A10 Admiration and Turning of Heads

[RichardL]

Quite near my home there is a Harley-Davidson dealer I sometimes visit just to have somewhere motorcycle-oriented to visit and make the occasional generic accessory purchase. This weekend they were hosting their event, "Sturgis in Lisle", with the idea of giving bikers (overwhelmingly, Harley riders) a place to go if they did not go to the giant motorcycle rallye in Sturgis, South Dakota, attracting tens of thousands.

Well, I pulled into the parking lot and looked up to see nearly every eye on the old girl (certainly not, this old boy). As I got off to walk into the store two gents came up to me and said "you can't just walk away, you know every guy our age who once owned a BSA wants to talk to you."  They were very happy to see my A10 amongst the hogs and invited me to come to the vintage mortorycle rallye hosted, tomorrow, by the local Norton owner's club at yet another Harley dealer. Drat! Tomorrow is an inlaw family reunion. For the sake of matrimonial harmony, there is no chance in hades of attending the rallye. They also invited me to join the Norton owner's club, which I might do because, here in Chicago, it is the closest thing to a British bike club. Still, I'm holding it in abeyance.

That's it, just chatting.


Richard L.

[LJ.]

Nice story and I can relate to that very well. It pays to get to as many meets or just generally out riding on the A10 because you never know what people have back home in their sheds!

I popped out on the A7 Star Twin yesterday lunch time to catch the post office before closing time. I knew I was cutting it a bit fine and saw two or three cars parked outside with guys sitting at the steering wheel waiting for wives. 'Oh No'! window winds down, out comes the questions, 'what year is that'? etc. Well I then knew I'd missed the post as I engage in the usual chat about the history of the bike and listen to the enquirers life story regarding his past motorcycles... Don't get me wrong, I love listening all this when I dont have important errands to see to.

Anyhow, this particular chap had a B31 in his early days, he laughed when he told me he still had the petrol taps in his workshop. I wondered if he had anything else lying around. My ears soon picked up when he also mentioned he had a DBD Gold Star at sometime in the late fifties... He's comming around some evening this week, I wonder what he'll dig out.