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A 2010 Chief Bomber at the new Indian Motorcycle Dealer on Beach Street.
Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010
The weather sites that we use indicated that whereas the weather in Daytona Beach and Central Florida on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010 would not be optimum for bikers they did say that the rain was expected to hold off until early afternoon, so we ventured out to visit some of the biker venues. Starting on Beach Street, a very hot spot during past bike events but having fallen off in recent years, we could see that vendor support has picked up slightly this year with numerous vendors on the river side of the street, including the Harley Davidson manufacture's display. Our first stop on Beach Street was to the new Indian Motorcycle Dealer. The shop is very clean with a large selection of bikes available. The above photo is one of their new models for 2010, the limited edition Chief Bomber. Personally I'm not a fan of the flat paint jobs in vogue lately but I do like the concept of the retro bomber design on the tank and the blacked out pipes are very clean. Across the street Indian Motorcycles also has a manufacture's display. Stop in to see one of the visiting reps 1950 500cc Indian motorcycle. One of the neat points of interest brought to our attention by the reps was that Indian hand builds only four motorcycles a day so in that regard they are not like other mass produced motorcycles. They are very proud of their hands on approach.
The afore mentioned Harley Davidson Manufacture display had previously been held at the Ocean Center on Atlantic Avenue by Main Street for many years so when I asked one of the H.D. reps if the reason for the move was for economic considerations I was told that the decision was due to complaints about the difficulty to find parking in the Main Street area. Listen, we all visit Main Street and if we feel like stopping it's not that hard to find parking. Puh-lease! We've all had to make concessions with the economy down – we're just glad to have you supporting the bikers at Daytona this year. Harley's display was nice and the personnel were friendly, attentive, and helpful. One of the cool set-ups in the display (and at the Speedway display as well) is where they have a Fat Boy set up for quick changes of handlebars, seats, and foot controls which allows you to feel the fit before buying the parts. A really nice feature that would be well received if each dealership had a display like this for their customers benefit. This was as far as we got before the skies opened up well before 10:30AM with copious amounts of water pounding the ground all around. Thankfully, most of the visitors to Bike Week were wiser than I and stayed in as the roads were relatively clear of traffic and the venues were as vacant as the streets of Green Bay during a Packers game. Sunday was a better day for riding but we had other commitments so we didn't return until Monday, March 1, 2010.
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