Category Archives: Business

For the Love of Poopy’s

Located on Illinois Route 84 near the southern edge of the city of Savanna, Poopy’s bills itself as “Illinois’ Biggest Biker Destination” and for good reason. The place is huge. The place is fun. And the place has earned its reputation as a worthy venue for motorcyclists to visit for food, beverages, and a wide variety of entertainment. Its owner, Kevin Promenschenkel, earned the nickname “Poopy” at a young age when a wayward bird let him have it, twice, during a Little League baseball game. The name stuck and the rest, as they say, is history.

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Well it seems history is being made again. Promenschenkel has been busy doing everything in his power to keep his business afloat during these trying times, including participating in a lawsuit against the state, asking his loyal customers to support him by ordering Poopy’s merchandise online, and most recently, opening the venue for Memorial Day weekend — a major weekend for his business, filled with events and entertainment. This was a violation of our governor’s current stay-at-home order, but with the support of county and local authorities, not to mention many loyal bikers who came from miles around, Poopy’s did indeed open. In addition to all this, a motorcycle fundraising run has been organized to provide direct relief to Poopy in this time of need.  I intend to participate in that fundraiser, assuming Mother Nature cooperates and I have people willing to ride out to Savanna with me. I am doing this not because I have excess cash to give away but because I have a great deal of respect for Kevin Promenschenkel, am sympathetic to his situation, and feel compelled to help him out in this small way.

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I’ve been stopping at Poopy’s since September of 2011. That’s the year my son went away to college in the Quad Cities area. A week or two after he left, I found myself missing the kid something awful and so decided to pay him a visit. My ride at the time was a silver metallic 2007 Honda ST1300, a sport touring rig that made short work of my 130-ish mile run out to the Mississippi River. After picking up my son, I asked if he had any interest in checking out this “Poopy’s” place that we’d heard others talk about. At the time, he wasn’t yet old enough to have anything stronger than a coke but the allure of visiting a real biker bar must have pressed his button that day. “Sure!” my son exclaimed and within minutes, he was onboard and we were headed north toward Savanna.

I should pause here and mention that Poopy’s is anything but a typical biker bar. Poopy’s is a destination, an experience unto itself. Sure, it has a bar — several, in fact — plus a restaurant featuring numerous namesake-themed items (e.g. “The Big Poop”), a gift shop, a parts counter, and more. They even had a tattoo parlor on the premises back when I first began going there. The outdoor portion of Poopy’s includes a sizable entertainment stage with overhead catwalk, a pool bar, even a campground. They host vehicle shows, combat sports events, and many, many concerts. As I said, Poopy’s is an experience unto itself and I have developed a deep sense of appreciation for this venue — and the man who built it — from the first time I set foot on the premises.

My son and I had ourselves a grand old time that day. Using my phone, our waitress took a great photo of us while we waited for our lunch. We walked the premises, admired the unique decor and ambiance, bought a few souvenirs, including my lucky Poopy’s bottle opener, and vowed to return.

And so we have returned a number of times. Not nearly often enough, because I don’t live nearby, but whenever the opportunity presents itself — and always with friends. I’ve made lunch stops, brunch stops, and “you just gotta’ come and check this place out” stops. And Poopy’s never disappoints.

My last trip there was a few years ago. My most favorite pillion companion in the world and I had ridden out to Iowa over Labor Day weekend to meet up with some friends from a few different states. During a wonderful all-day ride that we took, the group  had planned to visit Poopy’s for a mid-afternoon lunch. As we approached and entered the parking lot, my beloved friend rolled video, creating a very nice memento. We sat outside for quite some time, enjoying the live music, good food, and each other’s excellent company on that fine late-summer afternoon. Indeed, it’s been too long since I have enjoyed such a time at Poopy’s.

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And so on Saturday, June 6, 2020, I hope to join whatever companions I can assemble and ride west for the day. My motives have been questioned on several counts by different individuals. Without naming names, here are their questions and my answers.

