FARGO
Few motorcyclists can say their highway cruising speed is less than their age.
Not that George Ulseth and Madelene Knutson pay much attention to how old they are.
The two - who will say only that they're in the late 80s - enjoy riding on George's Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
George drives, and Madelene sits in the attached sidecar.
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"I feel like I'm a bird in a nest," Knutson said of the sidecar.
Ulseth is a Fargo-Moorhead accountant and attorney.
He earned a number of medals serving his country in World War II. He came ashore on Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Madelene lives in Fargo and has a busy social life.
"She's a real spiffy lady. She enjoys living," said Eilene Sweet-Seitz, Madelene's neighbor.
Ulseth and Knutson became friends about five years ago. Some of her relatives by chance met Ulseth at a restaurant and suggested he and Knutson get acquainted.
Ulseth has long enjoyed motorcycles and hoped to get Knutson interested in them, too.
But Knutson didn't want to ride on the back seat behind him. So last summer he bought his Harley Ultra Classic. It came with the sidecar in which he hoped Knutson would ride.
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Knutson was reluctant at first to try the sidecar. "I told him, 'I don't think I want anything to do with that,'" she said.
But Ulseth encouraged her to give it a shot.
"I thought it was something she would enjoy," he said. "He told me, 'If you try it and don't like it, that's OK. But just try,'" Knutson said.
She tried it - and loved it.
"You see so much more from a motorcycle than you can from a car. Everything is so much more colorful," she said.
Ulseth said the two often drive to Minnesota lake country.
On a recent evening, for the benefit of visitors, Ulseth drove his Harley, with Knutson in the sidecar, across the parking lot of Knutson's Fargo apartment building.
Soft jazz played on the Harley's sound system.
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Knutson was smiling when Ulseth pulled the cycle into a parking space. "This really is so much fun," she said.
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are Forum Communications Co. newspapers.
