{"id":3653,"date":"2025-12-20T02:38:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T15:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2025-12-20T02:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T15:38:42","slug":"dealer-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/dealer-obsession\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealer obsession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What began as a baseball pilgrimage across America turned into a full-blown Harley-Davidson obsession, taking Richard \u2018Sod\u2019 Mason and his wife Karen to 42 states and more than 200 dealerships around the world<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time Richard walked into a Harley-Davidson\u00ae<\/sup> dealership, he didn\u2019t even own a Harley\u00ae<\/sup>. He was in Tennessee, standing beside the Jack Daniel\u2019s distillery, when he spotted the storefront and wandered in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI bought my first T-shirt before actually owning a bike,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 2017, and he and Karen were in the thick of another quest entirely \u2013 ticking off every Major League Baseball stadium in the United States \u2013 and they completed all 30. But on that same trip, someone in Milwaukee insisted he visit the Harley-Davidson Museum. He walked in as a former sportsbike rider who had given bikes away for more than a decade. And he walked out being bitten by the H-D\u00ae<\/sup> bug \u201cwell and truly\u201d. And since the baseball quest was finished, the dealer hunt naturally became the new map to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The next year he bought a Harley-Davidson Breakout\u00ae<\/sup>. It didn\u2019t take long to realise it wasn\u2019t the ideal machine for long-haul touring, and by 2019 he was riding a CVO\u2122<\/sup> Street Glide\u00ae<\/sup>. This year he upgraded again, picking up a 2025 CVO Road Glide\u00ae<\/sup>, and he\u2019s put more than 10,000 kilometres on it in less than six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe rode across to Western Australia, up to Coober Pedy and then back home to Melbourne just for something to do,\u201d he says. \u201cIt took nine days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the real adventure is the dealer odyssey that began in Tennessee and has since grown into one of the most impressive personal dealer logs we\u2019ve seen. The couple has visited 207 dealerships across Australia, the US and Southeast Asia since that first experience back in 2017, and Richard reckons he\u2019s ridden to around 150 of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the last trip to the United States in 2023, we knocked over 90 dealerships,\u201d he says. His goal had been to search out and visit 120 Harley dealers in 120 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut after 90, I was going, you know what? I can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the US, he rides thanks to a mate in Virginia who keeps two of his 10 bikes registered and ready for him to borrow whenever they visit. To keep track of it all, he and Karen use an app called Locate Harley Dealers<\/em>, which he attributes to the success of what\u2019s now become quite the obsession. As a project manager by day, he loves the structure it provides, and he exports it all into spreadsheets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe live by the spreadsheet,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are the dealerships we\u2019re going to do. These are the maps. And off we go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collecting is part of the ritual too. Poker chips, pins, stickers and \u2013 at least for a while \u2013 t-shirts. The pins alone weighed 12 kilograms on the last trip. \u201cThe TSA had to open the bags and take everything out because it\u2019s all metal,\u201d he says, referring to the US agency responsible for airport security screening. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to put it all in my suitcase in case the suitcase went missing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And with each dealership comes a different flavour of Harley culture. In the United States, Richard and Karen were bowled over by the hospitality. A Texan dealer offered him a beer at 9am. American Eagle Harley-Davidson fired up a giant mechanical eagle hanging from the ceiling with lights, smoke, the lot \u2013 an act normally reserved exclusively for new H-D owners. A dealership in Scottsdale donates all its profits to wounded veterans. In Amarillo, the H.O.G.\u2122<\/sup> chapter room was \u201cas big as some restaurants,\u201d complete with kitchen, stage and LED lighting running around the walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Japan was a different experience. Staff stayed at their desks. Nobody approached them or invaded their space. Vietnam was the opposite again. During a heat-soaked visit at \u201c38 degrees but feels like 48,\u201d one dealer ordered and paid for their taxi when their phone coverage failed. \u201cHe just said, \u2018don\u2019t worry, here,\u2019 and did it on his phone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there are the quirks \u2013 like Colorado\u2019s Blue Laws, which prevent dealers from discussing motorcycles or anything pertaining to them on Sundays. \u201cI went in and started asking about the bikes,\u201d Richard says. \u201cHe goes, \u2018Sorry mate, you\u2019ll have to come back tomorrow. Can\u2019t talk about anything.\u2019 I wondered why he was even open.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through all of it, Karen is always along for the ride, enjoying the travel, the collecting and the camaraderie just as much as her husband. She\u2019s been asked countless times whether she\u2019ll get her own bike, but she genuinely prefers experiencing it on the same bike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After 32 years of marriage, the two of them have found a late-in-life hobby that fits them perfectly. They ride with comms and talk the whole way, share the same scenery at the same moment, laugh at the same roadside oddities and take in every ride as a team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have more fun being together on the bike than most people, I think,\u201d Richard says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

H.O.G. is woven through their story. Richard spent years in Yarra Valley H.O.G. as photographer, safety officer, assistant director and director, and while he\u2019s since stepped back from those roles, he\u2019s still a member of both the Yarra Valley and Dandenong chapters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and Karen have visited 42 states so far. People often ask why they haven\u2019t done the other eight. Richard just laughs. \u201cBecause they don\u2019t play baseball there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What began as a baseball pilgrimage across America turned into a full-blown Harley-Davidson obsession, taking Richard \u2018Sod\u2019 Mason and his wife Karen to 42 states and more than 200 dealerships around the world. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":3656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-3653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3749,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/3749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hog.thecreativeplot.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}