Granted, Jimmy and I knew that when we rolled out Ash Spurlins bike, Errant 2 that we’d get some attention with this build. You can check out the cool story behind this build here. With the unique wide glide girder front end, S&S 93″ Indian motor, custom wheels and seat made by Duane Ballard, and the stretched frame and tank, what isn’t there to like about this bike! ? Add to that the height requirement for Ash since he’s over 6′ 5″ or so and you’ve gone one loooong and tall bike. Ash has gotten some great attention to with this one as magazines such as Iron Works and Easy Rider have featured it since it was completed late last year. Now the newest magazine, Xtreme Bikes from Spain just rolled out their latest issue featuring the bike on pages 44-48. Check out bad boy ash cruisin’ the boulevards and bridges of Louisiana.
Hey, thanks for coming back! Great to see there are a few of you out there that have taste and style! Seriously, thanks for visiting. If you know of stories you think people would be interested in, shoot us a line C'ya!
We have to admit we get to work with some amazing artist! Whether it’s Duane Ballard for leather, or Steve O’Brian for paint, or JD for fabrication and engine work. One of our new friends is Bob Thrash of Thrash Designs. His specialty? Well, about everything that has to do with automobiles and bike design and his works is impeccable. Having worked with some of the leading “creatives” in the auto world to participating in the design and build for a Ridler Award winning ride, we know we’ve got a guy that knows what he’s doing. Recently Bob put his hand at developing some new designs for us and we’re excited to start rolling them out over the next few months. What do you think?
Throughout the 2010 season the Limpnickie Lot has adopted a new practice under the direction of Lisa Ballard called the “Limpnickie Lot Footprint” in order to give something back to each community they visit. These included pizza and skateboarding with Boys and Girls club Kids, food drives for local communities and several other interactions and we are pleased to announce the next step in this action. This year in Sturgis, there will be many footprints left behind from the Limpnickie Lot. Athena” Chickie” Vagabond will be working side by side with three high school bike builders, which happen to be all girls. They competed through essay to win this once in a life time opportunity. The bike will be raffled off at the Broken Spoke Saloon downtown location. Be sure to stop by and support this great cause. (more…)
A frequent question posed by motorcyclist is whether or not they should carry a firearm with them for personal protection. This is a question that has a lot of answers and yet not one fits every situation. Just too many variables to consider on this issue as “one shoes doesn’t fit everyone“. So remember that as we proceed thought this issue. First, let me state that I am trained and carry a 9mm with me almost everywhere i go and am proficient in it’s use as well as a number of one-on-one confrontation scenarios (i.e. martial arts). Granted i’m not a competitive fighter, but i can hold-my-own when it was needed. And have had to “hold my own” over the years (although i was a lot younger and foolish too) when the need arose. (more…)
“What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the first nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it. For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness which most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want. We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes. For it is the only nation founded solely on a moral dream. A part of our own future is tied up in it and the greatest of all the gifts the Americans have given us is hope.” President Reagan quoting column by Ferdinand Mount. Pretty much says it all in a nut shell.
Note: Growing up in the military (and having a brother and other family members deployed and currently serving) i am a strong supporter of our soldiers and empathetic with their families as well as understand our need as a nation to support them whenever and however we can! This was contributed by James Schenck, an Army veteran and the president of the PenFed Foundation, a military support organization.
This Fourth of July, can you to join me in saluting the sacrifices of all veterans who served to defend our nation and remembering their contributions. While the nation reflects on sacrifices of veterans this Independence Day who did not return back from war, I also would like to salute members of the military who sacrificed in other ways. From the Marine whose family is struggling financially due to multiple deployments, to the sailor who couldn’t buy her first house because she was overseas, to the soldier who is now relearning how to walk with his wife by his side and needs daycare for his young children: members of our military make sacrifices everyday that go unseen. (more…)
You’ve got to love AMERICA! We get a day to say “Thanks” to our veterans but also party to show our support of them! The best of both worlds wouldn’t you say!? So, while you’re enjoying the weekend and hoisting a brews (or twelve) in honor of the men and women in uniform, don’t fret about all the absurd politics and maneuvering we’re seeing, but rather just know that our protectors (soldiers) serve this great country of ours and they do it with distinction. (more…)
In the book “The Devil Can Ride,” which is edited by Lee Klancher, the reader finds an anthology of “the world’s best motorcycle writing,” (ok i stole that from its sub-title) and inferred by other references we’ve found. Seems the author has selected other authors, such as Mark Singer, Hunter Thompson, T.E. Lawrence, Robert Pirsig, Peter Egan, Kevin Cameron, Joe Scalzo, and approximately 20 more to highlight in his unique and witty book. There’s even a previously unpublished story by Darwin Holmstrom which covers the sexuality of motorcycles in which he explains how the Victory Vegas got him laid (by his wife). The story is funny as is the book informative in it’s eclectic collection of writers and styles In addition to the writings, there are black and white photos, often taken by the authors. The book comes in hard cover and is available from Motorbooks for $26.00 in the US, $32.50 in Canada. To access the publisher on line, click here, as well as Amazon.
