It looks like Harley-Davidson has decided to kill of Buell. As illustrated above, they made very sexy pieces of machinery with truly unique engineering.

My friends from 702sportbikes hauled my bike down to Santa Monica today so we could ride in the area. I’ve got a few more pictures on Flickr… and some poor video of Paul doing a carnival game in full race leathers. Continue reading →

This is Matt going through Da Spot. We took off at 6am this morning to beat the heat with 17 bikes total. I was back by 10am and the temp was still tolerable. The ride was going pretty good till Rican dropped his wallet. I pulled to the side to see what was up and dropped the bike in the loose dirt. The back of the mirror, the hand guard, the frame puck, the rear slider, and the header pipe all got scratched. The only one that really bothers me is the header, but I was going to wrap that anyway when the finish eventually discolors. I came out alright, just got an interesting bruise. My leg armor protected my knees and the leather jacket took care of my shoulders. You can see more photos of the ride here.

This morning we did a ride up Mt. Charleston for breakfast at the lodge. It’s 22 miles from the north end of Las Vegas. Even at 8am it was already getting hot out, but once we got up in the mountains it had dropped a refreshing 20degF. We came in from the north end and it was neat to watch the vegetation slowly gain height from desert scrub all the way to full pine trees once we started gaining elevation. A great ride and definitely a place I’ll remember the next time I try to escape the heat. Here are my photos and a picture of me at the start. We had 40+ motorcycles today.

I was coming to the end of a two week stay in LA with Ryan when I found out my riding buddy Paul was going to be getting married in the hills around Malibu. I went to the wedding last Saturday and then went riding with my friends Larry and Kellee on Sunday.

I didn’t have my bike with me, but I did have all the safety gear so I rented from SportBikeRental.com. They delivered a 2007 Honda CBR 600RR for me to use for 24 hours. It was definitely a different ride than my Buell CityX. For one the redline is 15,000rpm while my bike redlines at 6,500rpm a speed I didn’t drop below while cruising on the Honda. The riding position is also more extreme compared to the upright position on my bike. We spent nearly 7 hours in the Santa Monica mountains. Most of the roads were pretty tight with a lot of technical 1st gear work… except I threw it into 2nd gear because the power delivery in 1st was ridiculously harsh. 2nd gear really helped smooth things out. I longed to ride my own bike. I’m sure someone used to inline-4 cylinders would have been more comfortable. Truth is bikes like the RR aren’t the easiest rides unless you’re wringing them out at the top end. It was a good day and I’ve geotagged all the photos; you’ll see a lot of them from The Rock Store.

I rode my own bike on Monday when got back to Las Vegas. It was good to be back, but I noticed a few things. I was riding the bike much higher in rpm band than I normally do. Which is either a habit left over from the previous day or I just got the ear plugs jammed in too far and couldn’t tell where I was. It also felt like I was putting my foot through the (virtual) floor when trying to use the rear brake so I might have to raise that up. It felt great to be back on my bike though; really fits like a glove.

First Annual 702sportbikes BBQ photoset on Flickr.

…but these “professionals” insisted on washing my bike for free. Not too sure what their profession was though…

Bikini wash math: each girl does about 20% of the cleaning. 4 girls means it got about 80% clean. Oh well, it was free and that sure beats doing it myself. Whole set on Flickr.

I also went and looked at that 1957 Chevy panel truck. It’s just as nice as I expected and I’m seriously considering buying it.

Through a minimal amount of coercion we were able to get 55 motorcycles from 702sportbikes to show up for a group ride today. We rode down the west side of Lake Mead and stopped for lunch at the marina. I’ve uploaded 41 pictures from the day to Flickr. I’ve also got video that I still need to go through. Here’s a picture of Ivan, me, and John from today.

Update: Here’s a video cut back to back of Paul running the corners yesterday (the person in the truck he passes is one of us).

Update: Here are Kurt and Jason.

http://blip.tv/play/hj6o_EU
I’ve uploaded a short video from the race last Sunday. It shows: the start, lap two front straight, lap three turn one. I’ve also got two pictures of Kurt during the second race.

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I’m at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway watching a couple friends race in the WERA road racing series. I’m working at a table 2 feet from the bikes sprinting towards the pit exit. A friend commented yesterday on what good technique this picture from the track demonstrated. I had a guess based on the “Cycle World” leathers that was later confirmed: that’s Nick Ienatsch, the man who literally wrote the book on sport riding techniques.