In this video our buddy, Robert Pandya, the new spokesperson for the International Motorcycle Shows talks about this years motorcycles for women and/or the vertically challenged. This video is part of an ongoing series called "New to 2" highlighting what's new on two wheels.
Showing posts with label International Motorcycle Show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Motorcycle Show. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Complete Idiots Building and Riding Bikes
Book ReviewsThe Complete Idiot’s Guide to Choppers
By Russ Austin and Michael Benson
Alpha Books
Penguin Book Publishing
ISBN #1-59257-452-1
By Russ Austin and Michael Benson
Alpha Books
Penguin Book Publishing
ISBN #1-59257-452-1
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motorcycles
By Darwin Holmstrom and Charles Everitt
Alpha Books
Penguin Book Publishing
ISBN #1-59257-303-7
That’s just what we need, more Idiots on motorcyclesWhen The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motorcycles (3rd Edition) crossed my desk I heard a collective groan, “That’s just what we need, more Idiots on motorcycles.” Upon reading, I discovered that it was singularly the best basic guide ever published on the sport. Motorcyclist magazine alumnus Darwin Holmstrom and editor Charles Everitt had created a textbook that should be required reading for anyone thinking about standing near a motorcycle, let alone riding one. But thanks to the title all I could see was a wave of Idiots on gleaming new motorcycles heading right for me.
So you can imagine my dismay when I opened an envelope on my desk to reveal a copy of the newly minted: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Choppers.
Now understand that I’ve no qualm with choppers. In fact I think they’re cool. Very cool! And don’t feed me any handling, braking, ride-ability crap about them. The thing is that a Chopper is supposed to look cool. That’s its main job. Coolness is Number One! All else is superfluous. Besides, every motorcycle on the market is more motorcycle than any of us really need so why not have a cool one?
As for Idiots it’s no secret; we all know a few, and we all are a few. A psychology exploited in marketing philosophy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide series. The CIG’s savvy publishers have developed a style and that simplifies learning regardless of your own personal level of idiocy. Information is presented in small chunks with the most basic details first and later more advanced information is piled on. All the time cleverly disguised footnotes salted throughout the text act as mnemonics.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Choppers was written by Russ Austin, a custom builder and owner of Precious Metals Customs in Atlanta along with Michael Benson, a former car magazine editor and professional CIG writer. The duo do a fair job of explaining all the pitfalls and warning of the pratfalls involved with chopper building, buying and maintaining with a couple of secret handshake moments thrown in for good measure.
Austin’s warnings to the neophyte builder are born of his own sweat and scars which he makes abundantly clear, and at the same time he makes no bones about promoting his shop, private brand parts and personal philosophy which causes a large part of the book to read like a sales brochure. Not to be seen as all ego Austin does come clean on the source of his inspiration, necessity, admitting that his signature style of fender-free choppers was born of a painter who failed to deliver a fender in time for his first bike showing. He quickly fabricated a seat bracket and rode to the show sans fender. The crowd loved it, he took home the trophy and has avoided fenders ever since.
Overall, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Choppers provides the chopper-challenged a good platform of basic verbal information but it fails miserably on presentation. The few photographs included are too small to see details, have cluttered backgrounds and poor lighting. The photos in the color section look like the bikes were rolled out of the showroom at high noon for a snapshot then rolled back in. Choppers, especially such unique ones, deserve better. Choppers are the most creative, pictorial and coolest movements in the history of motorcycle culture. Worse, the section on Culture is the smallest in the book which is no surprise as there are pages of descriptions of motorcycles without images and boxes with bike builder biographies devoid of portraits. Such treatment leaves this reader wanting.
Buy this book if you’re admittedly absolutely totally ignorant about choppers, what makes a chopper or makes a chopper rider tick and need to know for some overwhelming reason like keeping up with the boys at the biker bar or avoiding that lost deer-in-the-headlight face when going to a custom bike show. You should also buy this book if you’re planning your first chopper build even if you’re already a top-rate tech because one piece of advice from the Guide will save you hours of cursing and confusion on something you probably never even thought of, which more than justifies the $19.95 cover price.
Now if your chopper desires extend merely to daydreaming and drooling over photos of cool bikes then your twenty bucks is better spent on some glossy custom bike magazines because the photographs are better and there might be partially clad or even totally naked girls in some of them.
Meanwhile,
Ride Far , Ride Fast and Ride Well!
