Jackie is the silent partner here at Trailer Dogs. It is all her fault
that I'm back on bikes as it was her idea to get one back in 2004. Our first bike together was the Kawasaki Vulcan 1500 which was a decent bike after several years without riding. You can see her here sitting on it one afternoon. Little did I know at the time, her interest in getting her license. Once it became known though, I quickly decided that for her birthday I would pay for her to take the CMSP Basic RiderCourse. Lets just say in poker parlance, I called her bluff.
Well, she wasn't bluffing. With very little help from me she jumped on "Thumper" and
was soon cruising around the convention center parking lot getting the feel before taking the course. Since she was serious, it was time to get her a bike. (You can read the story about the purchase of her Yamaha on another page here at Trailer Dogs). The Yamaha turned out to be a nice bike for her to get her initial experience on the road. Light and nimble not to mention very clean and good looking.
Once she had her license it was time to take some road trips. Our first trip riding together was over to the coast for a weekend of camping at Albee Creek Campground in the Humboldt Redwoods. Here is a short movie clip of her cruising the Avenue of the Giants. She did great on her first ride even if the high winds that were swirling down Hwy 101 on our departure did cause her some consternation. Overall we had a great time even if it was only for a couple of days. Our next and her last ride on the Yamaha was to Street Vibrations in Reno of '06 where we had a very nice time checking out all the bikes and vendors where, perhaps, she got the bug to own a Harley.
It was just after Sturgis 06' that we found the bike that she really wanted. She found, or rather I found, a nice low mileage '05 FLSTCI back in Rahway NJ for a really good price. (Someday I will finish writing the story about that eBay purchase.) Once we got it home we were off again over to the coast for a weekend. The ride over was nice but the weather that weekend was very cool with heavy fog so we did not do much riding that weekend. She even tried to outrun me once on the way over but Thumper was up to the challenge. I think we spent the night and rode home the next day to get back into the sunshine.
Winter was coming on and she wanted her bike to be red and black. I had been trying to get in touch with Billy "Longhair" the painter for a long time when I happened to run into him at the local HD shop. She got together with Billy and together they came up with a design and the color choices for her paint job. With winter pounding us I took her bike and Thumper apart and took the tanks and fenders to Billy for some custom work and the results were outstanding. As you can see when you compare the picture on the right with the one above and on the left.
Well she has certainly taken on the persona of a biker. You can see the confidence in her when you look at the image. Sturgis '07 was a ride to remember. Jackie has turned into quite the trooper, pushing on when others, me, suggest a room for the night. We paid the price too... we pushed on and got hammered by a very powerful thunder storm. She handled the trip with true grit I'm very proud of her tenacity. We did about 3,500 miles in 16 days and had a great time in Sturgis. Holiday plans for '08 preclude her going this year but she is game for Sturgis '09. Then I'll have to add another page about Calen who will be riding this summer and going to Sturgis with us in '09