Meeting Willy G.

Chosa's Harley Davidson was having a grand reopening and Willy G. Davidson was invited to the festivities. Willy G. does not make appearances in every dealership so I was thrilled to know he was coming and so I rode my bike to the City of Mesa, Arizona where Chosa's is located. (Chosa's is now Chester's Harley Davidson). Willy G. and some very important people from the Harley Davidson Company in Milwaukee were there and they would be signing autographs. The signing was to begin at 7:00 p.m. I got there at around 5:30 p.m. and the line was already pretty long.

I parked my bike and dutifully went to the end of the line, gosh how I wished for those high school days were you would just ask for cuts to the lunch line. Heck, here that was not to be. It only took a couple of minutes til I was already being friends with the guy in front of me as well as the one in the back which allowed us to play the "save my spot" game. This way we could go into the dealership and browse instead of just standing there like dummies.

I really didn't have anything for Willy G. to sign, luckily before we reached him we all received a goodie bag and in it was a HD shot glass and a red Chosa's bandanna. Now I had something to collect the coveted autographs. Mrs. Willy G. Davidson was there as well and she was nice enough to exchange a word or two.

So when we were at the Love Ride in California two weeks later, as we were sitting there enjoying the food, I spotted Willy G. Davidson, his wife and all his entourage trying to inconspicuously cross the grassy area. I pointed him out and one of our friends, a really cheery woman that did not hesitate to go and mob him, entourage and all. Willy G. was kind enough to stop and talk to us, some of the people in our group were covering him as we knew if anybody else saw him they would all come running as well. Trust me there were over 20,000 of us there, hiding him was kindda hard.


We took a couple of pictures with him. I mentioned to his wife that I had just seen and talked to them two weeks before in Mesa, Arizona at the Chosa's re-opening and she commented on how lucky we were to catch them twice in such a short period of time. That was true, because I have not seen them since.

That was the best California motorcycle trip out of all the ones I've taken. On the way back we had just crossed the California/Arizona line, it was around 1:00 p.m, I was bringing up the rear and all of a sudden my bike started coughing and making these really ugly noises, I lost power and I pulled to the shoulder, out of sixteen bikes ahead of us nobody noticed that I stayed behind. I saw them disappear right before my very eyes. The engine was running but you could hear it miss a lot. I saw a sign that a rest stop was just ahead of us so I pushed forward. I made it to the rest stop and I parked the bike. Mi chica pulled her cell phone and started calling, we knew no one in our pack would hear a cell phone ring, they were all riding in the very loud bikes and mi chica's phone was running out of batteries. I saw electrical outlets at the ramadas and so I thought we were saved... wrong! None of them worked, luckily mi chica got through to Phoenix and so the message was sent to my son to come down to pick us up.



Before he could do this, he had to take our Expedition and go find a hitch for it. Everything was closed because it was a holiday weekend with Monday being the actual holiday. We saw cars come and go, come, park, and two hours later leave, come park, go finally at almost 9:00 p.m. my son finally got there. It took him forever to find a place where he could purchase a hitch, and then get it installed. Then, it took him another forever to find a place that was open to rent a trailer.



So, on that particular trip, we left L.A. at six in the morning and got home in Phoenix at almost midnight. Oh, by the time our friends realized we were not in the pack they had no idea were we had stranded, we knew they would have all had rode back, they tried calling us but by this time mi chica's phone was completely out of battery and so we were incommunicados. It was nice to hear from all of them the next morning as one by one they called us to let us know how sorry they were they lost us. Two of them acutally got to Phoenix and attached their trailers ready to go pick us up, but they needed to know where we were.

Mi chica and I enjoyed being stranded together that we didn't even mind. To this day, that trip remains the one we enjoyed the most. No time to get mad or be mad, after all this was all part of the: