Hey everyone! I’m back from Americade and compiling my post from the weekend. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I found an interesting video clip from Daytona 2008, featuring an interesting trio hanging out together.

If you watch UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) then that scary, yet handsome bald fellow should be no stranger to you: that’s the “Dean of Mean” Keith Jardine, riding his 2008 HD Crossbones. The other guy, who is the comic relief, is BMX-er Michah Kranz. The hot blonde is Jes Rickleff, who was the “winner” (if you can call that winning?) of season one of Rock of Love with Brett Michaels.

It seems like yet another example of Harley-Davidson trying to engage a younger demographic. Hey, it got me to watch!

The 85th anniversary of Laconia Motorcycle Week is coming up on us fast (not to mention that it’s a little late this year-starting on Father’s Day rather than ending on it)! In my neck of the woods it’s a clear sign that summer is finally here and what better way to kick it off than to gather thousands of bikers for the oldest rally in the country, in a sleepy New Hampshire town?

Even though the town itself is small, there’s definitely no shortage of events: ranging from New England-style clam bakes, lots of motorcycle demos, music, The Ride to the Sky up Mt. Washington (which I could devote an entire post to, it’s so amazing!), hill climbs and races, beautiful scenic roads to ride on and of course, lots of vendors.

Rippin-Kitten, Ride to the Sky, June 2007

Last year I was able to attend the rally for almost a week. Unfortunately I won’t have the same luxury this year, but I do plan to go up for at least a day trip. If you live or are going to be visiting a near by area, I suggest you do the same.

I came across this article the other day and my inner sci-fi geek thinks it’s just too cool to not pass along! It’s definitely not a design that will hit mainstream, but it plays to my imagination. If you saw this being demonstrated at a rally, wouldn’t you want to try it out?? -RK

Art Center College of Design shows Yamaha-branded wearable motorcycle concept

Challenged to rethink motorcycle transportation, Art Center College of Design student Jake Loniak decided the idea of a machine as an extension of the body should be taken literally. Inspired by Biomechatronics and called the Deus Ex Machina (not to be confused with that other Deus Ex Machina from Australia), Loniak’s concept is an electric, vertically parking motorcycle controlled by 36 pneumatic muscles with 2 linear actuators.

The Yamaha-branded Deus Ex concept is worn as an exo-skeleton with seven artificial vertebra as well as the pneumatically attached helmet. The motor is in-wheel, powered by ultra-capacitors and doped nano-phoshpate batteries similar to those already used in hybrids. It’s also capable of 0–60mph in three seconds. Top speed is 75mph with a recharge time of 15 minutes and cycle time of one hour.

As an exercise in urban transportation, we love the engagement a machine like the Deus would require. That said, the lack of storage or securement for a briefcase, purse or satchel means that even the average urban commute is beyond the Deus Ex Machina’s current capabilities.

Source: Hell For Leather magazine, written by Grant Ray

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! I know that I sure did, even though they never seem long enough!

Over the weekend, as most of us know, the Rolling Thunder rally was underway with thousands of motorcycles heading toward the Pentagon to honor the fallen. The President was even made an honorary member of the Rolling Thunder motorcycle group.

While this video says it’s 9+ minutes long, it’s really only about five minutes long with a lot of dead space at the end. Despite that it’s put together well and still worth watching all of those that took part in the ride this year.

Back in February I wrote a an honest review about Sara Liberte’s new online venture, GarageGirls.com that garnered some harsh feedback not only from me but from other readers. Sara, herself, responded to the feedback and informed us that the site was fresh out of the box, that she was working hard on adding more content and we should cut her some slack.

It’s now three months later and my curiosity has led me back to check in.

Here’s what I’ve found:

The homepage is now streamlined with digestible information, the footer links work and the content about Sara and Jody are in the appropriate “about us” section.

The Body & Machine sections have a lot more content broken out by monthly updates and reads sort of like a newsletter with info about nutrition, fitness tips and the latest news in circulation. On the Machine side, there’s info about motorcycle maintenance, advice and tips and general motorcycle news/info (with lots of videos sprinkled through to help break up the content). Again, I like how Sara is trying to make the correlation of taking care of your body and also your machine as an extension of your body. My only criticism for this section is that it’s not very obvious what month you’re reading, it’s not clearly labeled (which is more a criticism for the web team).

The Events page shows where you can next see Sara and the Garage Girls (although perhaps calling it something other than “events” might help users understand what they’re going to see when they come to this page), Sites2See is pretty much the same and Cruisin’ companions has some additional photos of fuzzy kind, with a link to donate to her local animal resource center-a topic near and dear to my heart.

While Garage Girls may not be the epicenter of information for women on the web, the site has improved and is forming a distinct personality of it’s own. Bravo to Sara for being tenacious in building her site up and showing us what she’s made of. I look forward to seeing where it is in another few months.