MK.............=o&o>
Thursday, April 01, 1999
Possibly the End of the Line
A few years ago I was standing in a bike shop on Long Island while the owner whined. “There’s no brotherhood among bikers anymore,” he spouted, comparing the new days of yuppie piloted Harleys versus the old honor among thieves culture. Thinking about the shops that owed me money long past any chance of collecting, supposed writers that promised articles never delivered and the other daily mundane disappointments of being in this business, I agreed. Both of us were wrong, only I learned the hard way.
On Saturday night the 17th of January I was having difficulty breathing. My asthma was acting up. A couple of puffs on my inhaler didn’t help, I could feel my lungs continue to tighten. By midnight I was feeling worse. Asthma is unique disease, it tortures you in your childhood, leaves you alone in your twenties and thirties then comes back with a vengeance in your forties.
Not realizing how sick I really was we called a cab. My wife and I headed for Nyack Hospital. During the ride I was getting exponentially worse. The cab driver flew down the street. He blew through the first stop sign at twice the legal speed, took the first right on two wheels and went completely airborne at the crest of the hill. His speed was a major factor in saving my life.
A block from the hospital I couldn’t breathe at all. Terror gripped my chest. I fought for air. At the entrance to the emergency room my body surrendered. Complete respiratory failure. Then cardiac arrest.
There was no white light, no out of body experience. No floating in a canoe down the river to oblivion. Just nothing. Now I view that as proof that my time on this earth was not up.
The emergency room scene was the reality that mirrors those television doctor shows. Respirator, defibrillator a lot of staff working very fast. They restarted my heart. A respirator pumped oxygen into my lungs.
My wife called my parents and they headed for the hospital. My family practice doctor arrived. He called in a Pulmonary Specialist that drove up from New York City at three o’clock in the morning.
It took ‘till 6:30am for the team of doctors and nurses to stabilize me enough to be moved to the critical care unit. My parents went home. They had aged a lifetime in one night seeing their first born near death. The hospital promised to call if there was any change but the staff was not very optimistic. Five thousand people a year die from similar asthma attacks.
Not that I remember anything after the cab arrived at the hospital, nor do I remember any of the following ten days that I spent in a coma. I pieced the story together from what my wife told me.
Business-wise the timing was pretty poor. Not that spending ten days in a coma was ever on the list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. The edition of CC Motorcycle Newsmagazine we were working on was our largest of the year. The plan was to distribute 10,000 copies at the Cycle World/International Motorcycle Show. It didn’t look like I was going to be in any shape to pull that off.
My wife stepped in and cracked the whip with the staff. She wrote a column to fill the page where my column usually appeared. She assembled the notes on my European Adventure story finishing the first installment. She organized all the boards and computer discs, delivered them to our printer and had 10,000 copies delivered to our booth at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Additionally she supervised our staff for the entire show then came to the hospital every night to see me and talk to me. Many have told me since, “your wife’s a rock, she’s definitely a keeper.” I truly love my Roberta, I knew she was special from the first day we met.
At the motorcycle show word of my illness started to spread. As members of our staff wandered about each was asked about my prognosis. The Christian Motorcyclists Association held a prayer vigil at our booth. When conversations turned toward my fate all went quiet.
Meanwhile the story had reached the motorcycle community on the internet. Calls came to the critical care unit from across the country and around the world. Riders that I’ve communicated with but never met had called to check on my progress. They all sent their prayers.
At the request of my neighbors, a group of believers in ancient Indian ways sequestered themselves in a teepee on the Arizona desert. They built a ritual fire and began a “sweat”. As they chanted and prayed perspiration poured down their bodies soaking the desert floor. That day I woke from the coma.
Every day since my vision is more clear. I’ve contacted most of my friends, among them I include those of you that advertise with us. Unanimously I’ve been informed, “we prayed for you.” Everyone asked if there was anything they could do. Was there anything that I needed?
One of my nurses reminded me of the proverb, “if you can count your true friends on one hand, you are a lucky man.” I am much more lucky, I have many more true friends than digits and limbs. I now believe that so many guardian angels were called to hover over me that there must have been a shortage everywhere else.
I count those blessings with each activity of daily life. I remember moments that others may take for granted as milestones of my recovery. The day I was able to feed myself, the day I tied the laces of my sneakers. The day I was able to prepare my own breakfast. The day I was strong enough to pull my Super Sunday T-shirt over my head without help. I look forward to the day I can ride. You see, ten days in a coma can turn a marathon runners muscles to mush.
John Haymond, an Attorney whose name you probably recognize from ads on these pages said to me. “In my business I deal with a lot personal tragedies and the families that survive are those with spirituality.”
John was absolutely correct. Whether you believe in Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha or Sun, Fire, Earth and Water, it’s your spirituality that counts. Spirituality is the bond of brotherhood.