  • Aren’t you afraid of getting sick… or worse?
    No. As the result of having worked in an essential service industry, I never stopped working during this pandemic. I have taken reasonable precautions, both at work and at home. And yes, I wear a bandanna face covering every time I go to the grocery store, pharmacy, etc. I will not likely go indoors on this trip and if I do, I’ll just don my bandanna. Also, as an avid motorcyclist, I am accustomed to tolerating a certain amount of risk. Believe me, it’s not that I don’t care whether I die. It’s that I dread not living during whatever time I have left on this earth.
  • But Poopy is a blatant Trump fan! Are you one, too???
    Does it matter? This is a fundraiser event for Poopy’s, not a political rally. Okay, here’s the plain truth: As an admitted member of the exhausted majority, I despise both the Democrat and Republican parties with a passion and in all candor, my opinion of “45” is less than glowing right now. But I am a real Poopy’s fan and therefore a fan of the man who has put so much of himself into that institution. Although I have never met Poopy in person, I like him and I suspect that if we drank together long enough, we would depart as friends. In short, I respect Kevin Promenschenkel and given that I, too, would not have been prepared to go more than a few weeks without an income stream, I am inclined to help him.
  • You’re just a badass biker with no respect for authority. I hope you get sick!
    Good day to you, too, ma’am! Yes, I am a biker. No, I am not. Okay, it depends on whom you ask and how that person defines the term. I am an avid motorcyclist and I have ridden across the country. My current ride is a 2012 Victory Vision Tour, a big-inch “full dresser” American V-twin, and I am no more loyal to any one motorcycle brand than I am to any political party. So there we are. If you fault me for riding a motorcycle, for respecting other riders regardless of what they ride, or for advocating for motorcyclist rights in general, then I am guilty as charged and your opinion does not move me.

In the end, I think it would be a dirty shame if Poopy’s were to disappear as the result of this horrific pandemic event and the shut-down of our economy — indeed of our society as we know it. I’m sure many businesses will not return as the result, through no fault of the independent owners themselves. So if I can help out one of them, this one in particular, by riding with friends for a few hundred miles on a Saturday and dropping some money in the till, I will gladly do so.

Whether you agree with me or not, I respect you for having read this far. And as always, thank you for hanging with me.

Fruition

 

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Over the course of the last three-plus decades, I have amassed a great deal of knowledge and experience working with rapidly growing, closely-held companies. I have spent the last two of those decades learning my way around a small cluster of related industries that fall into a category described as professional grounds management.  That’s not exactly how I saw my career playing out when I graduated from college in 1983 but that’s indeed how it has played out. Helping smaller companies become (and behave like) bigger ones, that’s what I do.

During all that time, I have worked for a couple, literally two, excellent leaders and a greater number of less-than-ideal bosses who were definitely not leaders. In two organizations for which I have worked, I was repeatedly given the privilege of teaching new hires, people who had been acquired at several times my salary, how to be my boss. In at least two instances in my career, I was “let go” by otherwise competent individuals holding formal authority but having no clue what they were letting slip through their fingers.

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Believe it or not, this sort of repeated pattern can get to a person after a while. And believe it or not, that’s the fault of the person, not their environment. You heard me. If over a period of time I had become convinced by those around me that I wasn’t executive material, that I wasn’t destined for success, or for wealth, that somehow I just wasn’t good enough, it was my fault for believing such a crock of shit. Other people, however greedy, cruel, or incompetent they may be, cannot get to you without your permission.

The good news? A mind can be changed and with it, one’s world also changes.

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The founders of Diaz Group LLC and I have been business acquaintances for the last ten years. During my tenure at Cherry Logistics, a third-party facilities repair and maintenance company, we transacted a great deal of business together that grew substantially year after year. Unfortunately, Cherry closed its doors in 2017 (see Ups and Downs – Part 2 of 3). In a fit of bad judgment, following nearly two decades in the facilities maintenance, snow and ice management, and green industries, I pursued and accepted a position with — promise not to laugh — a minor player in the Chicagoland retail grocery arena. To say that marriage was destined to be short-lived would be an understatement. After a four-month honeymoon period, punctuated by a severe shoulder injury, we parted ways (see Closures: My Summer Interrupted, Part III).

