We had been making plans for some time to come to the International Motorcycle Show in Ft. Worth and Friday saw the planning become reality. Here's our story, FWIW:
The original plan was to ride up to the show-this being the first time for Jen and Cassie to ride since the accident in August. Well, that fell through as the final part was not shipped out in time by Honda (their words: "we forgot to ship it"). This was a small blow to our plans, but we decided to just cage it up, spend time at the show, have dinner with the fellow TWT, then drive back late.
We picked the girls up from school at 13:00 (hey, they were only going to miss gym class anyway!) and hit I-35. We're cruising along with traffic behind a Stanley Steemer truck and we come onto one of those typical long trains of cars. You know the ones: someone up ahead was going slower than the flow of traffic and so was holding up and stacking up the traffic behind them. Well, as we're now slowed a bit in this, a Chevy Aveo comes blazing around us and inserts itself in between us and the Steemer guys. I naturally back off to make room and that's when it happens: the Steemer guys have to brake suddenly for something ahead that we couldn't see, and the Aveo locks up the brakes but cannot stop in time. It makes contact with the van, spins sideways and ends up sitting across both lanes of traffic that are desperately trying to stop (including us). The Steemer guys pull off the highway quickly while some Pontiac behind us swerves to avoid becoming part of our rear bumper (he/she was tailgating us). I have all of 1-2 seconds to react to avoid hitting anyone, as so I see a small gap between the front of the Aveo and the concrete guard rail on the left so I weave the Mazda 3 in between and WE MADE IT! All of my ladies in the car are . We pull off the highway and stay with both parties as the witness to the accident. Jen snapped this picture as we were getting ready to leave:
That little excursion set us back 30 minutes, but we still made it to our meeting point by 15:45. A few minutes later the TWT crew started to show up. Once most of the crew arrived, we headed for the show:
Everyone was in the car lamenting the fact that we weren't on our bikes...
After FINALLY finding a parking spot for the cage (and yet again lamenting the EASY parking for the bikes), we come into the show and hit our first giveaway:
They were giving away a Suzuki GS500F. I'd take it!
Honda was the first area we hit, and after giving a ho-hum reaction to the Honda rep over the CBR1000RR, I walked over to the ST1300 and decided to try it out with the kiddos:
My girls quickly found the Yamaha dirt bikes:
One of the bikes I REALLY wanted to see and try out was the Buell 1125R:
I gotta say that bike really impressed me. It was comfortable and I liked the styling. Would I trade my SV1K for it? Nope. But it was interesting technology.
The Buell display also had a couple of bikes in a pre-leaned state, so we had to get the required squidly pics:
My girls got to be Harley riders, too (at least, virtually)!
My girls also fell for the quads:
I know, I know-they have 4 wheels, but you gotta admit they look cute!
By FAR, the bikes that made the biggest impression were the URALS!
After just 5 minutes, Jen was asking the Ural reps for the pricing on these things. She walked away saying, "if we had an extra 11K, we'd have one of those!" I was impressed by the comfort of the bikes and the potential utility, too.
We also found some upgrades to the kids gear as one of the vendors had children's sizes! Jen bought me a 2 year subscription to MCN (never had it before) and she bought some jewelry and glass cleaner .
I took many drool shots of many bikes that I'll post later.
Everyone said that they had a GREAT time at the show. You've got to love a family that can share a common passion.
After the show, and after we FINALLY found our way out of downtown FW, we met with the rest of the group at the Purple Cow. We had a great time visiting with everyone and we can't wait to do this again!
The original plan was to ride up to the show-this being the first time for Jen and Cassie to ride since the accident in August. Well, that fell through as the final part was not shipped out in time by Honda (their words: "we forgot to ship it"). This was a small blow to our plans, but we decided to just cage it up, spend time at the show, have dinner with the fellow TWT, then drive back late.
We picked the girls up from school at 13:00 (hey, they were only going to miss gym class anyway!) and hit I-35. We're cruising along with traffic behind a Stanley Steemer truck and we come onto one of those typical long trains of cars. You know the ones: someone up ahead was going slower than the flow of traffic and so was holding up and stacking up the traffic behind them. Well, as we're now slowed a bit in this, a Chevy Aveo comes blazing around us and inserts itself in between us and the Steemer guys. I naturally back off to make room and that's when it happens: the Steemer guys have to brake suddenly for something ahead that we couldn't see, and the Aveo locks up the brakes but cannot stop in time. It makes contact with the van, spins sideways and ends up sitting across both lanes of traffic that are desperately trying to stop (including us). The Steemer guys pull off the highway quickly while some Pontiac behind us swerves to avoid becoming part of our rear bumper (he/she was tailgating us). I have all of 1-2 seconds to react to avoid hitting anyone, as so I see a small gap between the front of the Aveo and the concrete guard rail on the left so I weave the Mazda 3 in between and WE MADE IT! All of my ladies in the car are . We pull off the highway and stay with both parties as the witness to the accident. Jen snapped this picture as we were getting ready to leave:
That little excursion set us back 30 minutes, but we still made it to our meeting point by 15:45. A few minutes later the TWT crew started to show up. Once most of the crew arrived, we headed for the show:
Everyone was in the car lamenting the fact that we weren't on our bikes...
After FINALLY finding a parking spot for the cage (and yet again lamenting the EASY parking for the bikes), we come into the show and hit our first giveaway:
They were giving away a Suzuki GS500F. I'd take it!
Honda was the first area we hit, and after giving a ho-hum reaction to the Honda rep over the CBR1000RR, I walked over to the ST1300 and decided to try it out with the kiddos:
My girls quickly found the Yamaha dirt bikes:
One of the bikes I REALLY wanted to see and try out was the Buell 1125R:
I gotta say that bike really impressed me. It was comfortable and I liked the styling. Would I trade my SV1K for it? Nope. But it was interesting technology.
The Buell display also had a couple of bikes in a pre-leaned state, so we had to get the required squidly pics:
My girls got to be Harley riders, too (at least, virtually)!
My girls also fell for the quads:
I know, I know-they have 4 wheels, but you gotta admit they look cute!
By FAR, the bikes that made the biggest impression were the URALS!
After just 5 minutes, Jen was asking the Ural reps for the pricing on these things. She walked away saying, "if we had an extra 11K, we'd have one of those!" I was impressed by the comfort of the bikes and the potential utility, too.
We also found some upgrades to the kids gear as one of the vendors had children's sizes! Jen bought me a 2 year subscription to MCN (never had it before) and she bought some jewelry and glass cleaner .
I took many drool shots of many bikes that I'll post later.
Everyone said that they had a GREAT time at the show. You've got to love a family that can share a common passion.
After the show, and after we FINALLY found our way out of downtown FW, we met with the rest of the group at the Purple Cow. We had a great time visiting with everyone and we can't wait to do this again!