We finally got a NICE weekend here in New England for a change (it’s been raining for about the past EIGHT!). Despite the best efforts of the meteorologists to tell me that it was going to rain they were thankfully proven wrong.

It was nice to spend some good, quality time with my metal-baby, giving it a good detailing since I busted it out of winter slumber. I know that everyone has a different method to their madness when it comes to cleaning their bikes, but I still swear by my own method (which I wrote about in detail last year). There’s such a great amount of gratification to see all of that chrome glistening in the sun after you spend time cleaning it up (here’s the pictorial from last year so you can see the difference!).

Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial Statue

Yesterday we (along with everyone else and their motorcycles) went for a nice, relaxing ride up the coast to Gloucester. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect (although there were those few jackasses that you see riding around in short sleeved shirts, shorts and sandals…*sigh*). We stopped off for lunch: embarking on the the first of the summer seafood season that is paramount in this region, and soaked in some afternoon sun before heading back home.

This drawing was done by Norweigan artist, Eivind Josefsen. His website hosts many of his pencil drawings, videos and if you think you have the chops to become an artist, there are also some tips & tutorials.

This video was done in February 2008 and took 15 hours to complete. But you get to watch it all happen in just two minutes!

As I sit here and procrastinate in doing my actual work, I decided since I just celebrated my one-year blogoversary I thought it would be cool to look back on the past year and highlight ten of my favorite posts.

10. If she can do it, I can do it
This was one of the first posts I wrote that tackled my internal struggles of “women only”-type things. My favorite quote (still to this day) is a quote from the Suzuki spokesperson who said “we think [what] we know is that women motorcyclists don’t want to be called women motorcyclists. They just want to be motorcyclists. They don’t want a women’s motorcycle.”

9. I’m richer. Well, my motorcycle is anyway.
Last summer I made a lot of modifications to my bike-mainly because I was having airflow issues. Of course it’s a slippery slope when you start doing mods because once you alter one thing a chain reaction of other things needs to happen. But this post details one of my first adventures of tearing my bike down, drilling out the carburator and putting it all back together.

8. Video Tuesday: Laconia Bike Week 2007
My photo slideshow from Laconia NH bike week last year. I had such a great time, the highlight was riding all the way up Mt. Washington with all of the other bikers. What a view from the top!

7. “You ride your OWN?” (and other famous quotes)
I think the title says it all, some funny ones in there.

6. & 5. Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom Day 1 and Anatomy of the Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom
I’m putting these two posts together because they relate to each other. This was a very fun time from last summer cruising around on this motorcycle.

4. October 14: a day I can’t forget
This post chronicles one of the scariest and most trying times in my life. I truly believe this was fate testing us. I hope we passed.

3. Bikers and tattoos
Two great tastes that taste great together.

2. My first motorcycle love
A fantastic guest post written by Mr. Forrest Frazier.

1. Steampunk motorcycles
Perhaps I’m biased and this is too obvious, but because I love the steampunk movement this is my top pick. Also the most popular post on this site to date.

So now I ask you guys: is there a particular post that you really like from the past year and if so, which one is it and what makes it your favorite?

I’ve been a casual “wrestling entertainment” watcher since I was a kid back in the 80’s. Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Macho Man Randy Savage and Andre the Giant were some of my favorites back then. I had a resurgence of interest earlier in this decade which eventually died out when Steve Austin and The Rock moved on. Even today I occasionally flip over to WWE’s Raw or Smackdown if there’s nothing else on.

I know a ton of wrestlers ride motorcycles, in fact Mr. Jesse James built custom choppers for Shane McMahon (son of evil genius, Vince), the Undertaker and Goldberg (you can check those bikes out at West Coast Choppers website if you want to check them out).

I remember when the Undertaker dropped the “Deadman” schtick for a little while and went into full on Amercian-Badass-biker-dude persona. I liked that Undertaker, sans dyed black hair, so I went looking for some videos of that era. Well, I found 2 great tastes that taste great together: “Hollywood” Hogan (the evil version of Hulk Hogan) destroying the Undertaker’s motorcycle during one of the shows. It’s painful to watch this gorgeous bike get destroyed, but wrestling is ultra-sensationalism at it’s best (or worst, however you see fit to view it).

The initial destruction by Hulk Hogan.

And of course, the reaction from the Undertaker. Don’t you love how he gets so mad that he starts kicking the bike? Like it’s going to make him feel better?

Cute video of a hen-pecked husband’s torrid love and passion for his Harley-Davidson. There’s a lot of soap and inappropriate touching, not to mention the quintessential, sexy soundtrack of “Let’s Get it On” by Mr. Marvin Gaye. But they’re clearly having a moment together. And that’s special.