More on New York!!!

Cause it Rules! Here are the rest of the pics I have from our trip out East. Pics don't do it justice and the guys we rode with were the best! Everyone from the T.I., Pat and D.C. crew, Kuda and Marcus Dairy to our now great friend Charlie, Fritz, Darren, Walter, FlatIron Mike, The IL Shop and 6th street Hugh, Works Eng Crew and Matchless Bar and the one and only Greaser Mike, Big Nick, Duane Ballard, I am missing too many names here but they are in the pics and Rulers!

Here is links to 2 sets of all the pics

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12677388@N07/sets/72157601955099663/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12677388@N07/sets/72157601954693101/

2 Coolest shops in New York!

If you can find your way to New York you need to go to these 2 shops if you do nothing else! Indian Larry Legacy and Hugh's 6th Street Cycles. Here are a few pics and links to more. Thanks again to Paul and Keino for helping me make sure my tag stayed on my bike and Ally for helping us find a place to stay.

IL Legacy Shop Pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12677388@N07/sets/72157601945634608/

Hugh's 6th St Cycles Shop Pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12677388@N07/sets/72157601945414170/

Did I mention Bonneville

Ok so I'm behind but I will be posting pics of August and Sept trips over the next week. Here is the set from Bonneville with Wes and Chuck from Four Aces. Bonneville is amazing and everyone should go. Joel decided to come out and lend a hand and I bet he does next year too. Thanks again to Wes and Chuck for letting me tag along and help pit, you guys are top notch! Broken chains, blown primary covers, magnetos jumping out of the cases, blown head gaskets and finally 2 welded on carb manifolds completely broken completely off the head! One record and back to the garage to start getting ready for next year with a new plan. I can't wait! Only regret is Nugent played the night we got there and we did't find out til the next day!
Bonneville Pics

View as a Bonneville Slide Show

Smokeout West or Bust?

This week the good people who organize the Horse Smokeout accepted our offer to sponsor the wet t-shirt contest at the Smokeout West In Cottonwood, AZ, this October. This is the second year in a row for this great event, and it'll mark the second time Biltwell has supported the hard-working working girls of the Canyon State. Here are some photos from last year's t-shirt contest to get you in the spirit:



McGoo and the amateur winner of day one.



Titties and beer. It doesn't get much better than that, does it gentlemen?



This photo didn't look blurry when I took it. Was it the beer, or my camera?

Mooneyes Rod & Cycle Show

The 16th Annual Mooneyes Rod and Custom Motorcycle Show is happening this December in Yokohama, Japan. Bill, Chris and I are scrounging for a reason and the money to attend this super cool event. If we can get our Japanese business ducks in a row by Halloween, we should be set on kill for the Mooneyes event. If you haven't heard of the Mooneyes event, check out their website here: http://www.mooneyes.co.jp/english/photo/hcs07/entry/

Dutch Treats

I went on European holiday the week before the Love to Hate Gypsies Run in NYC on August 23. My couch tourism took me to the mean streets of Amsterdam and the back streets of a sleepy hollow called Aarle Rixtel. The latter village was founded in the early 1600's, and is the home of a long-time friend and fellow chopper fanatic Paul DeJong. I delivered a new Biltwell helmet to our friend Paul, and at first he was skepticval about our helmet's one-size-fits-most capability. To prove my point, we strapped a shiny new lid on Paul's six-month-old son Boyd.



Okay--so maybe the Biltwell helmet doesn't fit everyone. If you're a six-month-old baby biker, you probably need to sprout a few more teeth before you try to burn up the highway in a Biltwell lid.



In other news from the Benelux, our friend Maurice (Flying Dutchman on the Jockey Journal) hung out with me at the 19th annual Fat BMX Jam in Aarle Rixtel. FATBMX.com is a website that Paul's brother Bart has been doing for years. Before the interweb, Fat BMX was one of the best BMX 'zines in the world. The BMX-obsessed guys at Biltwell count on Fat BMX to drop the hottest 411 on the 20-inch scene.



This is Fat founder Bart DeJong hanging out with a Fat Jam spectator on the quiet streets of Aarle Rixtel. Those streets won't be quiet for long, however; Paul has been testing out his new helmet on his XL1000 Dutch chopper...



Clearly, Paul DeJong is the king of American Iron in his revered homeland. Thanks for showing me such a good time, guys.

-- McGoo

Pics to go with Bill's NY blog

I will post a ton more pics this weekend. I got a minute on my computer from the road and had to post my thanks to everyone fore mentioned in Bill's blog as well. More hospitality and new great friends treating us like family is what we got from everyone. THANKS!!!!

I (heart) NY

Well, like a week in Bonneville wasn't enough, about 12 hours after Chris got back home, him and I jumped in the team van and hauled balls to the big apple. Even with a stop in Vegas to pick up our friend Eric's bike, we made it in 62 hours. Not bad for a ten year old van and a heavy race car trailer full of bikes.



