Welcome to Friday Fudge, where we bring you all the best motorcycle content of the Internet. Well, not actually the best, more the weirdest, and some of it is definitely the worst. You decide.
Beat that heat
Is global warming for real? David Suzuki says yes, and one of the former founders of Greenpeace says no. All we know is, we’ve had a miserable cold and soggy riding season so far in Canada, but that hasn’t been the case in Germany, where police from Brandenburg recently had the unpleasant encounter witnessed in this photo.
This male scooterist had sensibly donned his crash helmet before leaving his house, but nothing else. Well, a pair of sandals, but that’s it. He told the police he was trying to cool off, as he was sensitive to the heat. The police told him that unfortunately, everyone else was sensitive to his nudity and asked him to put on a pair of trousers, although it apparently is not illegal to ride naked in Germany. Or so we’ve heard.
Too bad the Mad Bastard Scooter Rally is now history, because this rider appears to have been born for an appearance there.
Waiting game
Way back in March, we told you about an upcoming attraction at Orlando’s Universal Studios amusement park. The park was designing a motorcycle-themed roller-coaster ride. Well actually, it was Harry Potter-themed, with the cars shaped like motorcycle sidecars, but we figured the Harry Potter connection was insignificant, right?
Anyway, weeks later, Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure has opened, and it’s proving popular — maybe a little too popular. Turns out the media who wrote about the ride all got their own special-access visit to the roller coaster, and since then, the lineups have been horrendous, particularly as the ride has been fraught with technical difficulties.
How long, exactly, have the waits been? This writer said she waited more than eight hours to get on the ride. Her words: “This was my fifth time on the ride and I couldn’t justify waiting this long for the ride. Five-to-six hours probably would have been my max.” Uh, yeah. And here’s another idea: find a part-time job to fill those hours, and it won’t be long before you can afford a real motorcycle, and go for a ride whenever you want. You can even pack a Harry Potter book into a tankbag, and read it when you stop for a coffee break.
Pedal power
You know those motorcycle escorts you see at bicycle races? Sometimes they have a camera on board, and sometimes they’re just guarding the riders from other motorists. Either way, there have been complaints about them for years: some racing experts say the motorcycles give an unfair advantage to the bicyclists following them, because they can create a slipstream effect.
Until now, the naysayers have mostly been restricted to unhappy whiners, but now they have science on their side. The University of Eindhoven in The Netherlands did some research into the effect those motorcycles have on bicyclists, and the results are significant. Turns out a cyclist riding 2.5 metres behind a motorcycle sees a 48 per cent reduction in drag! Sure, that’s pretty close, but stretching that to a 30-metre gap still sees a 12.5 per cent reduction in drag. At 50 metres, the motorcycle reduces wind drag for the cyclist by 7 per cent. It might not sound like much, but in an event like the Tour de France, it’s significant.
What’s the solution? Aside from some people saying motorcycles need to avoid riding beside one cyclist for too long, to avoid giving a competitor an unfair advantage, nobody’s really had any brainwaves that we’ve seen. However, it’s likely only a matter of time before drones are doing the filming. Or maybe they’ll require escort bikes to have a giant, backwards-pointing fan, to counter out the slipstream effect? We’ve no doubt they’ve got top minds on this important problem!
Justin Bieber vs. the Custom Motorcycle
Ah, Justin Bieber. Where would we be without Canada’s most famous (male) musical export? Probably in a much better place, but that’s just wishful thinking, because like it or not, we’re stuck with him.
Bieber’s made plenty of headlines lately by challenging Tom Cruise to a mixed martial arts fight, saying it’d raise plenty of money on pay-per-view. He’s not wrong, but unless he pulls some type of dirty trick, like Emperor Commodus in that Gladiator movie, Cruise would probably beat him down fairly easily. We’re talking about a guy who’s done his own stunts in movies for years. He might need a step-stool to reach high enough to punch Bieber in the face, but he could always kneecap him, then destroy him with his ground game.
Anyways, you’ll notice that Bieber did not attempt to challenge Cruise to the greatest contest of all: A motorcycle race. There are likely two reasons for this. First, everyone knows Cruise is a pretty competent rider, particularly as he’s taken lessons from Keith Code. Second of all, Bieber is not a very competent rider, or at least it doesn’t look like it.
See, Bieber recently also made another set of headlines, by blowing a bunch of cash on a custom-made supermoto, no doubt in an attempt to get out of the house when his wife starts pestering him about finally getting around to the yard work.
Alas, his motorcycle does not seem to have come with a Rekluse clutch; like most millennials, Bieber is having some difficulty with the manual transmission in his new su-mo. But don’t worry, he can likely get one of his bodyguards to show him, or maybe drive the bike home for him.
Dial-a-sound
Don’t like the sound of your electric motorcycle? What can you do? If you had a cruiser or sportbike, you could just rip off the standard well-engineered exhaust and bolt on a horrible muffler that irritates all your neighbours and scares little kids. Now that you’re on a battery bike, that manly option has been taken away from you. Oh, the humanity.
But never fear, Revolt has your back. The Indian electric motorcycle project reportedly has four engine sounds built-in, letting you choose between cheesy reproductions of internal combustion engine exhaust notes.
The only commentary we can offer is this: We predicted this all months ago (see here), but we sure didn’t say it was a good idea. But hey, maybe CMG is now inspiring Revolt’s designers? Because we pretty much predicted the motorcycle’s name, too!
