Out with the old, in with the new

There’s something about spring cleaning, weather starting to warm up, and longer days that make you want to clean house. I went through the basement the other day to move everything out of there that has more than a year of dust on it, and moved it all into the garage.

The Sportster 883c

And… while I was at it, the garage needed cleaning too. So I started moving stuff around trying to get ready for the inevitable neighborhood “Spring Garage Sale”. As I was moving the truck and my Harley Sportster,? I realized that I hadn’t been out on it for quite a while (at least a couple months). So I grabbed the jacket, and went for a ride. A fun ride. North. Towards High Country Harley Davidson. Thought I’d wander through and dream about bikes. Besides, this would be much more fun than cleaning the garage! And maybe I could test-ride some of the new bikes while I was there. Anything to avoid cleaning out the garage…

I thought the new bigger bikes would be fun to try out. I have a great friend in Santa Barbara who let’s me ride his old Heritage Softail when I’m out there, so I’ve been getting used to bigger bikes.

But, during all of this, I had no plans to purchase anything. I just wanted to see what the new bikes were like.? As I rode up, they asked about my bike, it’s condition, mileage, and more (The dealership sells a lot of used Sportsters during their Spring Fling event in April.) I was walking around inside looking at the new toys, when I saw a Pearl/Silver Softail that caught my eye pretty quickly. I was talking with one of the sales reps who said it was a 2009 Softail Deluxe (Nostalgia model) with only 3,500 miles on it. Custom pipes on it (not that I’d know) and looked like it was in perfect condition. Since I was interested in it, they actually started trying to negotiate for the Sportster as part of a trade-in deal. After an hour or two, and a couple test rides on that bike and even bigger bikes, I said “let’s talk seriously about this. Long story a little shorter, I ended up trading in my Sportster for over high blue book credit (and more than I paid for it originally two years ago), and I’m now the proud owner of a new Softail (and I cannot wipe this silly grin off my face).

Not bad! They got a great, clean, low-mileage bike, and I got to lower my taxes on the used bike I bought by quite a bit.

So here’s what’s filling all that new space I had left over after “spring cleaning”.