We rang our pal Mike Camillo as we rolled into the city and he gave us directions to Brooklyn where a cool vintage bike show was going on at a bitchin' little bar called the Bar Matchless. We were treated like family by Chris the bartender and Jennifer the event organizer, from Works Engineering. We donated a helmet for the best Brit chop. It was ironic that Greaser Mike on his 750 CC triumph won the helmet and then rode with us for the next week. Mike's bike is way faster than it looks and he is not afraid to ride it hard. Chris' panhead won best American bike and he got loaded up with patches, t-shirts and more importantly a $50 bar tab that we made sure went to good use. Thanks to the bar and shop guys, we sincerely appreciate the hospitality. A home cooked meal from Mike and his lovely wife rounded out a perfectly executed impromptu day. The next day Greaser Mike treated us to a visit to Alphabet City's premier Brit Bike Guru, Hugh from 6th Street Cycles. What an awesome guy. basement chock full of great flat trackers, rare Trackmaster frames and all sorts of British iron. Thanks for taking time out of your day Hugh, we sure enjoyed the visit.

We made such good time that we were there several days before the actual event started so we rode all over Brooklyn and across one of the many bridges and into Manhattan. Wow. Nothing like it. Bike swallowing potholes, a bazillion people all in a hurry and two cranky old motorcycles that don't care to sit in traffic. Riding through what I think was the Chrysler Building on Park Ave was really cool. We got to the other side and just had to stop and have a hot dog from a street vendor and soak it all in. Everyone says New Yorkers are rude, but we had a different experience. They didn't seem any worse than LA drivers, they just use their horn alot more. A friend from Jersey told me "We ain't rude, we just got shit to do!"

We stopped by the Indian Larry Legacy shop and met Keino (not Chica!) and Paul Cox. Chris had met these guys before, but I hadn't and I couldn't help but feel like I was in the presence of greatness there. Ally (spelling?) was helpful as could be, and pointed us in the right direction for a hotel and even let us store Eric's bike there so he had a solid place to pick it up when he and the wife flew in on Wed AM. We came back humbled by the Brooklyn potholes with Chris' license plate bracket and tailight assembly in hand instead of on the panhead. Paul let us pull it into the shop to dial it in and then welded it up for Chris like it was nothing. Hey, maybe like the baja saying goes, "Bad roads bring good people". Check out their raffle bike for September Smiles. There couldn't be a more deserving organization and how crazy would it be to actually win a bike like this? Thanks again guys!

Monday night, McGoo flew in from a european drinking binge and all of a sudden we had an official chase truck driver and subway navigator. McGoo can subway around like he was born in the lower East Side or something. Chris and I gave up trying to add anything of significance to the plans, we just followed Harold as he raced from one train to another. In pouring rain we walked and subwayed our butts all over Brooklyn and Manhattan. We even managed to go to the Bodies exhibit and look at a bunch of skinned out people. Wow. Remind me to bring some beef jerky to snack on next time!


Come Thursday morning we were met at the Tunnel Diner on the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel by a dozen or so other riders from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut (I didn't forget Jeff!) Bikes were everything from Keith's wild purple BSA to Joe's very sano Triumph to our fearless navigator Fritz's panhead that looked like it was straight out of a David Mann painting. We took off for the 200+ mile trip with Fritz in the lead and a string of scraggly riders in tow. About 40 or so miles into it, my magneto mysteriously jumped time. We marveled at how it could be possible with the input shaft and hex hole in good condition and the points tight, but with some help from Keith, Joe, Fritz and half a dozen other guys we managed to get it re-timed by ear and got the old girl back on the road. Somewhere along the line we lost Keith and a few other riders. They got stopped behind us at a light and we kept thinking they'd catch up. Come to find out, the beezer's oil tank was breaking loose from the mounts and leaking all over the back tire. Ever seen anyone mulch a rear tire? Hey, it makes it a little less slippery! About a hour or so away from the campground for the first night I noticed my right exhaust mount that I had just made a week before had snapped and the pipe was being held precariously by the screw-in spigot in the head. Not real good and it might explain why performance was a little off. Eric was hanging back with me because his risers were shot and his bike handled like a rowing machine. We stopped at some closed down service station and stripped some wire out of an old air conditioning unit and used it to secure the pipe in a couple locations. Later I dialed it in with some hose clamps and had no problems the rest of the trip even though I was wringing the little 650's neck to keep up with all the big twins.

The next couple days were basically the same, ride, drink, camp, repeat. Photos will tell this part of the story better than I could. Just know this: Truth and the Choppahead boys know how to party with a capital "P". We settled out into smaller groups that rode together and finally ended up at the Marcus Dairy in Danbury, CT on Saturday. IronHorse magazine sponsored a hamburger and hot dog BBQ and plenty of cold drinks. Big thanks to Sean Marcus and Todd at IH mag. We hung out here with all of the riders, doing a little maintenance, checking out the carnage to the bikes, swapping bullshit stories, eating ice cream, etc.

All in all, the trip was a great success and we had a lot of fun and rode some pretty hard miles. If you've wondering why we are so slow at returning phone calls and emails, we have no excuse except we've been out playing when we probably should have been working. Chris will be back in on Thursday and will be chained to his desk until all return communications have been handled. Thanks for your patience.

-Bill