There definitely is a Brotherhood and it goes beyond bikers.
Thanks to all of you for sending your prayers and caring so much.
On Saturday night the 17th of January I was having difficulty breathing. My asthma was acting up. A couple of puffs on my inhaler didn’t help, I could feel my lungs continue to tighten. By midnight I was feeling worse. Asthma is unique disease, it tortures you in your childhood, leaves you alone in your twenties and thirties then comes back with a vengeance in your forties.
Not realizing how sick I really was we called a cab. My wife and I headed for Nyack Hospital. During the ride I was getting exponentially worse. The cab driver flew down the street. He blew through the first stop sign at twice the legal speed, took the first right on two wheels and went completely airborne at the crest of the hill. His speed was a major factor in saving my life.
A block from the hospital I couldn’t breathe at all. Terror gripped my chest. I fought for air. At the entrance to the emergency room my body surrendered. Complete respiratory failure. Then cardiac arrest.
There was no white light, no out of body experience. No floating in a canoe down the river to oblivion. Just nothing. Now I view that as proof that my time on this earth was not up.
The emergency room scene was the reality that mirrors those television doctor shows. Respirator, defibrillator a lot of staff working very fast. They restarted my heart. A respirator pumped oxygen into my lungs.
My wife called my parents and they headed for the hospital. My family practice doctor arrived. He called in a Pulmonary Specialist that drove up from New York City at three o’clock in the morning.
It took ‘till 6:30am for the team of doctors and nurses to stabilize me enough to be moved to the critical care unit. My parents went home. They had aged a lifetime in one night seeing their first born near death. The hospital promised to call if there was any change but the staff was not very optimistic. Five thousand people a year die from similar asthma attacks.
Not that I remember anything after the cab arrived at the hospital, nor do I remember any of the following ten days that I spent in a coma. I pieced the story together from what my wife told me.
Business-wise the timing was pretty poor. Not that spending ten days in a coma was ever on the list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. The edition of CC Motorcycle Newsmagazine we were working on was our largest of the year. The plan was to distribute 10,000 copies at the Cycle World/International Motorcycle Show. It didn’t look like I was going to be in any shape to pull that off.
My wife stepped in and cracked the whip with the staff. She wrote a column to fill the page where my column usually appeared. She assembled the notes on my European Adventure story finishing the first installment. She organized all the boards and computer discs, delivered them to our printer and had 10,000 copies delivered to our booth at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Additionally she supervised our staff for the entire show then came to the hospital every night to see me and talk to me. Many have told me since, “your wife’s a rock, she’s definitely a keeper.” I truly love my Roberta, I knew she was special from the first day we met.
At the motorcycle show word of my illness started to spread. As members of our staff wandered about each was asked about my prognosis. The Christian Motorcyclists Association held a prayer vigil at our booth. When conversations turned toward my fate all went quiet.
Meanwhile the story had reached the motorcycle community on the internet. Calls came to the critical care unit from across the country and around the world. Riders that I’ve communicated with but never met had called to check on my progress. They all sent their prayers.
At the request of my neighbors, a group of believers in ancient Indian ways sequestered themselves in a teepee on the Arizona desert. They built a ritual fire and began a “sweat”. As they chanted and prayed perspiration poured down their bodies soaking the desert floor. That day I woke from the coma.
Every day since my vision is more clear. I’ve contacted most of my friends, among them I include those of you that advertise with us. Unanimously I’ve been informed, “we prayed for you.” Everyone asked if there was anything they could do. Was there anything that I needed?
One of my nurses reminded me of the proverb, “if you can count your true friends on one hand, you are a lucky man.” I am much more lucky, I have many more true friends than digits and limbs. I now believe that so many guardian angels were called to hover over me that there must have been a shortage everywhere else.
I count those blessings with each activity of daily life. I remember moments that others may take for granted as milestones of my recovery. The day I was able to feed myself, the day I tied the laces of my sneakers. The day I was able to prepare my own breakfast. The day I was strong enough to pull my Super Sunday T-shirt over my head without help. I look forward to the day I can ride. You see, ten days in a coma can turn a marathon runners muscles to mush.
John Haymond, an Attorney whose name you probably recognize from ads on these pages said to me. “In my business I deal with a lot personal tragedies and the families that survive are those with spirituality.”
John was absolutely correct. Whether you believe in Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha or Sun, Fire, Earth and Water, it’s your spirituality that counts. Spirituality is the bond of brotherhood.
There definitely is a Brotherhood and it goes beyond bikers.
Thanks to all of you for sending your prayers and caring so much.
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