Brrrrr… Just a great winter riding picture.

Saw it over on ADV rider. Man I’m starting to really yearn for an old aluminum tanked XT.

Video. Riding a tightrope on top of the world.

Top comment from over on Youtube:

“If I would of put a piece of coal between my butt cheeks before watching this, I’d have a diamond right now.”

Sounds about right.

Thanks to Jason (The CADman) Robinson for the link.

Farewell to Ernie Kicklighter.

In the early 80’s Jacksonville Florida motorcycle scene, Ernie Kicklighter was kind of our local motorcycle legend. There were other guys. Drag racer Ron Turner was doing well in those days on his lightning quick Suzukis. Even started his own dealership. But Ernie was different. He was the guy with enough talent to be “approved” by Kawasaki (at least that’s how we told the story) and secure a REAL Kawasaki ELR with all the factory goodies. Those of us who followed such things were all abuzz when we heard about it. Hot damm! Ernie had an ELR and was going racing with it. He’ll show em what he’s got. Just wait!

At the time, I had just started a lifelong friendship with the brother-in-law of the local Kawi shop manager known as “Maico George” Masdea (who sadly also passed back in 95 or so). Well anyway George was good friends at the time with Ernie and got us lots of behind the scenes info so we always felt like we were getting some inside scoop whenever we talked to him about it.

As these things go, I just got the word today that Ernie has passed. He’d been in a bad offroad riding accident quite a few yeas back and had been in rough shape since. It finally got the best of him.

It’s a strange feeling because thinking about it now, I’d only met him maybe a few times and really only heard stories about him second hand but his local legend status from my youth never left me. He was THE guy who didn’t just talk the talk. He went out, had the talent and freaking DID IT. He actually Raced Daytona and banged bars with the giants and the greats. No, I didn’t “know” him but he will be missed all the same.

Anyway, I did some searching around the web and there isn’t much on him. I did find a blurb here and there like this post over on Rider Files that confirms his racing status in a weird way. There are pictures of his bike and a caption mentioning that he’d been “hit on the starting grid of the F1 race by the speeding Marty Roth. It was claimed that the throttle stuck on Roth’s machine causing him to plow into the back of the F1 grid.”

Here’s the shots of the bike. It was a bad day for Ernie.

There were also some blurbs here and there like this one that talk about another rough weekend of racing.

I’d love to tell you more but details are scarce. I don’t know how much actual bar banging he ever did with the greats. I don’t know when and how he left racing or what his career record was. These things have a way of fading from view as you turn the corner into your 20’s towards other pursuits like girls and cars and generally always being broke.

But hey, if anyone has any details and could clue me in on any of it’d I’d be very grateful. I’m sure there’s a few old racers out there who might know a guy who knew a guy.

Thanks. And Godspeed Ernie. I hope you’re banging bars again.

Thanks for the ramble..

Update: I’ve found a few posts on message boards from old timers commenting on him here and there like this one in a thread on OMC outboards of all places that touched on ATV racing:

“One of the best ATV racers in the day of 3wheelers was a guy from here named Ernie Kicklighter,He turned Honda’s offer down for a factory ridein atv’s and superbike cause he didn’t want to move to California.He did ride for the local Kawasaki shop owned buy Bill Gettz.Bill built an experimental Tecate with a Rotax engine to take to a national race.When Ernie rode it in the heat race he almost lapped Marty Harts(#1 in the world) Honda and everybody started crying foul.To keep from going through a bunch off bitching Ernie pulled the practice bike out of the trailer and took 2nd overall on sunday.He said he couldn’t use all the hp the rotax made because of tire spin and picking the front end up.They would be a formidable competition in the outboard world.They wouldn’t let a world record go uncontested for 15 years thats for sure.:cool: :cool:”

Yep. Sounds right, Bill Gettz was the shop owner at the time.

And from what I’ve found he was still racing as lat as 1993 in CCS

“Expert U.S. TWINSPORTS Pos Laps Number Bike Size Name
1 1 210 KAW 750 ERNIE KICKLIGHTER, JACKSONVILLE, FL. Regency Kawasaki, Regency HD, Enco “

Tim Harney “gets it”. At his shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Living the life. Excellently edited video by the way… Thanks Luisa.

Tim Harney from Luisa Conlon on Vimeo.

Another cool air powered bike. This time three tanks!

Thanks to Tim Hillsamer for the link. Lots more here at TECHVEHI but it’s all in French.

I found a bit more info on it in english at the “car body design” site. Apparently the first one is set up to be a land speed bike. Cool!

“The Saline Airstream Concept is a speed record motorbike concept powered by a compressed air engine. It was created by five design students at the ISD of Valenciennes (France).”

At the wicked fun 1963 Bridgestone BS-7/D cafe!

Great little buzz-bomb and a really interesting site! for more on this bike and other cool stuff that Chris has going on check things out at http://subrewgarage.blogspot.com/

Chris wrote in:

Hello,

I just wanted to drop a quick note about a little bike I’ve finished
up recently. It started life as a run-down little 1963 Bridgestone
BS-7/D. I decided to do a bit of a cafe/racer look to it, using as
many Bridgestone parts as possible, and without hacking up any of the
original BS-7 parts in the process. The end result is a good little
runner, complete with a BS90 Sport fuel tank and set of BS90 front
telescopic shocks. I did a bit of porting on the original 50cc
stroker, built a pipe, and installed a bigger 19mm carb. It will see
close to 60mph if I get a long enough run!

