Sunday, December 12, 2010

Seattle Progressive International Motorcycle Show

Saturday I went to the Progressive International Motorcycle show at the Qwest Field Event Center in Seattle. Since I am retired, I really wanted to go during the week, but the show only ran Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. My real reason for going was that I wanted to meet the Progressive Insurance spokesperson, "Flo". Unfortunately, she was not there. So instead I looked at motorcycles and "stuff".

I was a bit disappointed in the show. The layout was sloppy and only covered part of the main floor. Several large motorcycle companies were represented(Honda, HD, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Ducati, etc), but the motorcycles I really wanted to see where the BMW's. They were not there. I was surprised at the size of the Ducati display. They offer a big line of mainly sport bikes and they had them all there.

Of course there were lots of vendor booths selling clothes, services, accessories, etc. The most aggressive vendors wanted to clean my glasses!

Several museums brought their collections of old motorcycles. It was fun to see some of the motorcycles that we rode in the early 70's when I was just starting to ride. There were a few custom bikes competing in a build off contest.

There was some presentations put on mainly by insurance companies. One demo was done by a small lady in the Harley Davidson section. She demonstrated how to right a motorcycle that had fallen over. She was demonstrating her procedure on a Sportster. Of course she had one caveat: " if you fall over with a large bike like an Ultra Glide, you should probably call road side assistance to get it righted".
The show was spread out on a portion of the main floor.
I am not much of a Harley fan, but I thought this was a nice look with very little chrome. I think they could have powder coated the wheels and gotten rid of all the chrome.
In this picture, there is no chrome showing. Scott, this one is for you.
This was a very unusual custom motorcycle. I wonder how it corners?
I know this one doesn't corner very good! This drag bike has no padding in the saddle. But who cares when it is only ridden for a few seconds at a time.

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