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.
Up in flames, down in smoke
Oftentimes, a police department’s traffic division are big fans of starting up a motorcycle patrol. After all, who doesn’t want to spend their working day aboard a hot bike?
Well, Sgt. Frank Figel of Bergenfield, New Jersey, probably isn’t a big fan of the idea, after he almost ended his career in a blaze of glory last month. No, he wasn’t caught up in an epic Heat-style bank robbery shootout – he was returning from a funeral detail when his motorcycle, and then his pants, caught fire.
Thankfully for all involved, his fellow officers didn’t stand around yelling “Liar, Liar;” they extinguished his fiery pants, and the fire department eventually put out the inferno that engulfed Figel’s Harley-Davidson.
We haven’t heard if Figel plans to keep on riding motorcycle patrol duty, but we bet that he’ll steer clear of a bike with a flame job.
Story source: NorthJersey.com
The real thing
Here’s a funny commercial we ran across on YouTube this week, showing you all the benefits of trick photography … enjoy!
Roughing it
Lots of adventure riders like to tent on the road, but a Chinese company has brought that idea to a whole new level – they’ve developed a tent you can wear while riding your bike. Check it out in the video below.
While most of us wouldn’t be crazy about the idea of wrapping ourselves in billowy fabric and flying down the highway, the inventors claim their product is great if you want privacy to change clothes or take a dump along the side of the highway.
Plus, it will keep you out of the elements as you’re riding … well, until it catches in your chain and pulls you off the bike. Makes a good cover for the corpse though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwQw_lwcRu0&feature=youtu.be&t=1m12s
Blind faith
We’ve seen some oddball fundraisers over the years, but here’s something that’s probably beats them all.
Matthew Wadsworth is trying to raise $20,000, to fund a record-setting motorcycle jump. Big deal, you say, that’s the sort of thing Robbie Knievel does for free. Well, there’s a catch – Wadsworth has been blind from birth.
He hasn’t let that stop him from riding motorcycles since he was a kid – according to his website, he spent his youth ripping around a field on a minibike, hoping the path was clear in front of him. Now, he’s training for a 100-ft jump, and he needs funding.
Check out Wadsworth’s video below.
Catch of the day
Here in North America, police have a problem when they try to catch a fleeing motorcyclist. While no officer wants to see his suspect escape, there’s no question that it can be pretty dangerous to chase a speeding rider.
Cops in Vietnam have no such qualms, however. Apparently the traffic division in Thanh Hoa city was sick and tired of seeing their prey escape, so they’ve come up with a solution to the problem: they’re using fishnets to trap fleeing motorcyclists.
No, they’re not using a stockinged girl with shapely legs to distract miscreants, they’re throwing actual fishing nets at speeding bikers to haul them down. Sounds like someone’s been watching too many late-night gladiator movies on cable TV.
The fishing nets idea isn’t really new. I can remember, back in the late ’90s, seeing something similar in Japan. They were using a couple of rockets to launch a net vertically, with the intentions of trapping large groups of Bosozoku (Japanese bike gangs) in them, as they try to escape from police. I don’t believe that it was ever put into actual service though.
Neither video is viewable on iPhone.