probably went for a few hundred dollars, certainly not more than a thousand.  Things weren’t that expensive back then, but then, people didn’t make that much either. A new Mustang back then was about $2300 if that much. So let’s say that the CB350 cost about $700, then seven times that price for a updated version would set you back $4900. Quite a bargain compared to the actual asking price of a MODERN CBR400. Oh, I think they have a CB400 in Japan, it goes for about $6000, and is a direct lineage of technology and advancement along the platform base, and it is a hot seller, so to answer your question, yes, people would pay that much...  If they were getting a modern, updated version packed full of almost four decades worth of innovation and evolution. Otherwise, they would be a fool to pay 2001 era prices for 1960 type hardware.

Well, now, I didn’t see THAT one coming. I mean, like it wasn’t obvious or anything.  I'll know what to look for next time when I open an email from you Harley owners.  Yes sir, you sure fooled me Elmer.  Pulled your little sheep wool right over my eyes.  Shame on you!  Baaaaaaad sheep.   Baaaaaaaad sheep.

That’s a long time to admit to being ignorant, Elmer. A long time.

Congratulations.  A repeat sheep.  Hahahahaha! The "Sportster", what a joke. It wasn’t even ‘good’ when it was a brand new model! It is second rate even for a Harley today. The Sportster is Harley’s ‘sport bike’ and it is so under powered, it might as well be considered a ‘training bike’ for future Harley owners, just to get them used to paying out the butt for nothing in particular except a HD logo on something that is really loud, really heavy, and really slow. When the Sportster lives up to its name, I’ll take it seriously. Not even Eric Buell can get much performance out of the Sportster mods he’s doing. Pathetic. And wasn’t the early ‘70’s the time of the AMF years, when the company that made bowling balls owned Harley? Yeah, those were GOOD years for Harley… REAL good years, Elmer.

So, when you say ‘superior’, you mean that the tassels on the handlebars last longer? Or do you mean by ‘superior’ motorcycle that this one doesn’t fall apart as quick or drain as much oil on the pavement when you park it for more than a short period of time? How much did you pay for the ‘new’ motorcycle compared to the old one? Was it worth the extra cost, or did you find some poor schmuck to pawn your 122,000 mile rattletrap off on who was happy to be joining the flock and therefore, you were able to cushion the new purchase price at the expense of some other poor sheep selling their soul just to be part of the flock, to be an 'individual'?   For shame, sir.

Ah, yes, I’ve been waiting on this part of the discussion. This is the part where you feel that you have the very real need to personally justify your sheep-like existence to me. You all (I'm referring to Harley owners here) act as if I really gave a ring tailed flying rats anus if my opinion of Harley Davidson, their so-called ‘motorcycles’, and the brain dead sheep who rode them would or would not actually change the mindset of a subculture of Americans that can only, at their very best, be referred to simply as ‘retarded’. But please, do ‘enlighten’ me. I’ve had a long weekend of helping to patch people back together while watching the rest of the human sheep embalm themselves on everything from LorTab to overdosing on cold medicine for the alcohol content alone in it. I’m open to hearing one more sheep bleat mournfully of their pathetic existence and the need to justify their hard choices in life before I lay down for some much needed rest and forget the rest of the world for awhile … Proceed, sir.

No, that would make you seem like the average semi-intelligent knuckle dragging, knuckle head riding Harley rider, but I digress. Elmer, you’ve got to face facts. You’re not like me. You are a bleating sheep who has chosen this special time to stand up and proudly proclaim that you are a sheep and a member of the flock and that you also are an individual and a loner.  You are so confused that it is pathetic. You are a narrow minded, corporate image dependent brainless sheep who feels a very real need to deny that you are such because if you admitted it, then you would have been wrong for all of those years, and that is a very bitter pill to swallow. I see it all the time.

I have no point other than the fact that the world is passing Harley Davidson by and there is nothing that Milwaukee can do except try to sell more T-shirts, bumper stickers, women's panties, leather chaps, and embossed wallets on a chain faster than they can go out of business.  It’s a tight race, from what I can see, and Harley is doing an admirable job of keeping its head above the water. So far. You would have to be a total brain dead retard to buy a Harley, when you can get five times better a motorcycle for 1/3 the price if you bought a German, Japanese, or Italian motorcycle...

Elmer, your opinion of me matters very little, I think I’ve used the sum total of four brain cells to knock your banter aside and reply to you. It ceases to be a challenge anymore with the typical Harley rider, I mean, I’m not dealing with rocket scientists, you know.  It is more like talking to hamsters in a cage and tapping the glass to get their attention, but that would be wrong, because even hamsters are smarter than the typical Harley rider.

I truly pity you, Elmer, and your rented existence.

I wasn’t aware that there were any other types of Harley riders other than hot blooded ignorant idiots dressed in leather and studs and American flag covered do-rags to protect their noggins from a 70 plus mile per hour impact with the pavement. You generally don’t use the terms "well educated" and "Harley rider" in the very same sentence, now do you?

Elmer.  Elmer, Elmer, Elmer.  I piss out more brain cells each day than the average Harley rider will ever hope to evolve in their skull during their entire lifetime. If you call having lots of money because I’m not a fool to spend it on inferior products just so I can be a ‘real’ American and ride a ‘real’ American motorcycle, then I welcome your label of ‘very small minded’. Since when did it become ‘American’ to be so damn dumb? Milwaukee has brainwashed all of you.

I love it.

I’m going to open up a Harley Davidson dealership and get rich off of all the stupid people. It’s the American dream, I understand it now! Find a cheap product, sell it for a premium price, and market it to brain dead individuals who you can use Jedi mind tricks on to buy your crap. You’ll laugh and dance all the way to the bank. Now THAT is the American dream.  Maybe I'll even sell some rocks with the HD logo painted on them... you know, sell them to the sheep as "Official Harley Davidson Paperweights".

