Friday Fudge – vegans and flying bikes

Welcome to our semi-regular installment of Friday Fudge. If it’s weird, funny, or strange motorcycle news, or it just plain won’t fit anywhere else on the site – you’ll find it here.

Vegetarian Angels

Move aside, one-percenters: There’s a new motorcycle club on the scene, and they’ve got a problem with you. Specifically, they’ve got a problem with your leather vests.

From Live Kindly, we’ve got a tale of a new band of biker brothers in the UK with a chip on their shoulder. Why do they have a chip on their shoulder? It’s because chips are made from potatoes, and they’re one of the few things these motorcyclists can eat. They’re vegans, members of the Vegans Choice Motorcycle Club.

The club’s goal is to “to spread awareness of veganism, [and] educate and support people who are interested in making a change to their personal lives while making a contribution to the greater good.” So, for now, they aren’t rumbling with the Hells Angels over their cowhide vests. At least not yet. Who knows how dangerous this new veggie-friendly MC could get, once their numbers swell with eager recruits, lured by the siren call of veganism?

Buying American

President Donald Trump may have called for a boycott of Harley-Davidson products after the MoCo announced plans for overseas production, but his security detail apparently missed that memo.

In need of new motorcycles, the Secret Service has gone out and purchased more Harley-Davidsons for its motorcades. Will the Commander-in-Chief turn a blind eye towards his two-wheeled escort, or will he be enraged? Hard to say. It’s not like the Secret Service could have gone with alternate machines from Indian, as Indian has also announced plans for overseas production. That leaves Zero’s electric motorcycles as maybe the only mass market made-in-America option left, and that, dear readers, is almost certainly an image that Trump is not eager to promote.

So maybe the answer wasn’t to go mass market at all, but to instead buy something niche, like a Boss Hoss? All that V8 power on display is sure to please the oil industry, if not the poor Secret Service agents on board what Editor Mark says was “by far the most harmful two-wheeled machine I’ve ever ridden.” But at least the President himself wouldn’t have to ride it, as his bone spurs would probably make the forward pegs unbearably painful.

Sync or swim ride

Canadian enduro rider/vlogger Megs Braap may be an enduro star, but we’re pretty sure she lip-synced her way through this video. The scandal! We’re wondering now, has she lost all artistic credibility, just like Britney Spears at the VMA Awards?

(watches video closely)

Uh, nope. Looks like Megs still rips offroad, lip syncing or no lip syncing.

Riding Rookie

Jonathan Rea might have won his unprecedented fourth straight World Superbike championship, but he’s still an inexperienced motorcyclist. Why, you ask? Simple: Jonny Boy doesn’t actually have a motorcycle licence.

Sure, he has an FIM race licence, but Rea doesn’t have a permit to ride a motorcycle on public roads. He has a car licence, and he’s a cautious driver (he told Belfast Live that he is “like ‘Driving Miss Daisy'” when he’s behind the wheel). But he does not have a licence to ride a motorcycle on the street, and by the sound of it, he partly blames it on the UK’s notoriously soggy weather.

Wimp! We think he should take some of this year’s prize money and cough up enough for an Aerostich suit, and start riding in the real world. Until then, every time one of your friends is in awe of his WSB heroics, just say “Pfft! He’s not even a real motorcyclist!” No doubt they’ll be in awe of your own riding prowess as soon as you point out that you’re actually a more experienced rider when it comes to the street.

Fly and ride

It’s heartbreaking to see a man unable to achieve his dream, despite giving everything towards that goal. That’s why we’re all torn up to bring you the Daily Sabah’s story of Turkish inventor Mahmut Leventoğlu, who’s put together what he claims is a flying motorcycle.

We say “claims,” because authorities won’t let him actually fly the contraption, which took him three years to put together. Considering his development process seems to basically consist of strapping two 2.25-metre wings to a motorcycle and somehow gearing up a nose propeller, it’s hard to see why the Turks won’t let him get the necessary test permit. What could go wrong? After all, he has 30 years of experience working in a European automotive plant, so no doubt he’s a fully qualified aeronautical expert.

Words fail us

Seriously, as far as dumb bike stunts go, this is one of the dumbest things we’ve seen yet. Especially considering she’ll probably make him sell the bike as soon as they’re married, so he doesn’t do anything this stupid again.