One of the problems of riding motorcycles is that our minds tend to wander, and our free spirits become imprisoned by a stiff and tired body. At least, that's what Kathy Lee Kappmeier says anyways.
Kathy Lee is the founder of YogaWell, a Yoga class based in San Diego, CA, where she and some of her biker friends find new ways to strike Yoga exercises on their motorcycles.
In fact, Kathy Lee goes on to describe herself as a "goddess of Biker Yoga", having grown up with yoga and motorcycles, and finding the thunder of a v-twin engine as a "healing mantra". She does Iron Butt rides on her Indian Scout, and likes to get in some spiritual healing at gas stops.
Kathy Lee has produced a Biker Yoga Goddess Calendar containing photos of her two-wheeling female yoga friends demonstrating classic Yoga poses with their bikes. She also has a smaller refrigerator magnet version.
In addition, the Yoga Biker Goddess herself is working a book that will feature "real bikers" and how they benefit from the art and therapy of yoga.
If you think the art of Yoga is something you'd like to mix into your motorcycling passion, you can follow Kathy Lee's writings from her MySpace site... http://myspace.com/bikeryogalady
It's official now, the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed this massive motorcycle as the world's heaviest.
This beast was built in Zilly, Germany by Harzer Bike Schmiede, and dubbed, "Led Zeppelin".
It weighs just over 4 1/2 tons, and measures 17 feet, 4 inches long, and 7 feet, 6 inches tall. The engine alone weighs 1.8 tons, and comes from an old Russian tank.
The motorcycle is the design of Tilo Nieber, who has applied for a license to drive the thing down German roads.
Instead of designing this as a trike (to keep it upright), they cleverly added a sidecar to preserve its status as a motorcycle
The Wide Open Bike Show in Kansas City, MO, running January 12-13, is advertising, "Free Breast Augmentation", as this billboard illustrates.
It's actually a raffle.
The show's organizer, Wide Open Magazine, thought it would be a great way to get more women into a bike show, and what else could make a bike show better than to have more women, right?
Well, this might attract a bunch of flat-chested women. But women, nonetheless.
Just to reassure the women who register for the augmentation, the plastic surgeon herself will be at the bike show. According to the rules, men are not allowed to register for the boob job.
A biker crashed his motorcycle yesterday in New Orleans, LA, while carrying a rattlesnake.
He had the snake strapped down on the back, when somehow, the snake appeared to have gotten loose, and the biker lost his concentration...
Police accident investigators don't know how, when or where the cyclist had gotten the rattlesnake, and where he was taking it or why. But they said they believed the presence of the snake and the possibility that the driver was trying to keep it from falling off the bike while heading into a right-hand bend in the eastern New Orleans road caused the accident.
And no he wasn't riding a Harley; he was riding a BMW.
A witness following behind the rider, saw the snake dangling behind the motorcycle, and the rider himself twisted backward trying to tend to the loose serpent. The rider was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
A swedish-based paper company called Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget, has an incontenence product called, "Tena for Men", and they're marketing it to bikers.
The following advertisement, in French, was found on another biker blog, "Bikes in the Fast Lane"...
I suppose the correlation makes sense. Both riding motorcycles and wearing pee-pee pads are all about freedom.
The Plate Flipper is a device that hooks to the license plate of your motorcycle, allowing it to flip down, and reveal a special message for the guy behind you.
Perfect for folks who ride congested roads and need to send out a "friendly reminder" to the cage behind them. You actually create any message you want.
I think what's needed is a programmable LED version, where at the push of a button you can display different messages.
I imagine it can also be used avoid paying tolls on toll roads, allowing you to evade the cameras.
Engineers in Japan were able to make music from one of their roads by virtue of vehicle tires rolling over different sets of grooves.
The musical notes you see on the road are simply warnings that just up ahead you'll start to hear music from your tires. The music is made from a series of grooves cut perpendicular to the road. Different pitches are created by cutting the gooves closer or further apart.
The result is a cacophony of tires humming. Apparently, 28mph is the ideal speed to hear for a musical interlude.
This is NOT a snow globe. It's an honest-to-God bike cover to keep your bike clean, but one that showcases it to keep your vanity intact.
I don't know if this is a new product, or old, but I just about choked on my morning phlegm when I saw it.
The name "Harley Bubble" is so appropriate because many Harley owners live in a bubble themselves, believing that no other brand is deserving of their attention.
You can also place a couple of flash lights inside this thing, and set out on your front lawn as a Christmas ornament.
A Dutch company, PAL-V, says it's only two years away from making available to consumers of what they describe as a "flying motorcycle".
