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.

 App trouble

You know what would be awesome? An app for your smartphone that provides you with GPS as well as warnings about traffic slowdowns, road hazards and speed traps – that would be awesome.*

However, the police disagree. Such an app does exist (it’s called Waze, and owned by Google), but the po-po wants some changes. US-based sheriffs are trying to get the app’s cop-tracking function disabled because they say it is endangering officers’ lives. Never mind that the app has not yet been implicated in any attacks on police – the fuzz wants it shut down. With that kind of logic, we’ll soon see police ditching their uniforms and patrol car lights – after all, those things identify them as law enforcement as well, and that could draw an attack, right?

*Unless you’re an old-school CMGer who crustily complains they ride to get away from all that electronic stuff, and tootle on merrily into a construction zone, where Officer Friendly is waiting on the other side to hand them a doubled ticket for speeding through a work area.

Mods vs Rockers, 1945

Custom bike-building genius (we use the term loosely) Ichiban Moto is back. This week, he’s posted a flashback to the closing days of World War II, when Hitler’s lackeys were confounded by their poor-running cafe racers. With all the hassles involved with keeping a UJM on the road, it’s no wonder the Austrian corporal shot himself in the end. We should be glad Ichiban has provided us with this as-yet-unseen insight as to why the Third Reich really collapsed.

Getaway fail

At first, it looked like the perfect crime – an easy-peesy bike theft. And then it all went wrong, when the crims got busted in the act and their getaway driver … got away. And his buddies didn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to share a jail cell with two guys wearing dresses?

Day in the Dunes

The mad lads at Bixby Moto were bored, so they put a sand paddle tire on a W650 and filmed it. Pseudo-Steve McQueen action ensued.

Batteries not included

Here’s a guy who owns what’s probably a record-setting bike – the world’s smallest electric motorcycle. With its standard AAA battery pack, its range stretches to the end of the block and back. OK, we made that last part up. It actually only goes one way up the block …