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.
Baby bike
Here in North America, you don’t often see visibly pregnant women riding motorcycles. In a culture that often views two-wheeled life as being excessively dangerous, most ladies don’t feel like putting up with society’s frown, even if they miss riding.
That’s not the case in other countries, though, where motorcycles are seen as a vital form of transportation. For evidence, look at a recent fundraiser by the Bourne Rotary Club in the UK. Club members decided they needed to help out women in Uganda who were stuck miles away from the hospital in the bush, with a long trek on foot ahead of them once they went into labour.
The solution? A maternity motorcycle. The club raised funds to purchase a two-wheeled ambulance, plus sidecar, to haul the pregnant moms off to the hospital to deliver their bundles of joy. As a result, we’re guessing the old story about storks delivering babies is going to die out in East Africa, as moms instead tell their children that babies are dropped off by a motorcycle …
Source: Stamford Mercury
Not a Ducati
People ride for different reasons. Some like the feeling of speed, others like the fresh air, and some people just want to get out and impersonate creatures from Sesame Street. Actually, we’re wondering if this is some sort of guerrilla marketing campaign to promote the new Ducati Monster
A matter of the heart
An Italian man had a change of heart after a recent motorcycle accident, but it’s not what you’d think.
The rider didn’t rush out and sell his bike and turn in his helmet. He didn’t even purchase a high-viz jacket and swear to only ride a machine with ABS. Nope, his change of heart was a literal shifting inside his chest cavity – after the impact, his heart was rotated 90 degrees around inside his chest.
Doctors reckoned the medical abnormality was caused by air leaking from his damaged lungs. Thankfully, the damage was only temporary, and the man’s heart is now back in its proper location, beating strongly again. There’s no word on whether he still loves the open road as much as before or not, though.
Source: Daily Mail
The Birth of the Vultus
Few motorcycles have inspired more love/hate comments in the past few months than the Honda Vultus. Its anime-inspired origins have been the cause of plenty of mockery, but that hasn’t deterred Honda from announcing their unusual choice for a launch.
Honda is unveiling the machine to the public at Europe’s largest comic convention, the London Comiccon, probably hoping to drag manga fans out of their basements and into the streets by tempting them with two-wheeled freedom. Hey, the bike’s guaranteed to be a hit with the Akira cosplay crowd, who like to dress up like the anime character. After all, the Vultus looks like something straight from that movie, although it’s missing the hub drive.