When traveling across the country as we have, we come across a lot of hot rod and motorcycle art and artist, which i make a point of collecting the business cards, visiting their website or Facebook pages and then proceed to thrash myself for not continuing my artist adventures as a young man! When I saw the artwork of Nick Sinclair from Sinclair Hot Rods I got motivated to pound my skull even twice as hard for not continuing my artistic studies. My passion had always been in the field of tire smoking cars (67 Chevy’s) and long strung out choppers (remember Easy Riders was just out during that time) so our pics were of big muscled bikers on cool bikes…every young adolescent’s dream! Fortunately Nick stuck to his earlier passions of drawing as they show in every drawing we’ve seen appear from his sketch pad. My fav is Super Nugget, a street scraping Rat Rod with plenty of bad attitude and cool flames. The print is a limited edition fine art print and measures 19 inches by 13 inches. Only 50 produced. Each one is signed and numbered by Nick. Yeah, ok, i want one! Nick apparently digs the deeds of Ed Roth, Coop,Williams, Hess, and Kozik, and his work spans the typical Lowbrow, High Octane hot rod portfolio of gassers, street rods, rat rods, pin-ups, and of course, monsters. If you want to find out more about Nick go to his website HERE. You’ll find some cool limited edition prints, t-shirts and much much more.
Similar in purpose as “Pin-ups” in our prior post, “Door Art” in it’s own right has a purpose, image and degree of sophistication that can only come with a certain amount of “tougue-in-cheek” bravado. Or is that just “cool-ness”? Or are people just trying to promote their business? Either way, whether your sporting “Door Art” on a hearse, a semi, a rat-rod, tractor or even a show car, you’ve got a reason for showing off the name and whether it’s meaning has some deep seated and purposeful meaning to you (or the cars’ owner), guess we’ll never know. So, where is your “Door Art”?
Whether your talking about Pin-Up Girls (for automobiles, tattoo’s, motorcycles, machinery or planes) the inspiration behind them is extremely personal and historic. At their infancy these “ladies of lust” were highly personalized designs that had their roots in squadrons fighting in American’s toughest air combats (specifically WWI/WWII/Korean and Vietnam wars). And to this day, these beauties still carry themselves proudly while ensuring their legacy!
While seen by some as offensive (dependent on how “graphic” the artist gets i guess), today’s political correctness has tamed some designs to a whisper in comparison to the earlier renderings when the popularity of aircraft nose art was at its peak. In order to personalize any persons machine (i.e. equipment, motorcycles, cars or planes), individuals have continued to show their diversity of designs (and limits of sexual content) for these beauties ranging from true pin-up girls and girlfriends – to slogans and cartoons. Todays art has taken on some more details and usage, but one can still see the influences from earlier years when innocence was the norm, and imagination was left up to the viewers.
Regardless of the motorcycle your riding currently, music can make your “2 wheel” experience not only seem shorter (or longer based on the quality of the music), but it can also engage and integrate us even more into the motorcycle riding experience. I guess you could say a more “mental” or “cerebral” experience. At least that was our experience, having taken a cross country ride a few months back from Florida to SoCal. From first hand experience there seemed to be some mental engagement with my bike as well as the surroundings as i twisted the throttle a little harder listening to The Pretenders or Arlo Guthrie sing about riding, girls and life. The benefits of having some good tunes to pass the time while on those desolate and lonely stretches we encountered (i.e. TX, NM and Nevada) can’t be discounted either. Granted, for the sake of the general publics safety we did keep our singing voice inside our helmet. Anyway, this little jaunt across the USA and using our iPod for the first time stated us thinking, “what songs have the words “motorcycle” in them?“. So, here is what we found. If you know others we haven’t identified, tell us so we can add them to our iPod. Thanks to the guys over at “Bikes in the Fast Lane” for some of these.
