Monthly Archives: November 2013

Out on the highway – Street Gliding the Everglades Headwaters

After 10 days of ferrying the family around theme parks and shopping malls ‘Dad’ was given his day in the Florida sun to use as he wished 🙂

Now that my eldest is increasingly making her own way in the world, I doubt that we will head state-side on a family holiday for quite a while now so I thought I’d go for a full-on American experience and decided to hire a Harley Davidson for a day, head down south for some alligator spotting in the swamps and then have a go at firing some weapons at a gun range.

Street-Glide-2014I’ve never ridden a Harley before and as I’m fast approaching 50 and the age at which my family seem happier for me to own another bike then it was a good opportunity to experience what this style of ‘laid back’ classic motorcycling has to offer.

The bike I chose was the 2014 Street Glide model which is the latest output from Harley Davidson’s ‘Project Rushmore’ – an initiative from the iconic company to incorporate over 100 renovations into their 2014 product range that are based on close collaboration with customers.

The guys at Harley Davidson in South Orlando were very helpful to this HOG world newbie, giving me the full run down on this new machine and some of its ‘awesome’ features, such as the on-board infotainment system that includes bluetooth connectivity.

A few circuits of an adjacent car park to familiarise myself with the basic controls and handling and I was ready to get out on the highway.

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Postcard from North America – The worst and best of US

I’m writing this half way through a family break in the United States.

After good and bad experiences heading to Florida via Washington and heading home via Montreal on our last visit – well documented here – we opted to keep the flight costs down by travelling via Toronto this time.

fatUScop1The hop across the Atlantic with Air Canada was, we all agreed, the best long haul flight any of us had experienced with attentive cabin crew who kept us well fed and watered and excellent in-flight entertainment that made the seven plus hours literally fly by. Being able to link my new hearing aids directly to the audio output meant I could hear the three recently released movies I chose to watch very well – in fact probably the best I have ever heard such things as I was able to cut the cabin noise out virtually completely.

I had no problem hearing John McClane and his son swearing at the Russian mafia as they blasted their way across Moscow, leaving many vehicles written off in their wake, or Will Smith guiding his real life and fictional son across the hostile environment of an unfamiliar planet they had crash landed on – which is Earth 1000 years after we’ve irreparably damaged it and moved on, or indeed hearing Brad Pitt saving his wife and daughters and the rest of the human race from being over-run by the fastest moving zombies I have ever seen.

So having spent the best part of six hours watching heroic parenting and gaining expert guidance on how to save your offspring from all manner of nastiness this world might have to throw at them now and in the far future it was somewhat ironic when less than an hour after stepping off the flight I had to stand powerless with teeth gritted as a man much younger than myself treated my kids with rudeness and contempt.

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