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Sitting here holed up in the Narita, Japan airport mulling over the injustices of life (my Northwest flight to LAX is delayed beyond my connection to get me back to Phoenix…but I am sipping on a bottomless glass of Bailey’s), I had to reflect on what I saw on the bus ride to the airport this morning - Japanese motorcycle cops.

Its the rainy season here…which is probably why my f’ing flight is 3 hours late and counting…and that does not stop the law efforts of the Aichi prefecture policing.

<shit - the bottle of Bailey’s just ran out>

These guys are tough as nails.  Maybe not Noriyuki Haga tough, but tough nonetheless.  Its raining cats and dogs here, enough that the blazing inferno

You have made my life so much easier. No longer do I have to try to convince people that motorcyclists do not have death wishes and are, in fact, a safe and responsible bunch. You have finally revealed the truth for all to see: motorcyclists really are the irresponsible, reckless, speed-demons that the general public has always thought.

I am glad that a group of motorcyclists has finally stood up and let everyone know that the roads and highways are our personal playgrounds and that we don’t give a whit about the safety or convenience of others on the road.

Now that the truth has been revealed, I am sure the non-riding, voting public will simply quake with fear and

For those of you that keep up with racing, I have to recognize Noriuki Haga’s accomplishment this past weekend.

For those of you who attended or watched the WSBK’s race at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah two weeks ago, you know that Hagasan crashed in qualifying breaking a collarbone.

Now for those of you who have never broken a collarbone (clavicle), it hurts like a son-of-a-B! I’ve done it twice and once the swelling comes up to full pressure  (about a day) any movement is almost unbearable. Think coughing with a broken rib. This excruciating pain lasts 2 to 3 weeks.

Did the Samurai of Slide pack it in for the weekend? Hell, no!

He went out later that same afternoon and did Superpole,

A recent article in Wired magazine purports that motorcycles are worse polluters than cars, dismissing them as a good alternative form of transportation.

Here’s a link to the article:

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/motorcycles-pol.html

This started an email thread between myself and some fellow enthusiasts ………….
Someone:
 
 

 It’s just not true. The person has obviously done no research and has quoted someone else who has done no research. Typical sensationalist journalism.

 If you compare a car and bike from this past model year, the bike (even with a catalytic converter - very common on newer motorcycles) put out about double the “pollution” per gallon. But it also gets at least twice the gas mileage, which makes it a wash, especially since most people drive their cars alone. We (motorcycles)

Our Great White American hope, Ben Spies, who is the current two-time AMA Superbike Champion, and points leader during the current season has his sights set on joining a bigger circus, as well he should. And as is typical for such talent, MotoGP is front and center on his radar screen. Apparently, he is scheduled to be the American wildcard rider at the two US rounds (Laguna and Indy) of MotoGP this season. While I’m all for great riders moving up to the premier series, I think Ben would be better served by going WSBK racing for a couple seasons and a couple reasons.

Ben’s alliance with Suzuki is well known. He’s been battling his teammate Mat Mladin for several years now on the

How much time do you spend with the throttle turned to the stop? Unless you have a Ninja 250 or some bike that’s more than 30 years old, probably not often. In fact, maybe pretty close to never. Motorcycles these days are so powerful and have such good performance at part throttle, you’ve gotta have a lot of open road or dirt to go WFO for more than a second or two.

This reality became readily apparent to me on my latest dirtbike, a 2007 Yamaha WR450F. Yamaha decided to limit the throttle to only half it’s normal range as delivered from the factory. One theory says, it’s to keep the average rider from getting in over his/her head on those

Between work travel and fun travel, I haven’t had a lot of time to belt out much in the way of articles. Oh yeah, I don’t have a street bike anymore either. But my fun travel this past weekend did involve motorcycles - fast as hell ones.

On Friday, I had a red-eye flight back into town returning from a business trip only to go back to the airport in the afternnon to jet off to Salt Lake City for the 2008 World Superbike races (and AMA too). This was held at Miller Motorsports Park just outside SLC.  It was a 4-day event running from Thursday until Sunday when the main events took place.  A buddy and I were only