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.
Toe woe
An NYPD detective has managed to survive a motorcycle crash despite losing his toes, but his troubles aren’t over yet.
Detective Marc Lotter had to take a pistol to a gun dealer as part of an investigation – the gun was evidence. Lotter decided to ride over on his motorcycle – a decision that ended up with an airlift to hospital, after he was hit by a car. The docs ended up cutting all the toes off one of his feet.
Think that’s bad? When he was hit by the car, Lotter was carrying the pistol, and the NYPD didn’t like that. They are saying the 22-year-veteran might face charges from the department for using his personal vehicle without permission, saying the pistol could have been stolen or destroyed and they would have lost their evidence. There’s nothing like knowing your employer has your back, eh?
Source: NY Daily News
Ichiban: How to remove a motor
Let’s face it: Ichiban Moto’s videos are pure gold for any hipster who is wondering how to build a cafe racer. This week, he shows us how to remove an engine from the motorcycle frame. He isn’t the kind of guy who lets his YouTube exposure go to his head, though – he’s still in touch with the common man, with money-saving tips, such as how to save on expensive chain grease.
Silverstone silliness
Silverstone Circuit: It’s been the scene of many high-speed heroics over the years. It’ll likely never be the same now, though, since Colin Furze (builder of jet-powered bicycles, a homemade Wall of Death and the world’s longest motorcycle) showed up. Shockingly, he managed to talk them into letting him run the track not only in his junker transport van, but also his high-speed mobility scooter.
By the way – should you want to build your very own 60 mph mobility scooter, you can find his series of videos that show you how here. We bear no responsibility for the results.
Getting the axe
Here’s an innovation for all you hosers who are tired of splitting your firewood by hand.
Cager solution
Much as we all love motorcycles, sometimes we need to use a car. Let’s face it – the months of December through March are motorcycle-unfriendly everywhere in Canada except for maybe some parts of British Columbia.
Don’t worry, though – there’s new technology on the horizon that could help you make it through the winter commute, and it comes from the airline industry, of all places.
Airbus is apparently working on a new virtual reality headset that will offer plane passengers sensory isolation from their surroundings; apparently, they’re not only looking at providing alternate visual and sound environment, but they’re also looking at even piping in scents to the units. Not only will it look and sound like you’re at the beach, instead of inside a jet, but you will even be able to smell the salt spray.
The potential for motorcyclists is obvious! While you likely wouldn’t last long using this system if you were actually driving a car, it would be great for a passenger, or for someone on a bus or train – not only could you zone out and imagine you were riding, thanks to this technology, but you could even have the smell of two-stroke mix piped into your virtual reality system. Why settle for the sensation of riding a cruiser, when you could imagine you were riding a two-smoke GP bike, or maybe an RZ350?
Source: Wired
Getting dirty
Here’s a water crossing that started out fine, but deteriorated rapidly.
Concrete evidence
You probably haven’t noticed it, but there’s been a huge surge of popularity for three-wheelers in the celebrity gossip mags lately. It seems every celeb in their teens and 20s is hopping aboard a Spyder or something similar – apparently, the tykes go for trikes these days. Nobody is anxious to replicate Steve McQueen’s two-wheeled heroics.
It’s getting a bit sickening, frankly – it was bad enough when people like Justin Bieber flocked to choppers to boost their street cred, but the three-wheeled trend really shows them for who they are: Wannabes, too scared to even take off the training wheels. As a result, we think they should be allowed to keep riding these machines, but they should be confined to models like the one seen below.