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A month or so later, aside from some ongoing freelance writing work, I was still contemplating my next big opportunity when I got an interesting text message from a fellow Cherry alumnus asking whether I would be interested in meeting with Rafael and Ruben Diaz, two of the three original founders of Diaz Group. “I love those guys,” I replied. “When I handled Special Services, these were the people who could get stuff done before the others would even get out and quote it.” But I also expressed concern about the commute, 35 miles from my home to their office, which was then in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on Chicago’s south side.

In the end, both parties agreed to meet and our go-between Tony made the arrangements and then removed himself from whatever would transpire next. My first meeting with Rafael, Ruben, and a third character named Gil, who would eventually become the best mentor I’ve ever had, lasted every bit of two hours. Our second meeting lasted just as long and concluded with me accepting the only position they could offer at the time, Contract Manager. I jokingly told my family and friends that henceforth, my middle initial stood for “Gringo” but in reality I was joining a very diverse group of people. Less than a week later, on November 19, 2018, I was part of Diaz Group.

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The office on 51st Place was humble but also very homey on the inside. My not-quite-a-cubicle was equally humble. But no matter, I was made to feel not only welcome but very much a part of the family. When the executives arrived, they made a point to greet me and shake my hand, as did every manager, as did many field workers, some of whom spoke only rudimentary English. Such is the culture of Diaz Group and it suits me well.

The company’s leaders went out of their way to expand and enrich my role in the organization. They included me in meetings that were well-suited to my abilities even if the subject matter was utterly unrelated to my formal title. My mentor and I have had regular one-on-one conversations during which we discuss my future as well as that of the company, all while helping each other grow. Over time, Gil taught me how to recognize and replace my negative self-talk, to see more of my potential, and to eliminate my self-imposed limits.

My mentor also talked about an end-of-day process he calls “decompressing,” during which he reviews the events of the day and asks himself what went well, what did not, what could he have done better, etc. By doing this, he goes to bed already having thought everything through and this allows him not only to sleep better but to also be well-prepared for the following day. For years, I had done a shallower version of this without having realized it. I have a friend who used to chat with me most evenings and would ask me questions about my day. By answering her questions, I was in effect reviewing what went well, what hadn’t, and so on. We never thought of it as an element of personal and professional development but in hindsight, it was all that and more. Just like my mentor, at times she believed in me more than I believed in myself. I asked similar questions in return, though my friend never considered her workday to be as interesting as mine. That’s an illusion, of course. Another person’s work often seems more interesting than your own, especially if you care about that person, but the other person holds the same illusion in reverse. In any case, having already been conditioned to the process, I soon adopted my own method of “decompressing” at night. It works.

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Before long I had a little office of my own, with a much bigger desk, a nice chair, and a dry erase wall on which I chose to display concepts to be shared with others. Though my title had not changed, my role had been evolving since day one, exactly as we had intended. My beginning title and salary were a factor of what was possible for our company at the moment, not of what was (and is) possible. Bear in mind, however successful this company has been over the course of their first dozen years, this was no big corporation. And that suited me fine, given that my entire career had been devoted to making smaller, privately held companies become larger, privately held companies at an accelerated pace. I was in my industry, I was in my organizational category, I was in my element — and baby, it showed.

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In October of 2019, Diaz Group opened a new office in Elmhurst, Illinois and my job was moved to this location. Almost exactly the same number of miles from my home, the new office proved to be nearly half as far in terms of travel time. Then in November, as a precursor to what was to come, I was moved into the corner office, which I now share with my friend Rafael Diaz, the company’s president. All the while, I continued to develop personally and professionally. My contributions grew, as did my workload.

