WOW!

Man, oh man. My good friend Mike brought his new-to-him '08 Concourse over to the house today to show it to me. We stood outside and admired it's fine lines and talking about the performance of the machine. After a little bit, he tossed me the key fob and said "Where you taking it?". He didn't have to ask me twice...well, maybe a little bit of a nudge.

I went into the house and got my gear, put it all on and swung a leg over the beast. Looking down at the instrument cluster and seeing a speedo that ends at 180 mph and a tach that redlines at 10,000 rpm is quite different from the ol' Nomad. It took me a couple tries to get the dang thing started, different again from my bike with no key. I fired it up and it just hummed. I could sense the amount of power on the bike.

When I got on the road, I had to check the shift lever placement and rear brake so I knew where they were...never had my feet up under me like that. A little twist. and I mean little, of the wrist and away I went. I burped the throttle a tad when I got into 2nd and next thing I knew I was at 6000 rpm and the thing wasn't even struggling. When I got onto a section at the back of our development and let it out, 70 mph at about 6-7K rpm. WHAT A MACHINE!

All I said when I got back to the house was "WOW". I have always wondered what it was like riding a Connie or other sport-tourer and now I know. I will definitely have one in my future. As Mike and I discussed, there were a couple things that need to be altered to make it even more comfortable. But quite literally, I could see myself on one of those with a minimum of additions: risers, rear trunk, some additional reflector stuff on the rear of the bags and probably cruise control down the road...all of these are things Mike is going to do as he goes.

Thank you Mike for making my day and making me start Jonesing for a Connie. I still love my Nomad and spent some time with it today changing oil, final drive fluid, etc. and will ride it as much as I can. But the Connie is now on my radar and my piggy bank is going to have to get fed often to get one.