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Here's the scoop. Two weeks ago, I bring my baby to Street Vibrations in Reno,NV. For those of you not familiar with this event, they close the main road in the heart of the major casinos for about six blocks. For $50, you can park your bike anywhere along the strip, get a t-shirt,pin,etc. I decided to pay the money so as I can keep my baby with the group I was with. This is a 4 day event with somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 bikes at some point present, along with hundreds of vendors and what seemed to be every production and custom manufacturer in existence. Never saw so many different clubs in one spot. Parked on the strip were about 5,000 bikes, of which 98% were HD's and the remaining were almost all customs and a few Boss Hogs (nice bikes..lighter than they look). Oh yes, there was one Rocket...mine. Last year, the local Triump dealer had a booth, but did not this year. Also, last year Glenn had his bike there with his modified 3 into 1 exhaust (he is missed).
We get there Friday (2nd day of event) and we drive 3 blocks through thousands of people at the speed of turtle until we find a spot to park. I back it up against the curb in a group of HD's painted and chromed out to the max, and before I can get my helmet off, 3 guys start asking questions (the usual stuff, 'how fast,how heavy, how does it handle" etc.). I'm there for about 10 minutes, and I realize I'm surrounded by 20 people and giving a seminar on the Rocket. A Japanese man asked if his wife could sit on it while he took a picture. I finally broke away and realized my group got tired of waiting for me and took off.
I walked around for 20 minutes or so and decided to make sure no one was playing with my baby. I could not believe how many people were standing around the Ruby machine. I decided to just sit and watch from a few feet away because I knew the questions would be endless. I could not believe how many pictures were being taken. I had the same feeling you get when you kid hits a home run to win the game. The next day, I was able to park and get a good spot across from a large custom dealer. I had more people looking at my Ruby queen than were looking at the six bikes they had on display (starting at the low price of only 42k). Admittedly, I was kind of embarrassed when people asked "how much". It was apparent they expected something quite a bit more than 16k.
My favorite questions.....
1. What's the gas mileage like on this six cylinder?
2. Is this the same engine that's in the Valkyrie?
3. Is this the gas tank (a v-rod kind of thing)?
and my favorite from a lady who was not much of a biker
4. Is this an automatic transmission?
We left the following morning and a funny thought crossed my mind on the way home. There is a local bike show the following weekend and one of my buddies is entering his Victory Vegas (paint and chrome galore...very nice bike). I got to thinking, why not enter the Ruby Queen and see what happens. Since it got so much attention, who knows? I told my buddies of the plan, the laughter and comments were non stop! Nobody laughs at the queen. I entered her the next morning. That weekend, as soon as I entered the building and saw some of the bikes there, I started questioning my decision. There was only one certainty, I would be the only Rocket in a sea of expensive V-Twins. Story to be continued with a few pictures.........
:wink:
[ This message was edited by: spyglass on 2005-10-05 14:51 ]
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