It's actually more like a trike with built-in helicopter.
Dubbed, "Gyrocopter", it's hoped it will solve traffic jams by allowing owners to lift up into the air, and over the cars.
It might work if the Gyrocopter was so expensive that only a few could afford them. Otherwise, if everyone could afford one, there'd be traffic jams in the air, and the roads would be wide open.
Here's the irony of all this...
Governments could already allow many people to avoid traffic jams if they made motorcycle lane-splitting legal.
Yet, here's a company that wants the average Joe to fly Gyrocopters above traffic? Is this more safe than allowing motorcycles to lane-split?
Here's a full-sized Harley Davidson made out of scraps of plywood.
Colin Webb, of Somerset, UK, says he works at a recycling plant where tons of pieces of scrap plywood gets thrown into a landfill, and figured he could make something them. So he built himself a motorcycle.
The green machine - with moving parts - took Colin 900 hours to make from old pieces of board.
The 100kg bike is made of 82 sq ft of wood, five litres of glue and four litres of varnish.
Webb says he had no plans or drawings, it was all done in his head "with maths".
A biker from the Czech Republic woke up from a racing accident speaking fluent English, a language he had never spoken before.
Matej Kus, who rides for a racing team in Prague, was knocked out cold when a competitor ran over his head riding for the Berwick Bandits in Glasgow.
After regaining consiousness, he asked paramedics what happened in English, and speaking without any accent. For about 48 hours following his accident, he lost all memory of who he was. But as soon as he regained his memory, he lost his ability to speak English.
He apparently suffered from an extremely rare case of "Foreign Accent Syndrome", which is caused by trauma to a part of the brain that controls speech.
You reach your girlfriend's house, and get off of your motorcycle. Then you pull off your prosthetic hand, and leave it gripped to the handlebar, while you go inside to do the "dirty".
And when you come back to your bike two hours later, someone stole your hand!
It happened again yesterday, to a teenager in the UK. Jack Baker tried asking other people if they saw his hand somewhere, but there wasn't anyone around...
"I went for a look around, but I couldn't see my hand anywhere. There were no kids about and no one to ask if they had seen it. I ended up jumping on my bike and going home."
Jack had a specially made motorcycle designed to work with his prosthetic hand. And the hand itself cost 450 pounds (US $903.00). But you see, NO ONE in the UK ever steals prosthetic hands, not even ones that cost $903.00! Or at least, they're not supposed to.
Here's a cool gadget for the gadget-biker in your life...
A Three-Port USB Hub that looks and sounds like a real Motorcycle Engine!
You plug this thing into your computer, and it offers up to three USB ports to plug into other peripherals.
Then you hit the kick-start lever on this thing, and it turns over like a real engine, rumbles, and makes sounds. It also comes with a shift-lever that lets you shift into higher gears and hear the engine change noise.
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- A Japanese biker failed to notice his leg had been severed below the knee when he hit a safety barrier, and rode on for 2 km (1.2 miles), leaving a friend to pick up the missing limb.
The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, on Monday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into the central barrier, the Mainichi Shimbun said.
He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.
The man and his leg were taken to hospital, but the limb had been crushed in the collision, the paper said.
A guy in Florida just paid $70,000 for the Harley-Davidson Fat Boy ridden by (or more appropriately, sat on) by John Travolta in the movie, "Wild Hogs"...
The RUB who bought the bike, Barry Stem, realized that he can't ride a motorcycle without a leather jacket. So, he ponied up an extra $15,000 to get Travolta's jacket.
Said Stem...
"I drive a bike and I thought the movie was a riot."
An article from United Press International says that riding a motorcycle while naked is not illegal in Sweden, as long as you're wearing a helmet...
"If you ride a motorbike you need a helmet but there is no other protective clothing required," said Mahler. However, Mahler said police would still like to speak with the man.
The article focused on reports of a naked man riding a motorcycle. Police say that while it's nothing illegal, they still trying to hunt him down. Make sense?
The report goes on to say that anyone can still report the man for disorderly conduct, but it's not clear that anyone has.
The technology is a luminous coating that makes vehicles glow in the dark without requiring a power source.
Designed more for aesthetics than high-visibility, it's available on Yamaha's EC-02 battery-powered motorcycle. According to the article linked above, the EC-02 began selling in Japan a year ago.
I imagine much of the glow will be hidden by the rider's legs.
Making their way through motorcycle shows across California and parts thereof is a new "lifestyle" company called "I Love Vagina".
You can buy t-shirts, hats, pins, belt buckles, wallets, and pens with the "I Love Vagina" quote emblazoned on them. You can even buy a shirt for your dog with the same statement on it.
