Forty-five years ago I was a kid with a dream of owning a Harley-Davidson. I put away the alcohol and drugs that I’d abused all through my teens, got not one but two jobs, saved some money for a down-payment and worked with my credit union to establish credit. Now it was time to find the bike of my dreams….

….and find her I did.

I began my search at the stealership on Burnet Road in Austin, just south of Koenig Lane, where the sales manager treated me like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For whatever reason — my age, my long hair, my jeans-and-t-shirt wardrobe choices — he apparently assumed I wasn’t well-heeled enough to afford a Harley. When I announced that I was there to buy a bike he said ‘The used bikes are outside,’ waved a lazy hand in the direction of the door, turned on his heel and walked away. In previous visits to that shop I had watched that man do everything short of performing fellatio on the showroom floor to make a sale, so, yeah, I took being treated that way personally.

But it worked out well for me, because as I was leaving the stealership I spotted a Harley in a used car lot two doors up the street….

….and that Harley — the 1974 FX-1200 Superglide I named The Bitch — has been under my ass or in my garage ever since.

Forty-five years! 😮 Outside my blood relations, there is not a single relationship in my life older than the one between me and The Bitch.

So, Happy Anniversary, baby! Let’s do forty-five more! 😎