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.

Stopping the music

Harley-Davidson’s advertisements often espouse a hard-rockin’ lifestyle; buy a hog, the ads say, and you can pick up chicks as you cruise around to a rock and roll soundtrack.

Unfortunately for H-D employees, though, that is no longer the case in their factory in York, Pennsylvania. Management has put the ban hammer on music – no more intercom music, no boom boxes at workstations, no headphones – nothing.

Management says the moves comes as an attempt to boost quality and productivity; supposedly, Harley’s employees will be able to focus better when they are not headbanging to Steppenwolf or Danzig or Metallica or whatever it is they listen to in those factories. Or maybe that was the problem? Perhaps too many employees were tuning into the local pop stations, and ruining workplace morale. We’ll probably never know.

Going slideways

You don’t see motorcycles sliding around on the racetrack much these days (not on purpose, anyway). Modern-day electronics packages have put an end to that art. But some people are still masters of the technique.

Word game

What’s a biker? Until recently, the Oxford English Dictionary said the word meant “a motorcyclist, especially one who is a member of a gang: a long-haired biker in dirty denims.”

In today’s world, though, that sort of thing just won’t fly; all the gang members with long hair and clean denims or short hair and dirty denims apparently found the description offensive. Consquently, the dictionary editors changed it; now, a biker is described as “a motorcyclist, especially one who is a member of a gang or group: a biker was involved in a collision with a car.”

So now, instead of implying motorcyclists are all lowlifes, we’re not described as klutzes who run into cages. You’re not a criminal, you’re just inept. How’s that for improvement?

Wild child

They approach child care differently in other parts of the world.

Have gun permit, will get discount

Gun control is a hot topic in the U.S. right now and as a result many people are buying up guns and ammunition like mad.

Peak Powersports in Michigan is capitalizing on this mess by offering a very simple promotion: Show your concealed pistol permit when you shop there, and you get 15 per cent off.

While some may think this is crazy, the shop’s owner says he’s trying to encourage people to be safer around guns by taking the concealed permit safety course – he doesn’t require customers to actually own a pistol.

We’re betting there’s a side benefit to this promotion – with all the armed citizens in the neighbourhood, we’re guessing muggings are going to drop. And, customers at the shop are going to treat each other very, very politely.

Source: MyFoxDetroit

Slideways, Part II

You can either break traction by applying a lot of horsepower to the ground … or forgetting to remove your tire warmers.