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On December 23, 2019, I was promoted to the newly created role of Executive Strategist. I was very excited because although I’d held what were essentially leadership roles for decades, this was the first that came with an executive title. Still, this promotion was not a surprise. Quite the contrary, it had been almost a year in the making. I helped write the position description, along with my boss/mentor and the head of Human Resources, with input from Rafael.

In essence, I assist the rest of my executive team with developing, communicating, executing, and sustaining corporate strategic initiatives. I communicate and implement the company’s strategy so that all stakeholders understand the company-wide strategic plan and how it carries out the company’s overall goals. In plain English, I spend my days working on moving the organization from what it is today to what it will be in the future. For me, this is the most fulfilling role I have ever undertaken. And so for the moment, I am exactly where I want to be.

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Jesus Nevarez, Gil Resendiz, Rafael Diaz, and Michael D’Aversa

Maya Angelou is credited with having said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” As a professional communicator and leader, I strive to make people feel good about themselves and about this company. Indeed, it’s not much different from what I have long striven to do in my personal life. Such is the legacy I’m aiming for. The next few years should be interesting for all involved.

Thanks for hanging with me.

 

 

My Shrinking Demographic: A Tale of Two Trade Shows

A message to the automobile manufacturers and motorcycle manufacturers of the world: I am not the man you are looking for. You know it—well, most of you do, anyway—and I know it. I came into this world toward the tail-end of a generation known as Baby Boomers. For decades, we were the only generation that mattered. We were huge! But like the Traditionalist generation before us, we’ve been dying off. Without going too deep into Generation X, the Millennials, or Generation Z—all of whom came after me—the thing of it is, my generation is no longer capable of sustaining, let alone expanding, the automobile and motorcycle industries. Mobility scooters are another story, but let’s not go there today.

I attended two consumer trade shows this month, the Chicago Auto Show and the Chicago Motorcycle Show, each considered major consumer shows in their own right. I have a longer, if less consistent, history with the auto show, but a much more recent history with the cycle show. Both have changed a great deal over the years. Let’s talk about the car show first.

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I began attending the auto show years before I obtained my first driver’s license. I was a bona fide car nut and an aunt of mine would humor my addiction by taking me to the auto show. This was way back when McCormick Place only had one building. Never mind that I was still in grade school at the time. I could identify nearly every automobile made at the time just by looking at its front grille or rear bumper. No exaggeration! I would go from manufacturer to manufacturer, sitting in cars, collecting literature, and dreaming my dreams. Sticker prices meant nothing because money was no object to me at the ripe old age of twelve. See, I already knew what I was going to be when I grew up—I was going to be rich—so in my young mind’s eye, I could eventually have any car I wanted. And believe me, I coveted some good ones.

Today the American car buyer/leaser is interested in big honkin’ trucks and SUV’s. Smaller segments are into sporty little cars, earth-friendly vehicles, and believe it or not, economical transportation choices. Me, I grew up to become a sedan man. Most of the cars I have owned in my adult life have been sedans. My current ride is large, exceptionally comfortable ’08 Chevrolet Impala with a nicely appointed interior, for its age, and a buttery-smooth ride. Nobody buys sedans anymore, so the genre doesn’t get a lot of attention from the manufacturers, neither in R&D nor marketing. At the auto show this year, the “bigger” sedans were not too plentiful. What is available was displayed, but not exactly showcased. Hey, I understood. And on the bright side, I never had to stand in a long line to sit inside one of them.

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So what did I look at? I glanced at the current iteration of my Chevy and walked past the Ford and Buick equivalents. Though I have never owned a foreign car—the closest thing being a 1985 Renault Alliance built in Kenosha, Wisconsin—most of my attention was captured by the Volkswagon Passat, the Subaru Legacy, and the Nissan Maxima, that last one being my current “if money were no object” choice. It just speaks to me.

