{"id":9358,"date":"2019-09-16T11:43:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T17:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=9358"},"modified":"2019-09-15T13:34:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T19:34:12","slug":"dealers-in-the-distance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/dealers-in-the-distance\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealers In The Distance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"strapping<\/a>

Strapping the bike down before driving to Idaho Falls.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Our experience on the recent OFMC trip where Dennis inadvertently put diesel in his Indian<\/a> has led me to think about some things I hadn’t considered before. Primarily, the importance of being close to someone who can work on your motorcycle when need be.<\/p>\n

It’s no secret that there are one heck of a lot more Hondas or Harleys on the road than there are Indians. First off, the modern-day Indians are a much newer brand than Harley, plus they cost a lot. So–so far at least–Indian is sort of a niche brand.<\/p>\n

Thus, the economics of the situation dictate that there are a lot fewer Indian dealerships around and also not all that many independent shops with experience working on Indians. And when you paid something in the mid-20s or more for your Chieftain I’m guessing you aren’t comfortable letting just any wrench jockey tear into it.<\/p>\n

But what do you do when you break down? In Dennis’s case, he rented a U-Haul truck and we loaded the bike in and drove more than 200 miles out of our way to get to the nearest dealer. That will disrupt your trip in a hurry.<\/p>\n

If it had been Bill, on the other hand, who rides a Harley, we would only have needed to get the bike another 40 miles or so in the direction we were heading to find a Harley shop. Same thing for me on my Suzuki V-Strom. And there are plenty of all-makes shops that would have been fully competent to work on either of our bikes. Perhaps they would also have been fully competent to work on Dennis’s bike but as I say, he was not particularly willing to take that chance.<\/p>\n

So obviously, if you’re like Dennis and you ride a bike where repair options are sparse you are going to make an extra careful point to be sure the bike is in top condition before you take off on a trip like this. But Dennis didn’t break down; he made a mistake at the pumps and grabbed the wrong pump.<\/p>\n

I’m sure this is not an irrelevant issue for some people when they’re deciding which bike to buy. And it has to be a chicken and egg thing: how do you get the sales without the dealer networks, but how do you support the dealer networks before you have the sales? I guess in this case it helps to be a big corporation like Polaris that can afford to subsidize the new brand for awhile from sales of the established brand. But even they don’t have infinite resources.<\/p>\n

I guess I’ll stick with my Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki bikes. There are a lot of them out there.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I want to note that as I prepped to write this piece I googled Honda, Harley, and Indian dealerships in Colorado and was amazed–as I periodically am–at how many shops come and go. And then there are those who change their names. I try to keep my “Colorado Motorcycle Dealers and Repair Shops<\/a>” page reasonably current but this is an ever-changing target. I ended up adding about eight new shops and revising the name on two. About once a year I try to go through and click each link to see who is no longer in business, and there are always a bunch of those. Ah, the joys of running a website.<\/p>\n

Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n

Reasons not to date a motorcyclist: We never ask for directions. Getting lost is usually the point on a motorcycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our experience on the recent OFMC trip where Dennis inadvertently put diesel in his Indian has led me to think about some things I hadn’t considered before. Primarily, the importance of being close to someone who can work on your motorcycle when need be. It’s no secret that there are one heck of a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270,80,517,518],"tags":[1019,384],"class_list":["post-9358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harley-davidson","category-indian-motorcycle","category-suzuki-motorcycles","category-v-strom","tag-motorcycle-dealerships","tag-motorcycle-repair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9358"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9363,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9358\/revisions\/9363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}