Ahhh, spring!

Today's officially the first day of spring. I don't care that the calendar says it was two weeks ago. It's today. I can tell by the sound of the amplified flatulence of the Harleys running up and down the street that today is the day.

Here in Milwaukee, it's in the sixties today. The sixties! That's equivalent to giving a man dying of thirst a few sips of water. Or giving a drowning man a SCUBA tank. Just last week there were still shoulder-high mounds of snow covering the ground. It was still layering weather, when people venturing outdoors had to wear several layers of clothing.

We still have four months (a gross of days, 144 of 'em, but who's counting?) until August, when everything kicks off here in Milwaukee, but that time is going to fly by, I assure you. And while we may still have some cold weather, the below-freezing gridlock has been broken. The mercury will be yo-yoing up and down for the next month or so, but this is it. Spring is here.

Harley-Davidson's 105th birthday celebration, the official opening of the HD Museum, and the official opening of the Iron Horse Hotel will all be taking place in August. Actually, the museum and hotel are scheduled to open a little earlier, but Harley's official birthday celebration will be when the real celebrations begin.

August in Milwaukee is like standing in the middle of a NASCAR track while the race is going on. You have to yell to be heard by somebody who's rubbing shoulders with you. Walking down Water Street, the main north-south (more or less) drag in the downtown section, you'll see a solid line of all shapes, sizes, and configurations of bikes backed into the curb, angled out for a quick getaway.

All the restaurants will have their patios open and just about every square inch of sitting space will be occupied. Levi's and leather is the uniform of the day for both sexes. The women are often dressed (or undressed) just this side of being arrested. The college kids will be gawking at all the wild goings-on, sipping beers and working up the nerve to join in. The businessmen will be studiously avoiding eye contact with the bikers, lest they inadvertently set one of them off. The women who enjoy eyeballs rolling up and down their bodies will be strutting their stuff, parading by and silently wishing for a serious strike on her bait. The other women will be scurrying, trying to get past the audience as quickly as possible, some of them secretly enjoying the attention, others bristling and spoiling for a fight. The teenagers will be looking straight ahead, unsmiling, but the eyes of every single one of them will be gyroscoping the action, many of them unable to curb their excitement.

The bar owners, restaurant owners and shop owners wil be broadly grinning with each ka-ching! of the till. The cops will be testy, at best. The bikers will be, for the most part, genial and complacent. It doesn't take a genius to see that the beefed up presence of John Law is aching for a chance to crack some heads.

Hope you'll join us, and that we'll see you here in August.

[Details on the events mentioned above, and much more, will be forthcoming soon. Keep your eyes peeled for subsequent issues of Hog Heaven.]