A few months back I wrote a blog entry about becoming a new Harley motorcycle rider after the passing of my grandfather. In that post I shared how, quite unexpectedly, I became the owner of a 2001 Heritage Softail Classic.

J&P Cycles Senior Technician Scott Holton, recently blogged about how motorcycling is often a hereditary thing – an obsession that’s often passed on down the family tree. What Scott didn’t explain is what happens if that trait skips a generation in the gene pool. Where’s your mentor? How do you learn? Of course there are huge benefits when you have a close relative or friend… Continue Reading

Editor’s Note: Tim Barcz is J&P Cycles’ senior ecommerce manager, and while he’s been doing a bang-up job for us in this capacity since April of 2008, he’s never taken riding and getting his license as seriously as his work on our award-winning website. As you’ll read below, events have changed all that, and Tim will be blogging from time to time on the trials and travails of switching from being a sidecar rider to his anticipated evolution as a seasoned Harley rider.

The Journey of a New Harley Rider, Part I

By Tim Barcz

You know the call is going to come. You just don’t know when. Days… Continue Reading

Every day, servicemen and women around the world wake up in faraway places.  And in the years since 9/11, many of them serve in dangerous places (most notably Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently, Libya). When J&P Cycles heard about the movement to wear red on Fridays as a show of support, we were all over it.  Last Friday, our two locations took photos of employees wearing red. We had more than 120 J&P Cycles’ employees take part.

If you’re not familiar with the Red Shirt Friday movement, here’s their mission:

The mission of redshirtfridays.org is to show support for our servicemen and women. We

… Continue Reading

Lose 10 pounds. Quit smoking. Find a better job. Spend more time with the family. These are some of the more familiar New Year’s resolutions that people make a commitment to undertake each year. And as we turn the page on another year and look ahead to 2011, we here at J&P Cycles want to share some of our own resolutions with you.

As we all know, New Year’s resolutions sound good on paper but are often difficult to accomplish. In fact, some of them are history by January 2^nd. To help you buck that trend, what we offer below are some quick tips that might just help you… Continue Reading

About two years ago several of us were marveling over how much technical knowledge and expertise about motorcycles exists at J&P Cycles. Just ask anyone who has been to one of our two locations, chatted with us via our live chat (go ahead give it a try), talked on the phone with one of our motorcycle technicians, or visited with us at a motorcycle event. Everybody knows how knowledgeable our staff is when it comes to motorcycle parts and accessories. We wanted to get the word out to people via “this new Internet thing,” and thus, a blog was born.… Continue Reading

We all remember the story of Thanksgiving from elementary school. We were taught that the first Thanksgiving was a harvest festival for the Pilgrims — a time to be thankful and express gratitude to God, family and friends.

As more and more people work in careers outside of farming, I’m glad we still celebrate “the harvest” and continue to give thanks. Certainly as the world seems to speed up and the pace of life seems to be going ever faster it is nice to arrive at this time of year and recount all of our blessings.

Here at J&P, we have a whole lot to be thankful for.  Our large… Continue Reading

In a classic TV episode of Cheers, the bar is losing money and, in an effort to raise some cash, the tavern hosts a raffle with an ocean cruise as the prize. When the lovable, albeit simple minded Woody draws the winner from the tumbler, he announces cheerfully, “And the winner of the Cheers all-expense trip to the Caribbean is —No. 99!” The winner jumps up in amazement as the crowd cheers, steel drums begin pounding and the celebration gets underway. Meanwhile, in the background, Sam asks his smiling bartender, “Say, Woody, when you turn this 99 upside down it kinda looks like a 66, doesn’t it.”  Woody looks closely… Continue Reading

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you may have read recent announcements about the new Vance & Hines and Kuryakyn parts pages on JPcycles.com. Since we often hear that you use our website to research brands — not just an individual part or a number of parts for a bike project — we’ve set out to redefine how you learn about brands via our website.

Brand pages on JPcycles.com allow for quick navigation to top products, products by make (e.g., Harley-Davidson, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, etc.), and products by style. Since each page is built specifically with just one… Continue Reading

The connection between motorcyclists and the Armed Forces has always been strong for motorcycle riders — and in particular, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The American military started using motorcycles for transportation back in 1913, and three years later, Harley-Davidson motorcycles became a sought-after vehicle by top brass for use in military operations.  In fact, by the beginning of World War I, a third of the Harley-Davidson motorcycles produced were earmarked for military use.  So it comes as no surprise that admiration for this powerful, two-wheeled vehicle continues for those who served in the military.

This bond continues today and is one reason why we at J&P Cycles join the… Continue Reading

You’ve got questions about what motorcycle parts best fit your bike, or how one part performs over another.  Where do you turn for such information? Or maybe you’re planning a trip and looking for a great route through a state you’ve never been to. Where do you find that information? A lot of us turn to our friends or the local motorcycle shop. Or we take advantage of the online forum, a valuable source of information used on a daily basis by thousands of motorcycle riders.

Online forums and message boards have been around for years, and J&P Cycles boasts one of the oldest… Continue Reading