Today in motorcycle history, February 19, 1984

  

  

  Russian Ice Speedway rider, Anatoly Vasilievich Gladyshev, dies after getting tangled with another rider while making a pass on an inner lane during a race in Moscow. Anatoly was thrown from his bike directly into the path of oncoming riders. He is killed instantly.

   A master mechanic, the 37 year-old Gladyshev was offered the position of mechanic for the Russian national team if he retired, but twisting a wrench couldn't compare to twisting the throttle. So, he continued competing, mostly as a sub replacing injured teammates.

  After Anatoly Gladyshev's death an annual race was held in his honor in Irkutsk (Siberia).

  A two-time World Champion, Gladyshev won a Gold Medal in 1979 (the first Team World Championship) with team Inzell and again in 1981 as a member of Assen.


  





  Also on this day in 1980, Bon Scott dies in South London.


  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 13, 1970

  
    

  

  

  Black Sabbath release their debut album, "Black Sabbath". The album will go on to "change the face of rock music."

 

  The images their lyrics (and sound) evoke are that of skulls, smoke and demons, perfectly suited for motorcycle paint jobs.

  I was in a "biker bar" in Maine that only had Black Sabbath on their jukebox. Only Sabbath CD's. It was great.  I used to work with a guy that had a 1965 ironhead Sportster. He had  the image of the album "Paranoid" on the tank and "Ironman" painted on the oil tank. Man, he thought that was so cool.

  Rolling Stone '​s Lester Bangs described the band as, "just like Cream! But worse," and he dismissed the album as "a shuck – despite the murky song titles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley...."

  

  Forty-five years later Black Sabbath's music can still be heard cranked-up in bike bars worldwide. 

 

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 12, 1972

  


  


  

  The 15,007,034th VW Beetle rolls off the assembly line, breaking the record for total production set by the Model T Ford. 
  Now, what to do with all those old Bugs...it's trike time!

  Join the rearend of a Volkswagen with the frontend of a motorcycle, cover it with a body painted primer grey or candy apple red, chrome-out the motor and fit it with a couple of big-ass Weber carbs, throw on some fat tires and you have yourself a trike!

  The VW trike is fast, lightweight and damn good on gas. Why, it's the perfect blend of car and bike. Whether you're doing the mild, a DIY VW trike kit or the wild, such as "The Bug Eye", a 1966 chopped Beetle body with a 96" Harley-Davidson shovelhead motor, 14" over twisted springer front end with a 21" front wheel. The Beetle is the perfect starting point for a trike conversion.





  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 11, 2007

   I came across this on one of my internet travels in search of a motorcycle tech or tale.  From "Transversality" by Robert O'Toole, University of Warwick in Coventry, UK, dated February 11, 2007. Maybe it will inspire someone out there to go for a ride.....to a library.

  One of the best accounts of a motorcycle ride, by a great writer and diarist: T.E. Lawrence, from his RAF journals, The Mint.



  The Road


  The extravagance in which my surplus emotion expressed itself lay on the road. So long as roads were tarred blue and straight; not hedged; and empty and dry, so long I was rich.

  Nightly I’d run up from the hangar, upon the last stroke of work, spurring my tired feet to be nimble. The very movement refreshed them, after the day-long restraint of service. In five minutes my bed would be down, ready for the night: in four more I was in breeches and puttees, pulling on my gauntlets as I walked over to my bike, which lived in a garage-hut, opposite. Its tyres never wanted air, its engine had a habit of starting at second kick: a good habit, for only by frantic plunges upon the starting pedal could my puny weight force the engine over the seven atmospheres of its compression.

  Boanerges’ first glad roar at being alive again nightly jarred the huts of Cadet College into life. ‘There he goes, the noisy bugger,’ someone would say enviously in every flight. It is part of an airman’s profession to be knowing with engines: and a thoroughbred engine is our undying satisfaction. The camp wore the virtue of my Brough like a flower in its cap. Tonight Tug and Dusty came to the step of our hut to see me off. ‘Running down to Smoke, perhaps?’ jeered Dusty; hitting at my regular game of London and back for tea on fine Wednesday afternoons.

  Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders in middle. I chug lordlily past the guard-room and through the speed limit at no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and the way straightens. Now for it. The engine’s final development is fifty-two horse-power. A miracle that all this docile strength waits behind one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand....







  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 10, 1939

 

  

  







  Peter Purves, presenter of the long-running BBC1 trials bike series "Kick Start", is born in New Longton, near Preston, Lancashire, UK.







  While the 1978 Lombard RAC Rally organizer, Nick Brittan was staring out the window of his local pub when-BAM!-the idea that top trials motorcyclists, competing over a hazardous track and obstacles with the possibility of blood and/or broken bones might make exciting television. After a dozen or so phone calls he was finally able to pitch the idea to his connections at BBC1...

  Run against a timing clock, the show illustrated some of the skills needed in normal  motorcycle trials riding. In the Kick Start format, the riders went over obstacles such as piles of logs, 55 gallon oil drums, thru water troughs, up steep banking or a cliff-face and over cars. Penalties, in the form of time added to their time, would be given for putting a foot on the ground while tackling an obstacle or touching or knocking over specified parts of an obstacle.



  The course for the three-part series was devised by trials rider Sammy Miller and constructed within the World Famous Donington Park Race Circuit. 

  Kick Start ran on BBC1 from August 6, 1979 – June 1, 1988.





  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, February 9, 1974

   




   






  The Stooges play Detroit’s Michigan Palace Theatre. It will turn out to be the band’s last gig together before they call it quits.

  Prior to the show Iggy Pop gave a radio interview in which he "called on" the Detroit chapter of the Scorpions MC. He allegedly screwed a member's girlfriend and now he wanted tell all about it. Iggy called the club a bunch of fuckin' rats. The club showed up and pelts the band with broken glass, beer bottles full of urine, eggs, ice, jelly beans, and shovels (yeah, I said shovels). Undeterred, Iggy continues to taunt the crowd/the club, “You pricks can throw everything in the world… your girlfriend will still love me.”


  The band feeds off the crowd’s anger and continues to play. Iggy finally tells the crowd, “All right you assholes, wanna hear Louie, Louie? We’ll give you Louie. Louie, ” The Stooges then went on to play a forty-five-minute version of the Kingsmen classic, which includes improvised lyrics by Pop, in which he continues his verbal assault on the club.



  The show finally ends after Iggy Pop focused his attention on one particular Scorpion heckler (believed to be the girl's boyfriend) and said: “Listen, asshole, you heckle me one more time and I’m gonna come down there and kick your ass.” The biker told Pop to come on down, so Iggy jumped off the stage and confronted him. The biker beat the living crap out of Iggy, putting an end to the evening's festivities. 

  The concert was captured live on a reel-to-reel tape machine and in 1976, The Stooges released the recording in an album titled Metallic K.O. It is thought to be the only rock album where you can hear beer bottles breaking against guitar strings. The album remains a favorite among Iggy Pop/Stooges fans.

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD).  www.nabd.org.uk 

Today in motorcycle history, February 6, 2014

  

  

  A private buyer purchases Pope Francis’ 2013 Harley-Davidson Dyna Super Glide for about $327,000 at a Bonhams auction in Paris, France. The price far exceeded the $16,000 to $22,000 presale estimate.

  Plus, a black leather Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket signed by the pontiff fetches $77,485.

  Money from the sale of the two items went to benefit a hostel and soup kitchen at the Termini train station in Rome.


  “We’re absolutely thrilled that our donation of the motorcycle could result in so much good for the charity,” Maripat Blankenheim, a spokeswoman for Harley-Davidson, said in an interview. “I’m not sure that the company had an expectation about what the bike would get, but if we did, it certainly exceeded it.” 

  A 2014 Super Glide's MSRP is $13, 549.

  A vintage black leather Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket with an H-D eagle patch is roughly $545.00.

  A one-year Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.) membership is $45.00.

  A large (14") pepperoni pizza from Zaffiro's" (1724 N Farwell Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202) is $14.50.

  Today in motorcycle history is a proud supporter of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk