Here's where the Ural stuff begins. Walk into Mancuso H-D and I'm wearing my Ural T-shirt with the engine diagram. Salesman asks about the shirt and I begin to explain, thinking "gee, I've never had UDF without the bike before." Then sales guy says "hey, our finance director has a Ural; do you want to meet him?" Heck yeah! So Bernard comes out and gives me the oook's tour of his 2008 Ural Retro which he had ridden in that morning. But that's just the beginning.
He's had 15 hacks in about 30 years, including riding a Dneper from Michigan to LA in 1975.
He lived in the Soviet Union for a year and had lots of Ural stories from that. He then pulls out tons of pics of his hacks as well as his Messcherschmitt cars and invites us over to his place which is motorcycle collection masqurading as a home. My kinda guy. He directs us to the Houston Ural dealer, which is affiliated with Gulf Coast BMW and Triumph. Go there and not only are there Urals, there is a lovely BMW /2? with a Steib hack. Tons of old British bikes (Norton, BSA, Triumph), too.
Looking at the new Urals, I can see they've made several non-mechanical improvements over my 2004 Tourist. The tonneau cover has several pins down low on the hack for tabs that comes out of the tonneau at 45-degree angle to fasten. That way you eliminate the tonneau from flapping in the breeze and uncovering the hack. A thin gasket on the trunk lid to help with waterproofing. Top of windshield has a covering. Trunk handle is now a solid piece of metal instead of the thin, hollowed out version as on mine, which broke off. The trunk's rotating mechansim looks improved, too. The tractor seats are beefier and have a padded cover that resembles the gel seat, but isn't. And the bench seat on the Tourist was heavenly. Wish my '04 had one.
Great trip, even if UBB wouldn't let me buy the Gear Up and ride it home to Orygun.