And vagina-love is not just for guys. They sell the same gear for women too with a full line of women's wear, including stuff that says, "I Love Cock".
They sell other funny stuff like the "Vagina Pillow", which looks like a vagina, as well as a "Pussy Purse". Catholics might be offended by the "Vagina Candle", which depicts the outline of Our Lady of Guadalupe, except with a vagina painted in.
We ran into these guys at the San Diego Motorcycle & Hot Rod Expo last Saturday. They stuffed a couple of stickers into my hand, and gave me a free 30-minute pass to their online archive of "I Love Vagina Movies" (a $5.00 value).
The company's blog, which just launched recently, claims they are "the forgotten 1%ers that refuse to accept the image of the vagina that corporations are shoving down our throats". AS IF they're not trying to shove a vagina down my throat!
In addition, they described themselves as surfers, and it appears they thought bikers would appreciate this stuff. I'm sure the rubbies will love it.
As part of its April helmet promotion, Harley-Davidson dealers around the country are offering riders a "free helmet check"...
As the riding season begins to ramp up, it is important to ensure a helmet is ready for the rides ahead. During April's "Check Your Helmet Month" and throughout the year, enthusiasts are encouraged to visit their local Harley-Davidson dealer for personalized helmet fitment advice and a free helmet check.
I mean, come on now, a "free helmet check"? Does anyone think a Harley dealer will inspect someone's helmet without recommending a new one?
I can see it now...
Yuppie Biker: Uh, excuse me, I'd like to get a free helmet check?
HD Sales Guy: A what?
Yuppie Biker: A helmet check, I heard all Harley dealers are offering a free helmet check?
HD Sales Guy: Oh Yeah! A helmet check. Right. Do you have your helmet?
Yuppie Biker: Yes, right here.
HD Sales Guy: Hmmm. Let's see. Ah! Do you see that right here? That's a sure sign of foam oxidation.
Yuppie Biker: Foam oxidation?
HD Sales Guy: Yeah, you see in our region we get a lot of farm air, and over time it tends to weaken the foam inside the helmet. I recommend you buy a new helmet, and today you're in luck. We just got some new helmets in this week that are designed to be resistent to foam oxidation. Personally, I would not ride with your helmet. I mean, I know it's your helmet, and it fits you well, but this won't protect you. The Harley-Davidson brand of helmets are the only helmets I wear. How about we get you set up?
Yuppie Biker: Great! Can I get my 10% discount for being a HOG member?
HD Sales Guy: Absolutely!
Yuppie Biker: Boy am I glad Harley is offering this free helmet check!
For the month of May, Harley-Davidson will be promoting its "Say No to Helmet Hair" month, offering all riders a free doo-rag check.
A group of Harley riders who communicate with each other on a forum, decided to get together for a meet. The picked out a spot, and when they got there, discovered they had picked out a gay bar.
"I had heard something about the Harbor Room being voted 'Best Leather Bar," said Jenkins, previously unaware that the bar -- one of two buildings on an otherwise abandoned industrial stretch of land east of 1st Street -- is known throughout Milwaukee LBGT community's as a gay leather bar. It even hosts an annual "Mr. Harbor Room" pageant.
But then learned that if they took off their shirts, they would get beer at half-price.
So did they leave in disgust? No, they took off their shirts!
Then decided to stay to compete for the Mr. Harbor Room pageant.
Here's what one of the Harley riders said about the whole thing...
"I am really curious," said Torn_Tassles (real name Terry Whitcomb). "And one of the guys behind the bar gave me some great advice for how to wax my back hair. What a good group of men – I can't believe that none of them had found a wife."
Great advice on how to wax back hair? And these are "straight" Harley riders? Sounds like metrosexuals who bought Harleys trying to balance out their feminine side.
If you had a motorcycle capable of producing 700bhp, and a maximum speed of 300mph, where would you ride it?
This classy looking enclosed motorcycle might be a pretty powerful beast, but I'm not sure it's something you'd take a girl out for a date. And being enclosed, it kinda takes away the thrill of the open air.
If you're going to cage it, you may as well get something that's got space.
And even though it's a hybrid gas-electric, no one is going to spend this kinda dough to win kissy points with Al Gore.
The "R-Bike" is billed as a Robotic Shape-Shifting MotorCycle.
It adjusts it's wheel base longer or shorter, causing the seat height and rake shorten or lengthen. Here's a quote from the website...
