Welcome to Friday Fudge – a weekly round up of the more ‘unusual’ motorcycle related stories that are just too silly to post on their own, but raise a much bigger chortle when you slap them all together and take the piss.
A mad thief
Here in Friday Fudge, we have plenty of stories about people acquiring motorcycles by criminal means. One of these characters, a 43-year-old Malaysian man, was busted for stealing a Yamaha two-wheeler and had his day in court.
When the judge asked him for his motive, the middle-aged moto-thief didn’t claim hard economic times, though – he told the magistrate that lunacy was behind the bike theft. Supposedly voices in his head told him to take off with the bike.
The courtroom didn’t take the self-professed loony seriously, but we do: We think we’ve finally found our first overseas entrant into the Mad Bastard Scooter Rally. Just make sure to lock up your Vespa if he’s around.
Source: Yahoo
No bacon on this hog
Cruiser riders have a bit of a reputation for being heavier than their sportbike-riding counterparts. Whether that’s true or not, we don’t know, but it could be the inspiration behind this photo we found on the Internet – maybe someone’s hoping a vegetarian diet will reverse that trend.
Source: Bikes in the Fast Lane
A good night’s rest.
Here’s another entry in the Friday Fudge “innovation” file. Ever find yourself wanting to sleep behind a truck stop, but lacking an appropriately badassed bed roll? That perplexing quandary seems to be the inspiration behind the Gypsy Biker Bed Rolls that Don Wood sells on his web site. At first sight, it looks like a fine idea – a waterproof sleeping bag that emulates the bedrolls of cowboys past.
Until, that is, you check out the price tag. Mr. Wood wants $150 for this piece of equipment, proving his prices don’t hale back to the Old West, even if his design does. We don’t figure Mr. Wood is going to make much dough off this bedroll – even if they really did have a mad urge to sleep outside a truck stop, the unkempt “old school” bikers that it seems to be marketed towards won’t have a hundred and fifty bills to drop on a glorified sleeping bag, and the riders who do have enough money for it will likely just go buy a tent – and still have money left over.
Hot Van Time Machine?
The jokesters at Yamaha have done it again. Fresh off their Colin Edwards boot camp parody video, they’ve come out with another gag YouTube clip, this one featuring Edwards alongside Cal Crutchlow, Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo, together with Wayne Rainey, Eddie Lawson, Kenny Roberts – and Fabio. You gotta see it.
A killer instinct
Former MotoGP and World Superbiker Troy Bayliss loved to win. So much so, in fact, that he recently told Faster and Faster that when he was racing, he delayed in getting vasectomy surgery, not because he was scared of the procedure, but because he thought the operation might make him lose his killer edge. Or, as he put it in the interview, “I thought I’d start waving people past and drinking tea.”
Of course, it appears Bayliss wasn’t thinking the problem through – after all, a van full of kids and family responsibilities have slowed far more men down than vasectomies.
Source: Faster and Faster
A dangerous job
Japan’s natural disaster and nuclear woes last spring are certainly nothing to laugh at, but the motorcycle racing world has had a bit of an odd reaction to the aftermath.
Apparently, a load of MotoGP riders are indicating they plan to boycott Japan’s race at Motegi, scheduled for October. The track is about 66 miles from the troubled Fukushima reactors, and they don’t think it’s worth the risk. That sounds smart, until you consider this is coming from men who tear around racetracks at high speeds for a living. If they’re going to go all safety-conscious, maybe retirement would be the best plan for them.
Source: Motorcycle Daily
Making an old trend current?
The famous Norton Featherbed frame has been the basis for a load of great customs – Norvins, Tritons, and many other hybrid cafe racers were built by stuffing a hot engine into a smooth-handling frame.
That tradition hasn’t ended, even though the Featherbed frame hasn’t been produced for decades. Here’s a high-voltage custom built by Brian Richardson of Blue Grass Virginia. Not satisfied with the age-old tradition of finding a high-performance gasoline engine for his bike, he’s shoehorned a battery-powered motor in there. Perhaps he’s trying to put a spark into an age-old custom motorcycle tradition? In any case, he took seventh place at the Laguna Seca TTXGP last weekend – while registered as an antique. Talk about an electrifying performance!
Source: Visordown
re the bedroll, wish I thought of it first, here’s betting the same people who pay extra for gloves without fingers and assless pants will line up to strap one of these on. It goes without saying, of course, that they ain’t actually gonna use it – Timmies isn’t that far from home.
Just checked out Don Wood’s website. He describes how to makes the bed roll on his site. So if you really have a hankerin’ for a gypsy bed roll and you don’t want to bet the farm with the $150 buy-in, you can saddle on up to your local tractor supply company, or Princess Auto and make em yourself!