Want to ride with the desert wind? Ride into Desert Wind Harley Davidson®.
Owner Ray Croghan’s full-service Mesa dealership, 922 South Country Club Drive, is dedicated to America’s great motorcycle nameplate.
“We proudly offer new and used Harley-Davidson motorcycles,” says Croghan, a native Nebraskan, principal of Croghan Investments and Phoenix-area resident for more than 20 years. “We do not sell any other brand.”
The dealership has in inventory or can order all of the models: Street®, Sportster®, Dyna®, Softail®, V-Rod®, Touring, S Series, CVO™ and the Trike.
His other dealership, Loess Hills Harley-Davidson®, is near Omaha, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs, Iowa, 57408 190th Street in Pacific Junction, Iowa. It, too, is Harley and only Harley.
Desert Wind Harley-Davidson® also offers clothing, accessories, motorcycle parts, financing and service. If you want parts to customize your Harley, the Desert Wind Harley-Davidson® staff can set up an appointment or you can just stop in. In addition, Croghan and staff host numerous concerts and charity and nonprofit events.
“Our customers are interested in anything that is branded Harley-Davidson,” says Croghan, who previously partnered with Chesters at the Mesa location before he assumed ownership a year and a half ago. “This represents their lifestyle, not just their chosen means of transportation. And here at Desert Wind, we will help you find what you need to fully express the rider in you.”
His finance and investments manager at Desert Wind Harley-Davidson® is Bill Wallace, whom Highline Autos readers will recall from his collision-repair and restaurant businesses. “He applied and emerged as the winning candidate from amongst dozens of applicants,” Croghan says.
Ray’s love for riding began early. “My uncle was a very early Honda motorcycle dealer,” he recalls. “I worked for him in his Mobil gas station, which was where he sold the motorcycles. In my pre-teen years, he would lend motorcycles to me. That is how I learned to ride and to love riding. I have been doing both for more than 50 years.”
That includes five continents –– North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Australia –– and, he says, jokingly, two planets: Earth and Sturgis.
Held August 4 through 13 this year, that other heavenly body for cyclists is the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. Begun in 1938 by the Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club, Croghan says, it now is an almost required pilgrimage for avid motorcyclists. He has made the journey cross country a wheel-spinning 17 times.
“It is the best combination of people-watching and motorcycle-watching in the world,” he says. “The camaraderie amongst riders from all over the world is an awesome experience. The burgers and the beers are pretty special as well.”
For him, motorcycles are a natural force, the call of the wind to him and fellow enthusiasts. Desert Wind Harley-Davidson® is about riding and riders. “We are so fortunate to be able to ride out into the desert, stripped of the noise and pretense that burdens society,” he says. “Here a person can sense a freedom that is not given but comes from within.”
He and his wife Deb are inspired by Native American Southwest traditions, which has generated the Desert Wind Harley Davidson name and logo and, most importantly, their service vision.
Many of these indigenous peoples considered the wind a sacred spirit messenger who communicates a language understandable ––– only to those able to hear it. Croghan calls this transformative force Brother Wind.
The unique individualists who ride hear this and know that their community of brothers and sisters do, too. “Brother Wind whispers and sometimes howls to all of those who are free to hear it, on the plains and across mountains and here in the desert,” Croghan says.
Hear the wind, heed the wind: Desert Wind Harley-Davidson.
Desert Wind Harley-Davidson, 480.894.0404, desertwindhd.com
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