I like motorcycles and the guys that ride them. When I was little, I had step-cousins that raced dirt-bikes. I used to love to visit and ride with them. When I was about 20 I dumped a nice Jewish economics major for a motorcycle-riding-anarchist-danger-boy and it was the hellride down the Las Vegas Strip that sealed the deal. I even moved up to Santa Cruz with danger-boy and spent a good part of a year hanging out in his garage with him and our roomate while they worked on their bikes. The garage was nicknamed "Shop Kludge" after the Kludge-stick, which was something like a homemade sledgehammer that was brought out when everything else failed. Roomate had a Laverda that was surely possessed and had the ugliest paint job ever. Danger-boy rode a Yamaha FZ-750 but also had an old Norton that he was working to restore. I spent so much time in that garage I'd bet that under hypnosis I could rebuild a Norton myself. They tried to teach me how to drive, but I didn't enjoy tipping over and kissing the pavement so much, so I settled on the passenger position. I only got to ride the Norton once or twice because shortly after he got it running, danger-boy decided that he was man enough to not only ride two motorcycles, but to sleep with two women, and...well, fuck that. Anyway, Shop Kludge was very anti-Harley-Davidson. Roomate even had a t-shirt that said "If Harley-Davidson made airplanes, would you fly in one?" It resulted in at least one fistfight that I remember. I would probably still have a strong ingrained anti-Harley bias if I didn't know Keanu rode one. I mean, they couldn't be all bad then, right?
SO, speaking of Keanu and Harleys, I popped over to The Matrix Online this morning and found this story, about the Harley that Keanu will ride in Reloaded.
Of course, I'm still not sure if Harley-Davidsons are all that. I think that maybe someone needs to take me down the Strip on the back of one to seal the deal.