Up To Speed

WOODBURY, CT – A new store on Route 6 featuring motorcycle apparel and accessories quietly opened for business on Tuesday. Fowlers USA offers riding jackets and pants, gloves and other gear, and is owned by Sasha Fowler-LeBlanc and her husband, Todd LeBlanc. The retail business may be new, but its …

SOMERS, NY – The setting is an outlaw motorcycle race in the 1920s, depicted near the end of the Discovery Channel miniseries “Harley and the Davidsons,” and it’s where Harley-Davidson makes history. Not only is the race the first time its legendary “Knucklehead” engine gets tested competitively, but the scene also …

NEW HAVEN – The CT United Ride, which bills itself as “CT’s largest annual 9/11 tribute,” is being lambasted today by a local motorcycle dealer and by Slingshot owners who charge discrimination in the treatment of a group that wanted to participate in the 15th annual charity ride on Sunday …

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ – A bike dream coming true for Motorcycle Cannonball rider John Pfeifer of Houston, TX was quickly shattered Saturday when the 1916 Harley-Davidson that he was riding was destroyed by fire. Pfeifer was unhurt, although

Craig Johnson is a best-selling author and a motorcycle enthusiast. His “Longmire” mysteries about a Wyoming sheriff have sold more than 1.5 million copies and been turned into a television series that shifts from the A&E cable network to the Netflix streaming service

Is “Harley and the Davidsons” accurate? My answer to those folks inquiring today following last night’s premiere of part one of the three-parter is probably somewhere between

BRATTLEBORO, VT – It’s not often that you hear the word “whetstone” used in conversation; a whetstone being a sharpening stone for knives. Having grown up on Whetstone Road in Harwinton, CT, though, it’s a word that always perks my ears. Hearing of a craft brewery and restaurant here called …

WINDSOR LOCKS, CT – Riding on a divided highway is supposed to be safer than riding anywhere else. No one can pull out from a side street and an oncoming vehicle can’t drift across the center line. That doesn’t mean accidents can’t happen – as a Connecticut state trooper discovered …

MILWAUKEE – Layoffs are coming to Harley-Davidson with some 200 jobs being cut at U.S. plants. Workers at the factory in Springettsbury Township in Pennsylvania were notified at a meeting Wednesday with the local union reporting that 117 full and part-time positions will be lost. The layoffs will begin in …

UPDATE: Having received its certificate of occupancy, Brookfield Indian Motorcycle is now open.

SOMERS, NY – Harley-Davidson may have been founded in 1903 in Milwaukee, but an interesting element in the company’s history can be traced to Somers, which west of I-684 in Westchester County. That’s where William B. Johnson had the first Harley-Davidson dealership owned by an African-American. Johnson opened the franchise in …

FARMINGTON, CT – Motorcycle training classes run by CONREP are held rain or shine, but it was another kind of intrusion from above that provided a teachable moment at the Tunxis Community College training site on Sunday morning. Hot air balloons from the nearby Plainville Hot Air Balloon Festival began …

OK, I’m thoroughly confused… Having not grown up around motorcycles, I’m not up to speed on a lot of motorcycle history. Consequently, when Harley-Davidson unveiled its new “Milwaukee-Eight” engine this week, it got me wondering about the power-plants that had preceded it. While I was aware of some of the …

NASHUA, NH – Rocket Moto Sport will soon become the first New England dealer of Tilting Motor Works three-wheelers. Already a dealer of American-made Motus motorcycles, Rocket Moto Sport will by mid-fall start converting Harley-Davidson and Honda touring models into trikes using Tilting Motor Works kits. Tilting Motor Works is …

MILWAUKEE – Harley-Davidson this morning unveiled a new engine, the ninth Big Twin in its history, dubbed the Milwaukee-Eight. It will be offered in two displacements: the Milwaukee-Eight 107 (107 cubic inches/1,750cc) and the Milwaukee-Eight 114 (114 cubic inches/1,870cc). The company says the new engine “is a clean-sheet design that combines …