Word: rodding
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...trolled across rocky shallows at the point. Suddenly, a monster hit. My rod gesticulated crazily. I jerked back to set the hook. The indignant invisible thing fought back and I watched line peeling out even as I tried to reel in. The judge threw the motor into neutral. I found then that I could make some grudging progress against the brute. He did not, however, jump...
Thomson, a tall and rumpled Ichabod Crane, is ill cast as a lightning rod. A developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin's primatology center, he traces his passion for science to an inspirational rocket-scientist uncle. Imagine, the uncle once told him about his work for NASA, "they pay me to do this...
...Rod, the company's first completely new model in a half-century, aims to change all that. "This is the first departure from their traditional customer base," says Don Brown, a motorcycle consultant with DJB Associates. And it shows. With its aerodynamic look, clamshell-style instrument panel and unpainted aluminum-and-steel frame, the long, low-slung V-Rod lives up to its billing as Harley's first "performance custom" motorcycle--although a pricey one at around $17,000. (A classic hog goes for $10,000 to $15,000.) It features a 115-hp engine, designed with help from Porsche...
Sales in the industry are riding ahead of the braking economy, up 3% in the first six months, though nothing like the torrid 20% pace of the past few years. Harley hopes to sell 11,000 V-Rods, which will be available this fall, by the end of this year. That's about 5% of its total annual output. Still, Harley is by no means guaranteed a smooth ride. The V-Rod is a few thousand dollars more expensive than comparable bikes like Honda's hot-selling VTX. And expanding beyond the core franchise is never easy, as Harley learned...
...cult following, demand shouldn't be a problem. Managing that demand so that people invariably have to wait three to 12 months to get their prized possession has always contributed to the Harley mystique. CEO Jeffrey Bleustein says he's No. 38 on the waiting list for a V-Rod at his local dealership. And for more than three years, riders have been sending Bleustein money as a deposit for a special centennial-edition model in 2003. There's only one hitch: Harley hasn't even announced such a celebratory bike yet. Bleustein can only hope that the V-Rod...