So much has changed since the last time I attended the Chicago Auto Show a decade or two ago. There’s no denying it’s a smaller show. Numerous marques have gone out of existence since the last time I was there. When I was a kid, the aftermarket/accessory/travel/merchandise vendor booths took up nearly a floor of their own at what is now called the Lakeside Building at McCormick Place. That was a lot of square feet. This year they took up a small fraction of that. To be sure, the new show had some astounding features not found in 1974, such as in-show demo rides and outdoor test drives. But for me, the sheer grandeur of this show has shrunk back a bit.

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To be sure, the Chicago stop of the International Motorcycle Shows (IMS) used to be physically larger, not because so many brands have gone out of existence since I began coming (a few have), but because fewer exhibitors are showing up.  More on that in a bit. But this has always been a very different show than it’s automobile counterpart. Motorcyclists are a smaller segment of the U.S. population at large and perhaps a bit more fragmented as well. I’ve been coming out every year since I became an active motorcyclist in 2003 (I was a late bloomer, but a fanatical one). I have seen a number of changes in the hobby, the industry behind it, and this show, which to a degree represents it.

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To its credit, the IMS really does try to have something for everyone, but it’s really up to the exhibitors to deliver. Let me explain. I can recall a period of years during which there seemed to be a bit of one-upmanship going on between the motorcycle manufacturers on at least three different fronts. The heavyweight cruiser class was wide open and several players were vying for the largest displacement engine—separate and apart from Boss Hoss, a specialty manufacturer of motorcycles powered by Chevy V8 engines. Despite a gentlemen’s agreement among the major manufacturers to limit the top speed of their really fast bikes to 300 kilometers per hours (about 186 MPH because more than that would be unsafe), the players in the sportbike class were still vying for fastest production motorcycle, which I assume would be the one to reach 300 KPH the soonest. And on yet another front, several of the major manufacturers were trying to unseat the Honda Gold Wing as the premier touring motorcycle by which all others would be judged.

It was the best of times to attend the IMS. The accessory / aftermarket / merchandise aisles were packed, too. Then the Great Recession hit. Motorcycle dealerships were closing left and right, as were some less-than-major manufacturers and a number of aftermarket companies, too. The terrain of the motorcycle dealership and merchandising networks was forever changed, the IMS scaled back accordingly, and if you ask my opinion, the industry has never been the same since then.

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But the show has gone on and people still attend. If anything, the crowd seems more heterogeneous than before. It may be me, but I seem to recall the “black leather and gray hair” bunch being more dominant ten to fifteen years ago. They’re still present, to be sure—I’m sort of on the fringe of that demographic myself—but they no longer dominate. I’m not sure anybody does. Which brings me to an issue similar to, but not quite the same, as I described while describing the auto show.

I’m a touring rider. I ride big-displacement bikes configured for comfort and overnight travel. These are not entry level bikes, nor are they cheap by any definition. Many people can’t afford them. In point of fact, I can’t afford them—never mind that I have owned three so far. The touring bike class has never been the dominant segment of the motorcycle industry, but it has been significant. I commented earlier that I am sort of on the fringe of the black leather biker demographic. That’s only because I currently ride an American-made, big-inch V-twin and as the result, I tend to dress more like a pirate and less like a spaceman. But only six years ago, I was riding a much faster Japanese sport-touring rig and back then, I dressed more like a spaceman. So you see, it’s all relative.

But no matter how you slice it, my demographic is in decline, along with several others. The generations that follow are for the most part decidedly not marching in line with us older types. Big-inch V-twins don’t excite the later generations. Neither do the full dresser touring rigs or their sport touring subset. Or racer replicas. Surely there will always be technical riders, sport riders, and hooligans, but these will not dominate the hobby.

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What will? In all candor, I don’t know. But neither do most of the major manufacturers, from all outward appearances. Enter the newcomers! The ultra-affordable low displacement, high-mileage bikes. The unconventional three-wheelers. The electrics. And whatever comes next. But here is where it gets tricky. Despite the fact that motorcyclists in total are a minority of vehicle owners and operators in the US, the various segments (fragments?) of the hobby haven’t historically been too tolerant of one another. For the sake of our hobby and the industry that both supports and depends upon it, this must change. Now.

