Finally Decided To Join

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Mar 21, 2011 | 08:55 AM

rdb1976

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Road Master

Joined: Mar 2011

Posts: 861

Likes: 0

From: Cypress, TX

Finally Decided To Join

I am 34-years-old and grew up in southeast Wisconsin (20 miles west of Racine), so H-D is part of culture I grew up with. I lived in Wisconsin until 1998 (I was in Milwaukee for the 95th Anniversary, but was deployed to Iraq for the 100th), when I joined the Army at age 28. The Army stuck me in Texas for my entire 9 year career and I was fortunate enough to survive 3 tours in Kuwait/Iraq (1 for Operation Desert Fox/Desert Spring in 1999-2000 and 2 for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-2004 & 2005-2006).I landed my dream job here in Houston right before I exited the military, working in GIS (think of the guy that makes all the points, lines, and polygons that you see in Google Earth/Google Maps = that guy works in GIS) working for a company that designs, constructs, and maintains domestic and international utility pipelines and energy transmission systems. I'm married (2 years in July), have a 17-month-old daughter, and have another kid due in September.

I never considered riding or owning a bike until my brother graduated from Marquette and landed a gig as a design engineer for H-D. Ever since then I've been the "Mikey" to his "Paulie Jr" as I am the only brother in my family that doesn't ride or own one. I've had the itch for over a decade now and I've recently succumbed. I've signed up to attend the MSF Basic RiderCourse in April. I plan to spend the rest of this year and maybe half of 2012 renting bikes to practice and get an idea of the fit and feel of the different models, with the goal of buying towards the end of 2012. If I was forced to choose today, my bike would be a Road King. It has the necessities for the longer rides with my wife on the pillion, while still having the detach-ability for daily jaunts to and from work.

I'm here to learn and discuss and debate. Thanks for being here and listening to my incessant rambling.

Last edited by rdb1976; Mar 21, 2011 at 04:02 PM. Reason: Typo