Tell us about your ride: PA pipefitter piles on the miles

WEIRS BEACH — At 22, Jake Cook hasn’t had as much time to rack up the miles as some other Motorcycle Week attendees, but he’s doing his best to catch up.

Cook, a union pipefitter from Halifax, Pennsylvania, rides a 2018 Harley-Davidson Streetglide Special, which he purchased two years ago with 2,000 miles on it. “I just liked it,” he said.

He has since put 16,000 more on the clock, including a big chunk in one day. Cook completed the unofficial “1K in a day” challenge, riding from Florida to Maine – a distance of 1,200 miles – all in a day. And he chose to do it in March, when temperatures were below freezing.

“It sucked,” a succinct Cook said when asked what the experience was like. He said he did it after being goaded on by a friend, and that he only did it for bragging rights. “That’s about it,” he said.

As Cook’s odometer testifies, he spends a lot of time with the throttle in his hand. And those are all pleasure rides, since he uses a pickup truck to get to his job sites.

This is Cook’s first time at Laconia Motorcycle Week, and he and his friends rode the 500 miles to Weirs Beach – all in the rain. His first impressions of Laconia Motorcycle Week were measured. “It’s alright,” he said, adding that he wished there were a more varied mix of vendors. Cook and his crew were planning to spend the rainy weather on Monday and Tuesday “bar hopping,” and hoping that fairer weather was on the way so they could ride to Mount Washington, into Maine, and to Portsmouth.

Cook’s Streetglide isn’t stock, but as all of the modifications were made by its previous owner, he couldn’t say exactly how it has been tweaked. “It’s a mystery,” he said.