Anyone in the Midwest would agree: this winter has been absolutely brutal. Subzero temperatures, record snowfall, unrelenting duration. It just sucks.
My plan in the fall was simple: jump on the Dyna in October, ride it down to my folks’ place in Florida, and fly back. That way, the Dyna could winter in the Sunshine State, and I’d fly down at least a couple times to escape the misery that is Michigan in winter. Unfortunately, this didn’t go quite as planned.
October wasn’t bad, but it was busy. With work commitments and trade shows, I just couldn’t break away. Once the trade show was over and I returned to Michigan in mid-November, the winter was in full swing. Cold, ice, snow…not exactly ideal motorcycle weather. So, there would be no riding the bike to Florida.
Not to be deterred, I thought about renting a bike from the nice folks at Jim’s H-D in St. Pete. The logistics, however, proved to be too much. Between ground transportation, flight scheduling, and some silliness about them not being open 24/7, I couldn’t make it work. There had to be a way…
Enter, motorcycle transport. These fine guys came out in subzero temps and loaded the Dyna onto a custom pallet of sorts. Strapped it down, and through a ser
ies of cross docks, stopovers, and local delivery routes, she made it through some of the worst winter weather we’ve seen in a generation. Because of the storms, the bike was delayed several days in transit, but it did arrive, safely and unmolested, at Jim’s H-D in time for me to enjoy a few hundred miles of sunny Florida riding. The yahoos who unloaded the bike were a story in themselves. Let’s just say they weren’t as familiar with bikes as the boys who picked it up.
All in, it was definitely worth it. To be able to escape to the beautiful gulf beaches, even if only for a couple days, and have my own machine to ride: totally worth it.
