motociclista

Grandma's Homestead Restaurant in Charm is the Diner Destination in the latest issue of Accelerate online magazine. Not sure who the author of the article is, but he appears to be a scholar, a gentleman, a highly skilled rider and damn good looking, too.

Two motorcycle-related jokes for you. A young guy buys a new ZX-14R and he’s really proud of it. He’s out riding around, enjoying having a more powerful bike than anyone he knows. He’s stopped at a light when an old geezer on an ancient, rusty scooter pulls up beside him. “What kinda motorsickle ya got there, sonny?” asks the old guy. “This is a Ninja ZX-14R,” the young guy replies proudly. “Most powerful production motorcycle you can buy!” “Ya don’t say! Sure is a nice lookin’ motorsickle.” The old guy’s leaning over, checking out the gauge cluster, getting a nice close look at the paint job. Just then, the light turns green so the young guy decides to give the old scooter rider a show and he twists the throttle. Seconds later he’s just barely into second gear and already hitting triple-digit speeds when he looks in his mirror, expecting to see the scooter as a distant speck. Instead, he’s shocked to see something coming up from behind and gaining on him. Before he can even make out what it is, something goes whooshing past him. How could anything accelerate faster than his Ninja? And maybe it was a hallucination, but it looked like the guy on the scooter. But that’s impossible! He hasn’t even had time to make sense of this when he sees something coming straight at him at high speed. A split second before the impact, he sees it’s the old guy on his scooter. The collision is horrific, but the kid manages to get off the road. His Ninja’s fairing is shattered and the front end is mangled, but the scooter is a smoldering pile of scattered parts. He sees the old guy lying in a ditch and staggers over to see if he’s alive. The old guy is breathing, but he doesn’t look good. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” the kid asks the old man. “Yeah. Unhook my suspenders from your mirror.” ...and... A local cop decides to pad his ticket count with an easy catch so he parks outside a roadhouse where there are about 20 motorcycles in the parking lot. From his hidden spot, he watches as one biker staggers out of the bar, looks around and tries to find his bearings and then stumbles over to one of the bikes. He fumbles through all his pockets trying to find the key, and when he does, he drops it and spends a full minute on his hands and knees in the unlit dirt parking lot before he finds it. He almost falls over trying to get a leg over the bike, but he finally gets it started and wobbles onto the highway. Before he’s half a mile down the road, the cop has him pulled over. As the cop walks up to the biker, he hears 19 motorcycles fire up and head down the highway in the opposite direction. “Sir, have you been drinking?” the cop asks. “No sir,” the biker replies. “I’m in AA. Been sober for ten years.” The cop shines his flashlight in the biker’s eyes and they’re clear and alert. No slurring of words. No smell of alcohol at all. The cop realizes the biker is sober. “But I saw you stagger out of the bar,” said the cop. “What are you, some kind of joker?” “No sir,” said the biker. “I’m the decoy.”

Looks like we're moving in January and I'll be putting our house on the market next year. Anybody want to buy a nice big family home on 2.4 acres near good riding like Routes 520, 60, 541, etc? Two-car garage, or, in our case, a one-car, three-motorcycle garage. On the slight chance that there's anyone on here who's interested, here's a link to some photos and information: http://www.ivonnemgarcia.com/house It's not officially on the market yet, so I can offer special discount pricing to OR.net members and I'll even throw in the Rossi and DuHamel posters on the garage wall at no extra charge.

Panigalis, ZX-10s, S1000Rs, Harleys... You guys go for all the predictable choices. Me, I'm torn between the Honda Express moped: Or the jet-powered Suzuki:

Before you get too excited, make sure that $605 refers to December and not the past 30 days, which would include a big part of your November earnings. The way my Adsense account works is that it gives me the last 30 days, not the calendar month. But I use Adsense differently, so I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong and the $605 is December only.

Happened to me once, about 12 or so years ago. I was only 10 miles from home, but it was 10 miles of heavy stop and go city traffic. Tow truck.

My pleasure, Greg. (It better be pleasure, 'cause no one gets rich writing motorcycle books. But it is fun.) Thanks for being my best customer!

Generalities: 2 cheap bikes > 1 expensive bike (if one needs work, you don't care, you just ride the other one) sportbike + cruiser > 2 sportbikes (or 2 cruisers, etc. -- allows diversity of riding) sportbike + dual sport > almost any other 2-bike combo (aforementioned diversity, no overlap in function) Specifics: None of the above matters one bit if you love the VTX and won't miss the other two. If it were me, I'd sell the VTX and keep the Superchicken and the XR, but you're not me. Good luck.