Imagine leaving the house on your MotorCycle in "Standard" mode. As you leave the side streets and enter the open highway, you shape-shift into a Cruiser and take the highway out of town. The ride gets long and so for comfort you switch to Touring mode. After many miles, you take an exit onto rural two-lane twisty roads and see a dirt and gravel road on your left, so you shape-shift into an Enduro and take the turn ....
Here are some specifications...
Regular, Hemi or Diesel (750cc and 1000cc)
No rusting materials anywhere .... inside or out.
Extremely over-engineered to last as long as possible.
Variable length intake
Variable length exhaust
Multi-link suspension ON BOTH ENDS!
No chain tensioner needed
Center of mass retained by shifting the engine
Mimics shapes of each bike style precisely, from Chopper, Cruiser, Tourer, Enduro, Deep Woods
The design is in concept form, but according to the designer, the next stage is to look for investors, and then actually put it into production.
A man in India decided to let 40 motorcycles ride across his belly today. Apparently, he wants his place in the Guiness Book of World Records.
I didn't know the Guiness Book of World Records had this as a category.
First, Nayak let 40 motorcycles ride over the middle of his body as he laid prone on the ground.
Nayak had the drivers aim for his stomach, but in some cases, the cycles missed and went a lot lower on his abdomen.
What would have sucked is if 40 motorcycles rode across this man's belly, and no one bothered to report it. But as things would turn out, India is the place where jackass stunts make you famous, and blogs like this one eat the stuff up.
NBC10, who reported this story, says not to do this at home. Righty-O!
Here's a photo of a Honda Metropolitan Scooter with two jet engines. The engines are not yet mounted to the scooter, but that's the project of Ron Patrick.
Ron is better known for mounting a jet engine to his Volkswagen Beetle. Check out his website.
He says his wife would like to add more horsepower to her scooter, and he just happened to have a couple of JFS 100 jet engines handy. (Isn't it cool to have jet engines handy?)
His idea is to mount an engine to each side, and then cover the engines with aluminum housings, to look like real jet airplane engines. The two engines will add about 200 pounds of weight to the scooter, but the added power should more than make up for the weight.
Imagine telling your friends that the biggest problem you have with riding a scooter is getting birds sucked into your motor.
Ever feel like a master of the Harley Davidson? Now you can display your expertise with a Harley Diploma.
The diploma, bestowed by the faculty of Harley University, reads:
Having ridden the Hog and felt its power, and having roared over open road, the faculty and staff of Harley University hereby bestow upon (Your name) The Advanced Degree of Master of the Harley
All diplomas are printed on 57 lb. white linen cover stock, come with an official gold seal, and are personalized with your name (or your old man's name).
When I saw the words, "Motorcycle Air Freshener", I thought, "What, why would you want to freshen up the air around a motorcycle?"
But obviously, this thing hangs from your car's rearview mirror, with a picture of the famous movie poster, "Easy Rider".
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. With a surge in popularity of Harley Davidson motorcycles, it makes sense that the iconic image of Wyatt and Billy is finding its way into everything.
Here's a website selling "Biker Friendly" stickers, just like the graphic on the right.
You're supposed to stick these on your car to let bikers know that you're friendly to them.
This way, when you pull up along side a group of Hells Angels, they'll feel a lot better knowing that you're on their side.
The sticker is technically free, though you are urged to make a donation. Apparently, the stickers are in such high demand, they can't keep up with the orders.
I welcome you, to the Excalibur site, a special horse of battles, created for the amusement of all people what wish to see it, and mine.
This is the statement that you'll see when you visit Daniel Echeverria's website, "Excalibur, The Bike of Power".
Daniel's bike is dressed up to resemble a knight's charger. He takes it out to bike shows, the last one being Daytona Beek Week, 2005. He says that he wanted to turn his '79 Kawasaki 1000 into something unique, but didn't have any good ideas, until he came up with this one.
"The truth is that when I bought the motorbike, the poor thing was closer to the scrap yard than to be able to run, activity which it hadn't done for ages", says Daniel. "I thought it was strong enough to bear anything so I started to look for a topic to personalize it. After thinking about different ideas I ended up with King Arthur legend which was a very popular topic."
Well, at least the topic does lend itself to some pretty cool ideas.
For example, the headlight is in the shape of a dragon's head, and the dragon's mouth will open up to shoot out a burst of flame.
The sheet metal is dressed up to resember the armor plating on a charger.
And, the handlebars are in the shape of swords; that's the probably the coolest part!
The "R-Bike" is billed as a Robotic Shape-Shifting MotorCycle.
A man in India decided to let 40 motorcycles ride across his belly today. Apparently, he wants his place in the Guiness Book of World Records.
