July 2019, right after the roll out of the first StrikerX Uno, I had the opportunity to visit the Walt Siegle Motorcycle (WSM) workshop in Harrisville, New Hampshire. During a job lay over in NY city I had 3 days to myself and decided to rent a motorcycle and drive up North. It had been a great wish to meet the man who inspired me to start the StrikerX project. Not that I’m a worshipper kind of person but the magnificent stuff that WSM builds looked like a good experience to kill the time instead of staying in a far to hot, busy and overcrowded city. I’m no big city man anyway…
The trip (400 km) took me about 7 hours from New York Manhattan as the roads were really filled up during the first 150k but eventually once on the I-91 things became more relaxed especially when I abandonded the interstate over the last 80 km’s.
Next day the visit was planned on monday morning at the workshop in Harrisville. I took me a few minutes to figure out which building the workshop was in but eventually I ended up meeting Walt’s wife Laura, Aran and Brian.
Walt showed up a little later and Aran and Brian had already showed me some of the things they were working on. Unfortunatelly the visit was way to short as I had to deliver the rental bike back in NY by 5 pm the same day. I figured the trip back could also be done in about 5 hours to Dutch standards (and speeds limits) so I would have to leave around 11 am to take some extra time to fuel up and have a drink. (It turned out that you can do all this in 4 and half hours.)
The things Walt generously showed me really made an impression (again!) and convinced me not to cut back to much on the StrikerX costs to have a perfect bike. When I first learned of the pricing of the WSM bikes they seemed a bit over the top. But during my own building process I understood where all this money was going. Unfortunatelly most of the exquisite things on these bikes can not always be seen. Even more because these bike have very little plastic covering like most production bikes so when looking at these bikes you really need to look at the details, interior and electronics.
Anyway the visit was a real delight and way to short. And I really enjoyed having being up there. If it hadn’t been for WSM it had surely been worth the effort for the New Hampshire scenery…..