During my visit to the 2019 IMS, I had the pleasure of listening to and speaking with my friend Gina Woods of Open Roan Radio, and a newer acquaintance of mine, Robert Pandya who helped bring the Discover the Ride experience to life at IMS events across the country. I can’t say enough about either of these individuals and the contributions each has made to our hobby and to the motorcycle industry at large. And while each will eagerly acknowledge the heritage of our hobby, they are equally eager to acknowledge and welcome that which is new and exciting. We need more people like this influencing the industry.

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And so here I sit, figuratively speaking, upon Miss Scarlett, my 2012 Victory Vision Tour (did I mention that Robert Pandya worked for Polaris when they brought the Vision to market?), looking forward to the upcoming riding season. I may no longer be the primary demographic target for either the automobile or motorcycle industry, but I still have my eye on certain products of theirs and amusingly enough, they still have their eyes on my spending dollars. Maybe it’s a love/hate thing.

As always, thanks for hanging with me.

MGD on LinkedIn: Disarm, Diffuse, Resolve: Making People Skills Count in a Digital World

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As the entirety of my career to date has been spent with small corporations, either as an employee or a consultant, my articles may be most relevant to owners and employees of small, growth-oriented companies. In this article, I dissect a valuable people skill that, for today, is still difficult at best for AI to emulate: helping the distraught customer.
Disarm, Diffuse, Resolve: Making People Skills Count in a Digital World | LinkedIn

MGD on LinkedIn: Talk Is Cheap but Silence Is Costly: A Soup Label Marketing Catechism

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Here is a link to my latest business article written for the LinkedIn network:

Talk Is Cheap but Silence Is Costly: A Soup Label Marketing Catechism

Call me old-fashioned—or just old, you won’t be the first—but I still subscribe to the classic definition of marketing as a process by which we identify unfulfilled customer needs, wants, or requirements and then strive to develop and deliver… (read more)

MGD on LinkedIn

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My Window to the Top Office of Any Company (We All Have One)

This is the first article I have ever written expressly for LinkedIn and I wanted to share it here on MGDaversa.com. There may be more articles like this from time to time. To read the article, please click the link below.

via My Window to the Top Office of Any Company (We All Have One) | Michael G. D’Aversa | Pulse | LinkedIn

The Dehumanized Condition

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I saw this Quartz article—More and more Indian IT engineers are under-skilled, unwanted, and unemployed— earlier today and although it involves a bunch of people I’ll probably never meet, in a country I’ll probably never visit, this piece bothered me on a fundamental level. It reminded me of something that I learned decades ago about an inevitable consequence of economic evolution, a consequence that renders large groups of people irrelevant, invisible, and forgotten.

I first entered college, sometime after the earth cooled, as a student of economics. That changed quickly enough, but not before I had completed several seriously enlightening courses in that discipline. At least some of what I learned from my esteemed professors, for better or worse, has stuck with me to this day. The above-linked article reminded me of this. Let me explain.

Economic evolution/revolution has always opened doors for some and slammed them shut for others. Consider the transitions from agriculture to industry, from industry to service, from service to information, and from information to (smart) automation. That last transition is still unfolding. In fact plenty of people either don’t know about it yet or are in denial—but that’s a topic for another time. My point is this: with every turn of the wheel, opportunities have opened and opportunities have closed. Each and every time, while traditionally understood job opportunities shrunk, new and exciting job opportunities expanded, albeit not always at the same rate. Maybe never at the same rate.

What happens when the only job role you’ve ever known becomes obsolete? On a purely academic level, the answer is simple: people must be retrained.

But even the citizens of academia will readily admit that not everyone can be retrained and funneled into the revised economy. Why? For openers, there will likely be fewer new jobs created than old ones eliminated. Second, who is going to pay for all this retraining? Finally, consider also that some individuals may be too close to retirement to start over—but not close enough to be able to retire.

