saturday

Happy Holidays!!

Monkey Boy is wearing his festive green diaper, boots and a hat.

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Santa is wearing boots and a hat.

tuesday

BUB Revisited

I have just been informed by my good* friend Comet that the BUB 'liner's shape is patterned after the Coho salmon which, as I'm sure you guessed, is named after me. Cool Beans!

In a related vein, the "BUB" in BUBRacing is "Big Ugly Bastard," a nickname worn (proudly) for many years by BUB owner and racing guru Denis Manning.

Your daily dose of name etymology.

Free of charge.

*By "good", I mean we're friends. He is actually pure unfiltered evil.

sunday

Seattle International Motorcycle Show 2006

Part The Second

The Tallest Rideable Motorcycle In The World (not at the show)

Pictured here with builder Gregory Dunham of California. I did not take this picture, but I wanted to show how much bigger it is than...

BigToe - Previously The Tallest Rideable Motorcycle In The World (at the show)

SmallToe - The Smallest Rideable Motorcycle In The World

(at the show)

Pictured here with builder Tom Wiburg of Hökerum, Sweden (also responsible for BigToe, both bikes are owned by CTEK batteries of Sweden). I did not take this picture except in that I "took" it from the Guinness website. The picture I did take was incredibly blurry because people kept whacking into me and I gave up on a good picture figuring that something which is a World Record anything has probably already had its picture taken at some point.

Ooo! Shiny!

Is it just me, or is adding pounds and pounds of chrome to a sportbike kinda counter to the whole sportbike "lighter, faster, lighter, faster" thing?

Way, Way Shinier!

I'm not normally a chopper guy, but I appreciate the skill and massive amount of work involved in creating something like this. That single-sided swingarm front end is exceedingly cool. A remarkable bike, even if it probably corners about as well as the BUB 'liner.

It Goes All The Way Around, Too!

It does it excruciatingly slowly, though, if it hadn't been for a passing herd of Hooters Girls I'd never have had the patience to wait for the engine-mounted gopher fork to come around.

Gopher Fork?

Anything you miss with that skinny front wheel is gonna stick on these for sure. I wonder if they're difficult to keep sharp?

Still To Come: Vintage Dirt and Street, The Bike I Want Next, The Scooter(!?!) I Want and Gerald "Meets" Nicky the Kid.

monday

Seattle International Motorcycle Show 2006

I must start with the BUB streamliner. Because it was right inside the door we came in through. And because it's the fastest motorcycle in the world. If you can't make out the numbers on the nose it says 350.884mph, on 5 September 2006. That's so much faster than just ordinary fast that ordinary fast really has no business calling itself fast at all. Probably doesn't corner for shit, though.

V4, of course.

Yes, all sporting motorcycles are required to be really, really uncomfortable. That is a very tiny cockpit (pilot-hole). That kid couldn't have been more than eight and it didn't look like even he could get in there.

All around the BUB 'liner were the prized possessions of local riders. These are the ones that really caught my eye. The Indian 3wheeler is a reproduction, but it has the added nifty factor of being electric so it's still about half as cool as the real thing would have been. If it was just a copy...meh.

That's all I've got for tonight. I'm tired.

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Coming Soon: More Cool Vintage Stuff, The Bike I Want Next, Choppers!Choppers!Choppers! and more.