Hope you enjoy it!

Chris H.

Cool pipe too! I love projects like this. Really unique and must be a lot of fun to blast around on.
Thanks!

A really interesting concept bike and engine system.

I’ve read quite a bit about the compressed air technology in cars lately and I just sort of figured it would be impractical in motorcycles.  And then I saw this (pulled this out of the Spam filter again grrr..) from an alert reader.  Really cool concept ESPECIALLY for short distance closed course racing.  I have a hunch that those are the areas where the alternate energy bikes and cars might get a realistic toehold.  I’ve even seen some wicked fast all electric Cart racing that a hard core cart racing friend of mine is looking into.

Anyway, thanks to Zach Stambaugh who sent this to me back on Dec 11 while we were in a bit of an alt energy phase on here.

I’ve been enjoying your blog for at least a year now. After the poll about electrics, I wondered what you thought of this: http://o2pursuitdeanbenstead.wordpress.com/

In my opinion it goes down to whether the bike looks interesting. Is it original or fun? does it innovate a cool idea? If so put it up.

I think it meets the qualification of interesting.

Thanks Zach and be sure to check out the link to their site for more!  And yeas, that started out as a standard SCUBA tank.  I love it!  And if you don’t mind sitting through a 30 second ad there’s a really informative video on the design HERE I like the points they make about no end of life issues (like with batteries) and I imagine you could piggyback compressed air refill stations right next to a gas station without too much fuss. The only scary part is what would happen in a rupture in an accident. I’m sure smarte people than me have solutions to that though. I’ve always thought that electric is doomed by it’s own costs and physics but the simplicity of this CA tech seems really promising..

I promise. Today ONLY. Some Politics! Say NO to SOPA and PIPA!

Edit:  I will leave comments open on this but please be, well, somewhat civil.

If you want to be spared my editorializing below here are some sites with just the facts:

This Google homepage has excellent info that will stay up more than just today (I hope).

The best comprehensive site on all the details of the issue is probably Wikepedia.    The best “at a glance” article I’ve seen so far is  Here.

Probably the best single page for contact info on the key players in the matter can be found HERE.

The full list of SOPA / PIPA institutional and corporate  supporters is HERE).

Sign the Petition HERE

My two sentence editorial is this.  The content providers want the government to help stop online “piracy” by wildly overstepping their constitutional and technological bounds while taking the first small steps toward  infesting, monitoring, and controlling all content on the behalf of corporate content providers (and campaign donators)  and bloated bureaucracies with their own eye towards increased influence and power.  Certain segments of the government are drooling at the idea of finally getting their toe in the door in order to take control huge chunks of our freedom and technology.

My longer rant is this…

I usually don’t allow any politics either here or on the Facebook page.  There’s lots of places for that.    I come here to relax.   But (like a lot of internet sites today) I’m making a one time exception to that rule.  I like my blog just the way it is.  I don’t need anyone telling me what I can reasonably post on here.   Unfortunately, there are forces at work that feel differently.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste”  is a big catchphrase in American politics. Make sure that any (usually Orwellian sounding)  solution focuses almost entirely on the wrong part of the issue. Make sure it’s way to big and overreaching.  Make it Expensive!  Don’t really concern yourself that it won’t really fix anything long term (that’s really NOT the goal anyway).  And most important, make sure it allows those people already in charge to increase that control as much as possible so they can sell that influence to the highest bidders… all  hopefully without anyone noticing.  Again, see the full list of supporters HERE.

It makes not one bit of difference what party you’re in, it’s who your masters are.  In this case The President is against SOPA (and good for him) and a significant of bought and paid for” Congressman and Senators of both parties are all for it.

I realize at this point that a lot of folks are thinking “Oh come on Steve… this will only be an issue between “the big boys” of the web.  The large peer to peer sites like Piratebay vs Sony or Disney and they’re only talking about  shutting down access to overseas sites that brazenly facilitate the sharing of content so why worry about the average 4000 hit per day blog or whatever?  Why should I care.

Well remember the part about increasing power.  To quote this C-Net article,  “How SOPA Would Affect You”:

“A little-noticed portion of the proposed law… goes further than Protect IP and could require Internet providers to monitor customers’ traffic and block Web sites suspected of copyright infringement. “

They’re back peddling now that all the attention is coming down on them but don’t kid yourself.  The Internet is huge and it’s (for now) beyond their control.  That’s not something that sits well with the powers that be.  If they can find juuust the right reason and put a bow on it, they will take it.

Link Fixed: Really cool video technique in this Supermoto video.

Update: Link fixed. Sorry about that.

I’ve seen the Gyro cam videos (it’s on her somewhere too) but this is really close and it’s really bargain basement.  Check out the rig here!  Not much English but you’ll get the idea.  Would love to do this at Deals gap next may.

Local Track – Vivid Supermoto Angles from Supermotard Denmark on Vimeo.

Farewell Mike Ahola. He was an insanely talented enduro champion.

I’m a little late in posting this. I’ve only recently begun following world class enduro and I’ve earned a huge respect for the class and riders. Recently a real giant of the sport passed away.