If you haven’t already done so, please take a few minutes to read the article to which I referred earlier. Check out the prediction that “3.9 million employees of Indian IT services companies would become ‘irrelevant’ within the next four years” due to automation. And don’t overlook the prediction that 65% of the displaced workforce cannot be retrained.

That seems like an awful lot of people to disregard as irrelevant. Irrelevant! We aren’t talking about an obsolete screw that will no longer be used to manufacture a product. We aren’t talking about a line of code in a software program that is no longer needed. These are people! Human beings! When they disappear on paper, when they drop from the statistics, when they are no longer visible in the economic model, what do you imagine happens to them?

I am reminded of a 1993 movie called Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas. There is a scene in which Douglas’ character encounters a man protesting in front of a bank, raving about having become “not economically viable.” During this scene, the raving man is arrested and taken away by law enforcement officers. What is often lost on the audience is the fact that the man carted off by police is dressed identically to the anti-hero of this story.

Of course it doesn’t take an economic revolution to cause this condition. We see the same thing happen on a smaller scale whenever an economic downturn occurs. Or smaller yet when a specific industry falters. Or smaller yet, when this or that company is forced to “downsize” in order to remain viable.

This happens every day. I have witnessed it firsthand, on varying scales, for decades. As an educated man, I am capable of understanding and explaining the whole cause-and-effect episode. As a wordsmith, I can spin things toward a specific desired outcome.

Just remember one thing. No matter how we slice, dice, or spin a given situation, these are human beings we are talking about. Okay?

How would you like to be called irrelevant? I thought so.

I know this post has been a bit of a departure from the things about which I usually write. With that in mind, if you are still reading, thanks all the more for hanging with me.

 

Victory No More: My Thoughts Concerning the Polaris Decision

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The photo you see above was taken on May 4, 2013, the day I left home with my 2007 Honda ST1300 sport touring rig and returned with my slightly used 2012 Victory Vision Tour. This was indeed a pivotal moment in my life. This was my first motorcycle that wasn’t a Honda, my first American motorcycle, and my first Victory. Since that fateful day, Miss Scarlett and I have logged roughly forty thousand relatively trouble-free miles

But this post isn’t about my love affair of the past four riding seasons with this motorcycle. Rather, this is about the recent announcement by Polaris Industries to wind down production of the Victory over the next eighteen months. I promise to be brief.

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Was I happy to hear the news? No. While no motorcycle is perfect for every rider’s needs, I have been so pleased with the performance and comfort of my Vision Tour, I was already fairly certain that when the time came for Miss Scarlett and me to part ways, my next motorcycle would be another Victory. Over the past four riding seasons, we have run nearly 40,000 miles, 4,800 of which involved an epic journey from Chicago, Illinois to Portland, Oregon and back—a journey so great, it left me wanting to take another.

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But with Victory Motorcycles now being phased out, my next bike will likely not be a Victory. So now what? Well, I am pleased to report that despite the Polaris announcement, Miss Scarlett did not burst into flames or disappear from sight. In addition, Randy Weaver, owner of Randy’s Cycle, the best Victory dealership in all of northern Illinois and beyond, almost immediately went online and assured his customers (me among them) that his shop would continue to service the Victory marque for years to come. Comforting words indeed! (See Randy’s video here.)

Bottom line, I still have a damned good motorcycle sitting in my garage, just waiting for the next decent riding day. Polaris’ decision to cease production of Victory Motorcycles will not immediately affect my decision to continue riding Miss Scarlett for some time to come.

Surely the day will come for me to pick another motorcycle to ride.  But you’ll have to take my word for it, this isn’t that day. In the meantime, I’m chomping at the bit to take Miss Scarlett out again, just as soon as the weather turns in our favor. And when that happens, I’ll be here to share more ride stories with you, hopefully with my beloved pillion Ann to continue sharing her awesome photos and videos.

Until then, peace and ride on. Thank you for hanging with me.