Actually, the offer's good anytime through the end of the year. Here's the deal: some of you probably need a holiday gift for someone who rides and I need to move some books. So I'm offering a signed copy of my book, The Ride So Far, Tales from a Motorcycling Life, to anyone on the forum for $20. That price includes Ohio sales tax AND shipping. Books can be personally signed to the recipient, if it's a gift. If you want to pay by Paypal or check, PM me here. If you want to pay by credit card, go to http://www.theridesofar.com and use the regular checkout process, mention OR.net, and I'll rebate the difference. FAQs about this offer: What's in the book? See an expanded table of contents here: http://www.theridesofar.com/contents.html Is it any good? See excerpts of reviews here: http://www.theridesofar.com/feedback.html or see what jagr says: http://www.ohioriders.net/showpost.php?p=748113&postcount=12 Do you even know how to write? Decide for yourself by reading a sample chapter: http://www.theridesofar.com/sample.html

I hate glib statements like that. Have you ever called your financial advisor when the market was up 20% and heard him say, "Well, if you don't sell, you haven't made any money"?

Wednesday will be ugly. You heard it here first.

Considering KTM only plans to make 100 of them, I don't think they're a threat to anyone. Yet.

That's why I never drive a car. Them things are dangerous. I'll stick to my nice safe motorcycle. Nobody ever breaks into the door of my motorcycle.

Glad you were able to resolve it. The law was on your side anyway. But this is an example of why, as an extra precaution, I always put "sold in 'as-is' condition" on the bill of sale. The buyer has a signed and notarized copy, I have a signed and notarized copy, so there's no way anyone can state otherwise afterwards. Just an extra step to take, for others who may be selling in the future.

Same caption as all of them: "Hey y'all, watch this! Someone hold my beer."

That didn't "break the deal." H-D approved it (finally). Buell couldn't do anything without H-D's approval. What broke the deal was new H-D leadership that reversed direction. Shutting down Buell and selling off MV Agusta, which had just been bought. "Focusing on core competencies," as the MBA types like to say, or dancing with the partner that brung ya, as others might put it: either way, focusing on the traditional H-D formula. In the intermediate term, that appraoch, along with the recession scaring the unions into concessions, has brought H-D back to profitability. Long-term is another story, because those traditional H-D buyers are dying off in the U.S. That's why overseas sales are so important. They pick up the slack. So to get back to the original point, H-D has to protect international sales.

I thought that's where he found this one.

Talkin' about this. You know, official OR.net and Assfault Junkies competition 'n' stuff.

For my highly biased and totally unobjective opinion, please click on the link in my signature below. (It's about 2/3 touring oriented stories.)

What racer crossing the finish line in first place hasn’t earned at least a fist pump? What wide receiver doesn’t deserve a spike of the ball in the end zone? So: yay me! I won the Ohio Armchair Racers fantasy racing league, the Riders and the Junkies, competing in MotoGP, WSBK and BSB. It was a narrow three-point victory that would have been more if I hadn’t finished the season with a dead guy on my team (no disrespect to Super Sic; we miss you already Marco) and another rider in the gravel trap on turn one of lap one at Valencia. On the other hand, since only about five people in the end seemed to be really participating actively, it’s not the most incredible of victories. Hmm, you don’t suppose I won because nobody else really cared? Nah, couldn’t be that. Had to be my expert knowledge of racing. Actually I made a few rookie strategy mistakes this year, my first year in the game. I’ll know better from now on, so look out next year guys.

By popular demand (well, jnor suggested it, and he must be popular, right?) here are my photos and story from Vintage Motorcycle Days this summer. Yeah, I know it's a little late, but it was just now published.

So true. So sad, but so true. It's a creeping contagion, kind of like genital herpes or asian carp in the Great Lakes or insolvencies among European banks foolish enough to buy Greek government bonds. It's a plague that cannot be stopped.

You mean you're not going to go for one million on the FJR?

No major repairs. Rebuilt the front brake master cylinder. Replaced a broken speedo cable and a broken gear shift mechanism. Other than that, just maintenance. Lots of tires. It has a couple of intermittent electrical gremlins I haven't been able to figure out, and that's the only thing that keeps me from feeling it's totally reliable today. @joey614: It's a 1997 that I bought used in 1998 with 6,000 miles on it.

Sweet. One of the short list of bikes I've come very close to buying in the past and always wonder what if... But there aren't enough riding hours, garage spots and spending dollars to have all the great ones. Enjoy.