As readers may remember, (i know some of you have limited attention span) we posted previously on this blog an excerpt from our writing on the subject of “Diversity in the Motorcycle Industry” which was part of a final exam paper we had to write for a college course. Long story short; we received a lot of positive feedback from this and thus wanted to continue our excerpts from that paper. SO her ya go.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary states “diversity” as “the condition of being diverse: variety; especially: the inclusion of diverse people (as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization”.
When one thinks of the term “multiculturalism” however, we are referring to the changing age, sex, ethnicity, physical ability, race, and sexual orientation of people across all types and places of work in the United States. Thus I tend to view the “multicultural” workforce as a descriptive term that, correctly or not, has largely supplanted the term “diversity” in describing the increasing heterogeneity of the workplace. Roosevelt Thomas, founding president of the American Institute for Managing Diversity, qualified diversity as a “comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment that works for all employees.”
Likewise the Portable MBA Desk Reference ended its definition of “diversity” in a similar manner. “The challenge posed by diversity, then, is to accommodate different groups by addressing their lifestyles, values, work style, and family needs without compromising the goals and operations of the organization.” And Joan Crockett, vice president for human resources at Allstate Insurance Co., viewed a diverse workforce as being about “unlocking the potential for excellence among all workers.” Allstate’s diversity vision statement sums up this belief: “Diversity is Allstate’s strategy for leveraging differences in order to create a competitive advantage.”
“It’s a good day to die”. That is the meaning behind the words “Hoka Hey” and was the cry of every warrior that rode into battle with Crazy Horse. The war cry only the dedicated can shout and commit their life to. So, are your ready, to say those words and ride into battle with other warriors as they put themselves on the line to find out just who you are and what your made of? Unfortunately, this year due to some issues beyond our control, this Guilty Guy, won’t be participating but will be thinking and praying for our friends and colleagues (you can follow Cycle Source’s participation HERE) that will be having an experience of a life time! So here are the details from their site:
Living in Southern California, you can see how easily one can get tainted in thinking that EVERYONE owns, drives or is in the process of building some custom ride (i.e. bike or car), simply because of the sheer number of customs you see at cruise nights or shows. From seeing 32′ highboys at the gas station to cruising down Hwy 55 beside a group of Camaro’s, or checking out the next door neighbors radical Triumph, (BSA, Honda or Iron Head), you do start to take the “availability of them” for granted. Well at least until you get a dose of reality while visiting or talking with friends back on the east coast where we’re originally from. Granted, there are some radical builders and cars back in our old stomping grounds and we’ve had some ourselves, however what IS different on the west coast is that; 1) there are more sunny days to drive-the-rides; 2) the sheer volume of cars in one concentrated spot (we’re in Orange County-the meca of custom cars); and 3) the car clubs and drive-in events are off the chart in sheer numbers! So, while we’ve feverishly trying to finish our own 67 C-10 custom build for our “time-in-the-sun” opportunity, we’re just walking, driving around with our eye’s peeled for just a glimpse of someone else’s idea of cool.
Granted, Jimmy and I knew that when we rolled out Ash Spurlins bike, Errant 2 that we’d get some attention with this build. You can check out the cool story behind this build here. With the unique wide glide girder front end, S&S 93″ Indian motor, custom wheels and seat made by Duane Ballard, and the stretched frame and tank, what isn’t there to like about this bike! ? Add to that the height requirement for Ash since he’s over 6′ 5″ or so and you’ve gone one loooong and tall bike. Ash has gotten some great attention to with this one as magazines such as Iron Works and Easy Rider have featured it since it was completed late last year. Now the newest magazine, Xtreme Bikes from Spain just rolled out their latest issue featuring the bike on pages 44-48. Check out bad boy ash cruisin’ the boulevards and bridges of Louisiana.
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