A hundred years ago, as America was just beginning its love affair with the automobile, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson thought they had a better idea. It was to mount a specially designed internal combustion engine onto a bicycle, allowing travelers to avoid the cost of buying a new four-wheeled machine by adapting the two-wheeler they already owned. Their prototype proved unequal to even the modest hills around the city, requiring the rider to resort to old-fashioned peddling; but by 1903, the two men had redesigned the frame and beefed up the engine to produce the country’s first Harley-Davidson and one of the most enduring icons of the motor age.
To its millions of enthusiasts, a Harley represents freedom, self-reliance and a rejection of the herd mentality of fashionable trends. A Harley is a sleek, no-nonsense statement of life’s essentials.
Wiley Pryce of Hendersonville would certainly agree, but being a Cairn Terrier presents certain difficulties of expression. Even so, Wiley has his own way of showing the world his devotion to the Harley ethic thanks to his human companion Chuck Pryce, who has thoughtfully provided Wiley with a sidecar attached to Chuck’s machine. It provides Wiley, wearing his own set of goggles, the perfect soapbox for proclaiming his motorcycle love.
“Wiley has always liked motorcycles,” Chuck says. “If he’s riding in a car and a bike passes, he’ll stand up on his back legs and watch the bike until it’s gone by. We’re not sure if if it’s the sound of the bike, or the lights.” Chuck’s Harley isn’t Wiley’s first motorcycle. That was Chuck’s Honda XR650, to which Chuck attached a box to the bike’s rear rack for a younger, smaller Wiley. But an adult Cairn Terrier can reach 17 pounds, and Wiley—who will turn six this winter—soon outgrew the box. When Chuck traded in the Honda for a Harley, the sidecar was found at a dealership in Virginia. “This is my and the dog’s first sidecar,” Chucks says. “I like it. He loves it.”
Although Wiley’s preferred transportation is the bike, Chuck and his wife Susan travel en famille in a vintage Volkswagen convertible. “Wiley used to run straight for the VW for a ride, but now he runs to the sidecar,” Chuck says. “I have a strap that hooks onto his harness, and he’ll wear his ‘doggles’ as long as we’re moving. But if we stop, he tries to take them off.” Even non-bikers can tell how devoted Wiley is to his Harley. “One day a woman pulled up next to us and rolled down her window,” Chuck recalls. “She said ‘I don’t believe you could slap the grin off of that dog’s face.’ I think she was right. Wiley likes to ride as much as I do.”
No doubt Wiley learned his motorcycle love from Chuck, who says he’s never met a bike he didn’t like. “My Dad had motorcycles, and my brother and I learned to ride from him. I’ve had several Harleys, but a lot of other bikes as well.” Besides the motorcycle mystique, there are practical reasons for owning one, too, since motorcycles were energy efficient long before anyone was worrying about dwindling oil reserves or rising gasoline prices. “The Harley gets 45 miles to the gallon,” Chuck says. “We can go 220 miles on a tank.” The longest trip Chuck and Wiley have taken on the bike was 150 miles, using barely a tankful. “We get all kinds of comments from people when they see Wiley in the bike. Mostly they just laugh and shake their heads,” Chuck says.
But why the surprise at a biker dog? The one common bond that unites bikers is their diversity. Any sampling of even a small biker population will include doctors, mechanics, lawyers, artists, merchants and CEOs—a two-wheeled rainbow coalition that’s long outgrown the Hell’s Angels stereotype, and a ridership that’s become active in charity events and fundraisers for a variety of causes. “There are lots of professionals that are riders that are good for the image of motorcycles,” Chuck says.
And then, of course, there’s Wiley.