“Wild Hogs” movie mixer and ride to delta

On Sunday, March 11, 2007 a group of H.O.G. enthusiasts rendezvoused at the Harley-Davidson Dealership and took a short ride across town to check out the latest movie “Wild Hogs”, starring John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William Macy.  Although receiving only a single star by the critics, we all enjoyed it a lot and roared with laughter most of the way through the movie. 

After the movie we decided to take a ride to Delta.  As always the ride was great, the weather was perfect with blue sky, sunshine, and spring like warm temperature.  The vistas were beautiful with the snow covered San Juan mountains visible to the south and the Gravely mountains to the east.

I was following Neil Webster and Mario.  Mario pulled over for some reason which I didn’t understand at the time.  I figured it was just a personal comfort stop so I continued on.  When we got to Delta, I pulled up along side Neil and with a wide eyed look, he related that he had lost his shifter somewhere along the way and was struggling to shift into a lower gear using only his hand.  It was quite distressing to him and we went down alleys and made it to Wanda’s, our destination to formulate a plan.  We walked into the bar and within a few seconds after telling the story a couple of bikers immediately offered to help.  Mario arrived a few minutes later with a big grin on his face and with a shifter in his hand.  He apparently was heads up enough to see the shifter fly off and bounce down the highway and stopped to pick it up.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the bolt that holds it on was gone.  Beep, one of the bikers immediately offered to ride out to his shop in North Delta and come up with one.  I loaded the shifter into my saddlebag and followed him to the shop.  Beep introduced me to his buddy, Kickstand.  I know that nobody is named Kickstand so he related the story of parking his bike, putting down his kickstand while on a slight hill and his Harley rolling back down the hill and into the ditch.  Henceforth he has been known as “Kickstand”.

Beep found the bolt we needed.  We headed back into town, installed the bolt and life was good again.  We had a couple of beers, bought Beep and Kickstand a round of beer, thanked everyone, had some lunch and headed home.  We had a great ride and averted trouble thanks to fellow bikers.  Beep is a character, has a great shop where he showed me some “Racing Lawn Mowers” that he has built.  He announced proudly pointing to a radical looking purple riding mower with fat tires and sporting a Honda 750 motorcycle engine.  That one will go from zero to 52MPH in two blocks.

Photographer/Historian
Jesús Guerrero Jr.