Mother of all Harley Stores

June 23.

After a great night's sleep in a proper bed, I was up reasonably early this morning.  We wanted to get going as we were headed into Pennsylvania today.

Two things I was looking forward to today:

Firstly the roads in Pennsylvania are well suited to motorcycling.  I found this out last summer on the Milton HOG trip to Wellsboro and I was pleasantly surprised by the mountains and the windy roads that go along with them.  I was ready for a dose of that today after 700km of traffic and interstate to DC yesterday.

The second thing I was also looking forward to is a trip to the HD factory in York PA, where my Road King was born (as well as Scott's Ultra Classic Electra Glide).  In general they run tours every day except Sunday.

Back where it all started for my Road King.

The tour is free, but no pictures can be taken once you enter the factory floor.  All these pictures are from the visitor centre.

All the Touring models, Softail models and CVO models are built in York.  (Dynas, V-Rods and Sportsters are built in Kansas City.)  Ironically, no Harley motorcycles are built in Milwaukee as everyone generally thinks.  Their headquarters is still there and they manufacture all the motors and transmissions there.

The tour was quite good and I'd recommend it to any Harley fan.  Tons of robotics and automation in the plant.  You can tell they have good employee relations and a very strong focus on quality with operating metric boards everywhere throughout the plant.

If you are planning to visit in the summer it's a good idea to call ahead.  We learned that they shut down major parts of the tour when they start doing anything associated with the production of the following years bikes, when the information about them hasn't been made public yet. i.e. we understand they'll be starting some things in about two weeks for the 2013 models.

Of course they have a gift shop, with lots of cool stuff unique to the manufacturing plant that you don't see anywhere else.

I tried on this nylon tattoo sleeve to see what I would
look like as a real badass.  I don't think it's me.

After the tour and shopping were all wrapped up, we rode another hour or so, until it was time to feed the bikes and ourselves.  We came across this old school diner in New Buffalo, and naturally it called our names.

With a counter and stools like this,
of course we had to sit at the counter!

After lunch we carried on back road bombing and enjoyed what Pennsylvania offers motorcyclists.  To cap it off the weather was absolutely perfect today. Sunny and not overly hot.  Juuust right.

Just about arrived in Wellsboro

We arrived late afternoon in Wellsboro, where we came last summer.  A nice little town surrounded by great roads.  Today was a nice comfortable 400km for a change.

I had a great time today!

Day 24 and home tomorrow!