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.

Traffic circle trouble

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is the latest trend in roadracing, from comedy duo Hamish and Andy. It’s a 250-lap extravaganza!

Fine furniture

Want to take your scooter to work? Well, there’s a new way to do that –  Bel & Bel is making furniture that’s based on old Vespa parts. That’s right, you could scoot around the office on a chair made from your old step-through.

It’s an ingenious idea, really; next, we’re expecting another company to come to market with couches that are built from old cruisers or tourers … it would be a great way to repurpose all the unwanted Marauders and Shadows you see on Kijiji. Hey, for bigger bikes like Gold Wings and Electra Glides, you’d only have to take off the wheels!

Grass roots

Remember those old lawnmowers that didn’t even have motors? You just had to push them along, and the blades would clip your grass. Rumour has it they still sell them at Home Depot, but nobody knows who buys them. Maybe hippies? They never mow their lawn anyway, so it would be a perfect fit.

But for the anti-hippy out there, who cares naught for the ozone layer or sound bylaws, here is a creation from Honda that uses the 1000 cc motor from their VTR Firestorm. It’s capable of hitting 60 mph in about four seconds, and should make short work of anyone’s lawn, as long as you don’t lose traction in a corner and go through your neighbour’s fence.

Fringe benefit

Joshua Jackson, star of TV’s Fringe,  is supposed to be a hunk, the kind of male actor that chicks dig. Hey, he even rode a motorcycle in that film that time. So he must be into fast bikes, like any other riding celebrity, right?

Maybe not. His best girl, Diane Kruger, picked him up a two-wheeler for his birthday recently, but she didn’t follow the Hollywood norm. She didn’t get him a Confederate Wraith, like Tom Cruise would own. She didn’t buy him a vintage Indian, like Steve McQueen would have ridden. She didn’t buy him a Moto Guzzi California, like the one that Ewan McGregor so effusively praised recently.

Nope, she bought him a Vespa. A Vespa! Not that there’s anything wrong with scooters (after all, we do run the Mad Bastard Scooter Rally), but c’mon – even Justin Bieber has an MV Agusta.

Lame contest

Justin Bieber may be lame, but what about Maroon 5? Definitely lame. Didja know the band was originally named Kara’s Flowers?

That doesn’t seem to bother Honda, though, who’s given them CBR250R to customize and haul around on their latest tour, to be given away at the end. According to Honda’s blurb on YouTube, the bike’s “357 pounds of power, expert airbrushing & detail, a sexy white leather seat made for two and crimson rims easily make it the envy of the road”

That is nothing a rattle-can of flat black paint can’t fix, though; sounds like a good candidate for the rat bike treatment.

Musical maniac

Continuing our theme of lame musicians – how do you promote a budding music career? These days, the path to success seems to lie in cheesy television shows, which slackjawed millions watch religiously, instead of learning to play the guitar themselves.

Sam Callahan from the UK is taking a bit of a different path. Callahan tried sky diving, bungee jumping, pole dancing (yuck!) and even walking on hot coals to draw attention to his new album. Then he took it a step further – he jumped a motorcycle over a girl band (shudder!).

Callahan completed the jump, and raised some funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust while he was at it. We’re just wondering if he should have done the world a favour, and run the girl band over instead. And considering he pole danced to promote his own album, maybe he should have driven off a cliff at the end of it all.

Source: Hamilton Spectator