No, I have never owned a Harley, that is true. I was far smarter than that.  I have had the chance to ride several Harleys and that was enough to convince me that you would have to be a complete financial and mental retard to ever trade cash for one of these tired old examples of prehistoric technology.

You know, some people actually do learn from other people's mistakes, Elmer.

I'm one of those people, therefore, I didn't need to actually own a Harley to know that I would be wasting my money on total crap.  I have been around and known several Harley owners who had nothing but trouble with their bikes.  Shoddy production qualities and poor design and workmanship not to mention outdated technology that simply can’t be sugar coated with a bunch of leather and tassels or T-shirts and bumper stickers. Shit is shit, Elmer, even if someone paints it gold.

Normally I’d say that you can’t sugar coat shit, but Milwaukee has a patent on it and there are people lining up in droves for the smallest taste. Sorry, my Epicurean fancies range to the more exotic than the tragically outdated and rather unimpressively mundane.  And the people that I rode with, who had BRAND NEW Harleys, had problems. My ‘imported rice burner’ only went to the shop once for a factory adjustment on the valve train. It was in and out in two days. My friend’s Harley sat in the shop for over a month due to the waiting line for other POS Harleys to get fixed. I guess finding technicians who can work on 60 year old hardware is getting to be kind of hard these days…  Guess who's repair bill was smaller, guess who's repair was more technically complex.

Now that is what I like to hear, self realization breaking through.   Self-realization is the first step towards successful treatment and ultimately a cure. You’ve taken a big step here, Elmer, and I think you’re on the right track. Good luck, sir, and keep moving forward. Keep repeating "I'm stupid, I paid too much for my un-American piece of shit." and you’ll be okay in the end. It may take a while, but you’ll make it, if you really try and you really believe.

Yikes!  Another admission, and one I probably didn't need to know.  I don’t know about your wife, but if you don’t like riding through the country with her on back, leave her behind! Get one of those oh so tasteful "If you can read this then the bitch fell off!" T-shirts that we get to enjoy in traffic these days.  Or did your wife buy your Harley for you?  Did you marry into money, Elmer, and have to have the Harley to show off your new found level of status and culture?  Well, I can tell that your wife likes her motorcycles like she likes her men. Big, slow, loud, and dumb. She’s probably a better rider than you, at least she doesn’t complain as much.

Well, I could probably outride you all day long, and I could go from one end of this great nation to the other on my Ninja if I chose to, which puts me in the same class as a Harley, now doesn’t it? A Harley isn't bought for 'performance' and truth be known, most subcompact cars could outrun a Harley, which is very sad.  You buy a Harley to travel on, I never had a problem sport touring on my Ninja.  50 miles, 500 miles, it didn't make that much of a difference.  Since a Harley is considered by many people to be the ‘greatest thing on the planet’, well, yeah, I guess my sportbike is ‘the greatest thing on the planet’, just because it can do the exact same thing that your ‘American’ bike can do, only cheaper and much more dependably.

As for what you should (or can) do sexually, I can’t help you there, Elmer. I really can't.  As old as you are, you should have already of figured this part of life out and someone should have sat down with you and told you about the birds and the bees. Since you own a Harley, I would already guess that you’ve been fucked and that you are still being fucked. If you are desiring another good fucking, then the solution to that problem might not be any further than a quick trip to your garage followed by a long, slow, loud ride down to your local Harley Davidson motorcycle dealer where he can bend you over the counter in order to pay out your ass with some more of your hard earned money.   Maybe he'll even use some Harley Davidson brand lube on you, or a Harley Davidson condom.

You poor, pathetic corporate image driven bleating sheep.  I bet you didn’t even get kissed or the common courtesy of a reach around when he screwed you … and that is the true shame of it all.

Now, Elmer… Where is all of that love that we just shared? My momma always said it takes one to know one. You said you weren’t going to call me names like this, remember when you said:

So you have just violated your own rules of conduct, which is to be expected from the likes of someone who would ride a Harley.  I mean anyone who would ride something that is claimed to be the 'baddest motorcycle in the world' when it doesn't have the first sign of any real balls to it has by your very nature, got to be a hypocrite.  You are nothing like me, Elmer, you couldn’t even hope to ever evolve that high in the food chain.  You know, they do call them 'ape hangers' for a reason, don't you?  Since you ride a Harley, there’s also probably some problem about trying to compensate for a lack of, well, cubic inches, so to speak, you  know, down there.  A Harley is a giant rolling penis replacement on wheels, a two wheeled strap on dildo for those people who, like their choice in motorcycles, have no balls. It is for those who feel inadequate and have to prove to the world what ‘real’ men are by going slow and blasting their loud ass wet-fart through a PA system sounding exhaust note in a vain attempt at beating their chest to show who is the baddest. I guess those riding on top of such a sexual replacement implement would be considered to be ‘dickheads’, now wouldn't they?

I’m not a ‘dickhead’, Elmer.  After all, I’m not the one who has owned Harleys for nearly a quarter of a century. That would be a clear indicator of being a ‘dickhead’… or terminally ignorant.

Simple minds, simple pleasures, or so I’m told. Yawn.

"Love, Elmer"

Ah! There’s that special feeling of love again. All warm and cuddly, like one of those $59.99 leather clad S&M looking teddy bears with the HD logo emblazoned on it proudly that you hang off the back of your 'real' man's motorcycle.  No sheep is complete without it. Spread the love, Elmer! And remember, keep repeating :