Lisa on her Harley.
Senior consumer credit adjustor Lisa Starbuck rolled into the pages of Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in an article about Harley-Davidson riders from all walks of life.
Do you ride a Harley?
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The piece — which requires a digital subscription to access — was part of an insert celebrating the iconic motorcycle company’s 115th anniversary. Business reporter Paul Gores contacted Lisa on a tip from bank CEO and chairman Jim McKenna, who rides a Harley himself.
“I didn’t know what he was going to ask me!” Lisa says of her phone interview with Gores. She said it was refreshing to talk to him, because he nudged her to dig into her thoughts more deeply. “When you’re talking to somebody else who rides a Harley, they already know what you mean. He didn’t, and that gave me the chance to explain things more fully.”
A member of the Rock River HOG — Harley Owners Group — chapter, Lisa has been riding for 10 years, as the Journal Sentinel story explains, ever since her Harley-loving stepfather, Gene Schoenherr, bought her a Heritage Softail motorcycle in 2008. She rides as often as possible during the few months Wisconsin’s climate allows for it.
Lisa, as featured in Sunday’s paper. Photo by Paul Gores, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Used with permission.
“I try to ride to work on nice days, and otherwise, every weekend. If it’s not raining, I’m out riding with friends,” she says.
Typically, they choose an ultimate destination and then work out their route. “It usually ends up with food,” she acknowledges, laughing, noting that she and her friends frequently finish up a ride by getting ice cream. Her farthest trip was a 10-day jaunt to Yellowstone National Park in 2009. Last year, she did another 10-day ride out to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Lisa traded in her 2008 Softail for a 2016 model not long ago, after putting about 60,000 miles on the first bike. “You can run ’em up, but eventually, they start nickel-and-diming you,” she says of the costs required to keep a bike in shape. “But with a Harley, it’s less nickel and dime, and more hundreds and hundreds!”
For people who might be scared to get on a motorcycle, she recommends getting the proper training. Attending a motorcycle riding academy gave her the confidence to feel comfortable on a bike. But, she adds, motorcycles just aren’t for some people. “You don’t have the box of a car protecting you. And if that does intimidate you, it does become dangerous!”
As far as Lisa is concerned, though, the trade-off is worth it: Not being boxed in a car means experiencing so much more of the world.
“We were riding these gorgeous roads,” she says of a recent trip to Michigan, “and I happened to look up — and there was a bald eagle in a tree! If I were in a car, all I would have seen is roof!”