1934 Belgian La Mondiale using (a 500cc JAP motor). Belgian King Albert The first is on the left.Pict Via: Autogallery
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
King Albert.
1934 Belgian La Mondiale using (a 500cc JAP motor). Belgian King Albert The first is on the left.Pict Via: Autogallery
Magic man.
Canadian magician Doug Henning modernized performing traditions with his bushy moustache and flamboyant costumes. Most famous for his escapist tricks, Henning was one of the most successful magical entertainers. Here Henning sits on a motorcycle during a magic act in 1977. Via: ABC News
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
this looks like a job for...
(link)
Moonlight Mask, was aired on Nippon Television from January 10, 1972 to October 2, 1972, with a total of 39 episodes (divided into three segments). The show also became very popular in Latin America under the title El Capitán Centella ("Captain Flash").Moonlight Mask-"The lover of justice"
Gallery: The Life Photo Archive.
Photographer: Loomis Dean
Photographer: Ralph Crane
Photographer: Peter Stackpole
Photographer: Walter Sanders 
Photographer: Loomis Dean 
Coming Attractions: Sayonara Speed Tribes.
The extended version of the trailer for "Sayonara Speed Tribes" (link)
See Also: Damn Kids-The Bōsōzoku
Genius at work: The Hough Cycle Works 71
Via: British car forum
"The HoughMade Cycle Works 71. Not a strict replica, it is an homage' to the motorcycles of the pre-WWI era.
The frame is from a '90s vintage Huffy cruiser. The front fork is a reproduction Schwinn style springer. Hough fabricated "leaf springs" for the look, but their only function is as fenders. The wheels are from Husky- very heavy duty with thick steel and 11 ga spokes. It has a high quality coaster brake, but it also has calipers front and rear which is what is generally use for braking. The tires are all-white vintage style from Kenda.
The tank is fabricated from fiberglass. Under the cover (and bonded to it) is a 1/2 gallon steel tank that can be bought from bicycle-engine vendors. The seat and headlight are from eBay. The seat is a vintage long-spring frame that was padded with modern foam and covered with goat skin. The headlight was a small railroad lantern. It throws light like a flashlight, bur will not be ridden at night. Also mounted in the headlight is the speedometer with a custom face.
The bought an engine mounting plate, gearbox and other specialized hardware from a vendor who sold (past-tense) such things. The engine is a brand new Honda GXH50 (49.4cc) with 2.5hp and custom-made side plates to pretty up the mounting plate and smoothed the grain off the plastic engine housing to mimic metal. "
James May's rain of terror.
By James May Via: Top Gear
"From where I’ve been sitting, which is on a motorcycle, it really is hard to believe that there are parts of the world where water is a bit short. There’s enough in my socks to grow rice for 5,000 people.
It’s enough to make me wonder if those agencies charged with combating global drought and the subsequent famine are missing a trick. Next time some desperate farmer in Africa is struggling to irrigate a field, they should just fly me out with my motorbike. ‘May is here,’ they will cry. ‘As soon as he’s ridden around for a few minutes, it’ll rain like buggery.’
These days, I seem barely able to sit on a bike without being soaked through to the marrow. I can wheel it out of the garage in perfect and stultifying sunshine, but within a couple of miles I seem to have ridden into the Fountains of Rome. For this reason, I now become quite cross with people who advertise second-hand motorcycles as having ‘never been used in the wet’. How can this be possible in Britain? Show me a man who claims to have owned a motorcycle for 10 years and 20,000 miles without once being caught short, and I’ll show you either a card-carrying pork pieist or the long-awaited replacement for Michael Fish. Of the last five motorcycles I’ve owned, four of them have been ‘used in the wet’ on the way home from the showroom.
There are two things I want to say about this. The first is that, in the old days, I used to like a ride in the wet, especially once the rain had stopped actually falling. Wet-road riding requires a particular and stimulating set of skills: smoothness, anticipation, avoidance of potential treachery from manhole covers and the white bits of zebra crossings. The world smells great after a good dousing, and, providing you dry it off afterwards, a rinse is actually quite good for the bike. At least it gets rid of that difficult baked-on crud at the front of the crankcase.
However, I’m now getting on a bit, and I’m ready to admit to being a fair-weather motorcyclist. Riding in the rain means wearing waterproof clothing, and since I find it hard enough to summon the energy to put normal clothes on, I really can’t be bothered. Also because I’m ageing fast, I find I always need a wee-wee as soon as I’ve done up the last zip or press stud, and that the bike key is still in the pocket of my normal trousers underneath."'Waterproof motorcycle clothing’ seems to be one of the world’s great oxymorons"James May-in dry form
Consider this. My current set of protective waterproofs requires that they be zipped together once on, around the waist, and in order to achieve this I have to adopt the stance of one inviting a swift mounting from a bull. It’s worse than watching a woman do the ‘tights dance’. Then there are boots and gloves and inner gloves and a balaclava thing, and the whole business can put your back out. In the time it takes me to put this lot on, I could be 100 miles away in the Fiat Panda. I can barely move dressed as a middle-aged mutant ninja turtle, so how I’m supposed to operate the sensitive levers of a big-bore bike I don’t know.
And the second thing I want to say is this. ‘Waterproof motorcycle clothing’ seems to be one of the world’s great oxymorons. It doesn’t matter how thoroughly I do everything up, water comes in somewhere. It only needs to be a trickle down the neck or up a sleeve, but after an hour that’s a bath. Arriving anywhere soaking wet is bad enough, because then the sofa/office chair/doctor’s waiting room becomes wet as well. It’s even worse an hour or so later, because you start to smell like a damp dog.
Motorcycling is a hobby, not away of life or an assertion of my masculinity. People who ride around in the pouring rain imagining that it makes them more of a man should go and live in a windowless bothy.
Things are either waterproof or they’re not, and now I think about it, hardly anything is. Watchmakers seem to have cracked it, but why the hell does a mobile phone pack up as soon as it’s used near someone wearing a slightly moist sweater? Same with digital cameras, laptops, and anything made in Italy involving wires. Put these in a ‘waterproof motorcycling rucksack’, and the problem is simply compounded. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s all a plot. Waterproofing is still in its infancy, so the idea that a man can be kept dry in a 70mph driving headlong squall is ridiculous.
Strangely, confirmation of my fears comes from no less an authority than the Australian army. They wear that type of cowled overcoat known as a Drizabone. Apparently, it’s also known as the Wetzabastard."
The hands-on woman.
Bobby Trout, prominent aviatrix goes a-traveling on her motorcycle in Los Angeles. Pict via Corbis
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Choi Minsoo's steampunk hybrid motorcycle.
Via: AutoMotto
"Designer Choi Minsoo’s steampunk motorcycle is designed to be speedy and slim. The handmade motorcycle follows the philosophy of the use of simple machinery. The hybrid motorcycle is powered by gasoline and electricity, and the big box on the frame holds the batteries."
A very special alloy: Chogokin.
Wiki:"Chogokin - Sometimes Chougokin or Cho-gokin - (超合金) is Japanese for "super Alloy" and is a fictitious material adopted by the Popy Toy company in 1972 as the name of a new line of die-cast metal robot and character toys sold in Japan and ignited a craze that changed the face of the Japanese toy industry in the 1970s. Bandai - the parent company of Popy Toy - continues the Chogokin line to this day, branded under their own name."
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