Friday Fudge

Welcome to 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.

Hammer Time

Any motorcyclist would be upset over the theft of their bike, but Robert Brown took things a bit further than most. Brown, from Scotland, took a page from the Itchy and Skratchy Show when he found his two-wheeler had been pinched – he grabbed a mallet and went to confront a neighbour he suspected.

Although Brown’s actions seem to have scared the crook into compensating him, there were also some unintended consequences; it might have been Hammer Time in the U.K. (a clever mash-up of the Sex Pistols and M.C. Hammer’s greatest hits), but it almost turned into slammer time.

After Brown’s vigilante rampage, he pocketed the wooden mallet and hobbled back to his house. Shortly afterwards, the police came by, one thing led to another, and Brown ended up in court, where he was fined £300 for uttering threats. There’s no word on whether the bike bandit was similarly fined.

Of course, we all know the police hate vigilantes – it’s bad for their job security. Still, we think they should have given Brown some leeway – like any frugal Scotsman, he was probably just trying to save on law enforcement costs to keep his tax rates down, by taking the law into his own hands.

Story source: Scotsman.com

Mini madness

For more fun and games from the U.K., check out this clip from Top Gear director Paul Churchward, featuring a bit of a different take on the Italian Job – instead of the crooks taking off in Minis, the madly-skilled burglar is aboard a motorcycle, and is chased about London by three Minis!

The future is ugly

Sure, the idea of designing an electric motorcycle that looks like a bug-eyed banana with ape-hangers appeals to the retro-techno-hipsters in all of us, but what’s the point of such a project without an artsy video to accompany it? In fact, that might be the point of the project!

Head over heels

What’s more disconcerting than seeing your race bike cartwheel down the track? Well, how about cartwheeling alongside of it?

That’s what happens when you grab a little too much front brake, as this racer in the Brazilian superbike series found out.

Blind faith

Remember Matthew Wadsworth?

We first told you about Wadsworth last December – some readers may actually know him personally, as apparently he spends a lot of time in Quebec City. Anyway, Wadsworth, an internationally-renowned lutist, was out to set a record – he wanted to jump a motorcycle 100 ft.

If you don’t think that’s impressive, here’s the rest of the story – Wadsworth is blind. Still, that hasn’t stopped him from riding motorcycles (off-road, of course) since he was a kid, and he was totally serious about raising the funds for his feat.

Well, he did manage to get enough money together to make his attempt, with motocross master Micky Dymond as his coach. He didn’t manage to make his 100-ft jump, but he did manage to pull off a 70-ft jump – much more than most motorcyclists.

Check out a video of Wadsworth’s heroics below:

V-Rod Madness

In the news last week, we told you the story of Andy Carlile, an average Joe who set an impressive lap record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife track on his Yamaha R1. Here he is again this week, on a slightly different machine …