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On Sunday December 11, 2005, 6 friends set out on a mission on our Harley's to spread Christmas cheer around the Delaware and Pennsylvania area. Now, I know that people may ask, "How does one spread Christmas Cheer on a Harley-Davidson"? The ingredients consist of: 1 Santa (Kent); 5 Reindeer; Coupe (Rudolph), Larry (Blitzen), Dan (Comet), Bob (Prancer), Fran (Dasher).
We started out from Mike's Famous Harley-Davidson in New Castle, Delaware. I was wearing my Santa suit, including the white hair and beard that I had decorated into a pony tail adorned with red and green ribbon. The 5 Harley-Davidson Reindeer were all adorned with antlers on their helmets, and their motorcycles decorated with Christmas presents and bells. Rudolph of course was leading the way with his blinking red nose.
The ground was still covered from the snow that had fallen 4 nights before. It was a brisk 40 degrees with a 26 degree wind chill.
Typically, when we plan a ride, we like to head out and stay as far away from traffic as we can get. This cold winter's day, we did exactly the opposite. As the Santa's Sleigh Ride headed down the road with Rudolph leading the standard staggered formation there were people honking their horns and waving, taking pictures with camera phones and giving their thumbs up for approval. We saw many smiles from those that we passed by.
After spreading Christmas cheer for a while we decided we needed a rest stop and some hot coffee to warm up a bit. The reindeer's hooves were feeling rather frosty. We entered Media, Pennsylvania and to our surprise we found a local Harley-Davidson dealership that was open on a Sunday. As we pulled into the parking lot of Hannum's HD, the employee's rushed out to welcome us with open arms. We couldn't believe the excitement and joy they expressed as they welcomed us inside out of the cold and made us a fresh pot of coffee.
After we warmed up and visited for a while we headed back out onto the open road to spread a little more holiday cheer. On our way out to the Harleys sleighs, one of the employees pulled us all together for a group photo. Later, we found out this photo was posted on their website and submitted and published in a local Motorcycle Monthly Magazine. It seems as if Hannum's Harley-Davidson was spreading a little Christmas cheer of their own!
On our way back to Delaware, Blitzen realized that he had drank too much coffee at our last cheer stop so we had to make an emergency pit stop in downtown Newark, Delaware.
Once we entered Main Street in this busy shopping town, things got interesting. As we parked our sleighs, kids from everywhere started to rush up to Santa. A little boy asked, "Santa, why are you riding a Harley, where's your Sleigh"? I replied, "Santa only rides his sleigh on Christmas Eve. I ride my red Harley the other 364 days out of the year." The next question was even better. As a little girl looked up into my face she stated, "If you're the real Santa, what's my name"? Talk about reindeer in the headlights…………. the little girl totally stumped me. As I hesitated and I tried to recover, her father walked around the corner just in time and said "Of course he knows your name Jesse". I breathed a sigh of relief as I replied, "Jesse have you been a good girl this year?" Her eyes lit up and as Blitzen re-joined the pack we were back on our bikes and headed out of town. We fired up the motorcycles, said Merry Christmas to all and we were once again on our way.
At the end of the day we logged 92 miles on this Christmas Cheer mission with 2 stops between the start and finish. Harley-Davidson has a phrase that states, "The best part of any journey is the people we meet along the way". This couldn't have been truer that day.
As 6 friends dressed as Santa and his faithful reindeer set out on a mission to bring Christmas cheer to everyone in the area, little did we know that giving cheer would bring us the same amount of cheer to ourselves.
