Adventures with Ivory and Munchkinhead: Harley Museum

Back near the start of summer (when it was still cold), Milwaukee had a gallery night in which downtown galleries and museums were open for free to the public, including the Harley Davidson museum.  Munchkinhead and I didn’t actually know it was gallery night, we just knew the Harley museum was free that evening.  We both love Harleys – I mean, we are from Milwaukee – so we headed down to check it out.

The museum was really neat!  Munchkinhead had been to the Harley museum before, so she was sort of my tour guide.  We started upstairs, looking at the history of the company.  I was spent a bunch of time reading the old incorporation documents and board meeting minutes and such.  Munchkinhead liked the old pictures and history of how the bikes had changed.

We learned some neat stuff looking at the wall of gas tanks.  Neither of us realized AMF – as in the bowling company – had bought Harley at one point, or the fight that was put up to buy it back.  I also learned that Harleys used to be the racing bikes.  That surprised me a lot.  Munchkinhead already knew this because she’d seen the exhibit before.

There was a photo gallery that featured some pretty crazy people riding all over the place.  And an ears-on exhibit where you could test your knowledge of the classic Harley sound.  Telling a weedwacker from a Harley was easy; telling a crotch rocket from a Harley wasn’t too hard, but trying to tell one Harley engine from another, I had no idea.

Of course, the best part of the museum was the seats-on part where we could sit on different Harleys.

Munchkinhead like the army bike, of course.

 

And then she made me get on the scooter because she thought it went well with my outfit.

There was also a stick-your-head-here place where you could pretend to be Evel Knievel.  The giant face-less photo had a platform behind it that made it rather difficult for me to be Evel.

 

I still tried though.