“American is Back!” by Stephen Colbert, and USA Today’s MotoGP report

Okay, so it’s somewhat difficult to call Comedy Central’s Colbert Report mainstream media, but it’s hard to beat for quality infotainment. This video Colbert shot on his iPhone of a guy wheelying in the Lincoln Tunnel is priceless, though. He says “America is back,” but we’d argue America never left. Colbert just finally got to see how badass motorcycles are, firsthand. Glad we could cheer him up.

Periodically, I stumble across a statistic that bowls me over, changes the way I think and feel. Earlier this week, I sat over lunch, looking at a recent issue of Diesel Facts, a publication of the German MAN company, which makes diesel engines.

The statistic was in an article about 40,000-horsepower MAN two-stroke marine engines being specified for giant new 400,000-ton bulk carrier ships. The sentence that got me said that 19 such ships “will transport iron ore from South American mines to the Chinese steelworks that currently take 60 percent of all iron ore mined globally.”

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Suspension engineer Jim Lindemann has died after many years of successfully fighting brain cancer. Jim was for 25 years a familiar face on the AMA roadracing circuit and could sometimes be seen with a wire loop around his neck, onto which he had threaded the washer stack of a suspension unit he was servicing at the moment. It kept everything in sequence!

Like the roll of duct tape often kept handy on the wrists of mechanics on the starting grid, that wire loop also proclaimed his profession. Jim helped a great many riders over the years and not only by his knowledge of suspension. He always seemed pleasantly taken by surprise by life, and that optimistic outlook was contagious. Racers need the company of optimists.

We will miss Jim’s presence.

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Note to younger riders from an old rider: Sure, have as much fun in the sun as you can, but if you have Northern European ancestry, be aware that too much skin exposed to sun for too long can kill you. Not right away, but much later in life. Skin cancer is no fun at all. I speak from sad experience. 

When I was a kid (1940s and ’50s), I spent as much time in the sun as I could. My folks encouraged it, being outdoorsy types themselves, and motorcyclists, to boot. So, in the summer, depending on where we might be living (my dad was an Air Force pilot, so we moved a lot), I’d be outside as much as possible, usually getting sunburns instead of tans, thanks to my English and Scottish heritage. I had light blond hair, green eyes and skin blems aplenty. 

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I’m BORED, Kevin…

Dear Cycle World,

I read a column by Kevin Cameron years ago.  In it, he told the story of the BSA (I think) factory moving. Once relocated, they tried to bore BSA cylinders, but could not get them parallel. Finally they brought in the old technician that used to bore the cylinders. They hoped he could show them how to do it.

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In war, there are many casualties–and not just to people, buildings, animals, infrastructure and good taste. Sometimes even motorcycles must suffer, in this instance a perfectly good Pamir 125. Will the mechanic helped fashion 26-inch ape hangers from shotgun barrels, along with a suicide shifter and highway bars with the stirrups made out of chain. A custom air filter, rigid frame, custom headlight, and a seat off of a Harley round out the list of modifications.

In the attached picture from left to right: Will, Josey, and Wales, whose names have been changed and faces covered for security reasons and to hide their sniggering, somewhere in Afghanistan…

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For World War I or II warbird enthusiasts, the annual release of Philip Makanna’s “GHOSTS” large-format calendars is itself a red-letter day because his stunning air-to-air photography is breathtaking in its art.

This year, Phil will receive the International Society for Aviation Photography Lifetime Achievement Award, and his 2011 “Ghosts of the Great War” has won the International Calendar Competition’s “Calendar of the Year” and “Best of Show” awards.

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A decade ago, Cycle World and Ride for Kids came together with a common goal to make a difference in the lives of brain tumor survivors. With the importance of education in mind, the foundation was built for Cycle World’s Joseph C. Parkhurst Education Fund. This fund, named after Cycle World’s founder, Joe Parkhurst, is a unique college scholarship fund dedicated to helping pediatric brain tumor survivors achieve their educational hopes and dreams.

Due to the tremendous advancements made in pediatric brain tumor research and treatment, more children are surviving the deadliest form of childhood cancer than ever before. As they progress in school and aspire to attend college, they are faced with yet another challenge. After many years of life-saving medical procedures and stacking medical bills, families of these survivors are finding the cost of a secondary education for their children too much to bear. This unsettling reality has become commonplace for many survivors and their families, but through the efforts of Cycle World, Ride for Kids and thousands of readers, fans and supporters like you, $276,000 has been raised and 788 college scholarships have been awarded since 2002.

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Friday morning, between practice and his SuperBike race, Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Blake Young told me, “I have a weird feeling about today’s race. Usually I have a definite feeling before a race starts, about whether or not I’m going to win that race. But this feeling is just weird. I can’t tell if I’m going to win or do well or what. I don’t know what to think.”

Blake Young (leading Tommy Hayden) started off his SuperBike season right with a double victory at the opening round in Daytona. Photo by Catherine Wedmore

Young won that SuperBike race. I didn’t have the chance to talk with him afterward, to find out what it felt like to have the uncertainty of his weird feeling transform into earned fortune. I didn’t have the chance until after Saturday’s SuperBike race, which he also won.

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What’s the story this weekend in roadracing in the Daytona 200 on International Speedway Boulevard? Maybe it’s kids, maybe it’s a foreigner.

Bostjan Skubic on his SuperBike. Skubic is a 37-year-old racer from Slovenia and a Daytona regular with some good finishes in the past. Photo by Catherine Wedmore

Is it the economy, is it the grueling P90X program necessary to be in winning form, or is it the long working hours that have resulted in Jason DiSalvo being the oldest rider on the provisional front row for the Daytona 200? He’s under 30 years old! He’s 27. The second-fastest rider, P.J. Jacobson, is only 17. Third quickest in the field is JD Beach, who’s 19 years old. And Danny Eslick, with the fourth-fastest time of all, is 24. This is the first time in years that adding up the ages of the front row’s four riders in qualifying for the Daytona 200 adds up to an age that one human being might be, and still be a living human being. But we won’t know if this holds until Friday afternoon. Bless the kids.

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Photography by Mark Hoyer

Just your basic ZX-6R-powered 150-mph trike

If you’re trying to raise awareness about a thing, rolling around in a Scorpion P6 trike is a good way to do it. At the start of a cross-country tour to raise awareness and funds for the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation, Scorpion’s Director of Marketing Shannon Serig rolled into the Cycle World compound to say hello and to raise awareness also about this sick Kawasaki ZX-6R-powered trike his Miami-based company produces.

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Racing pic: Don Canet, on his nitrous-powered Formula USA Suzuki, leads Barry Burke. Burke later got an unexpected face full of flames from the tailpipe of Canet's Suzuki while drafting down the front straight. (Photo by Larry Lawrence)

The old Formula USA Series, a run-what-you-brung roadracing championship that started out as a Willow Springs Raceway club series and then went national under the WERA Pro Series banner, brought out some of the most unusual roadracing bikes ever.

So unusual were they that A lot of these racebikes had names. There was the Terminator, a pumped-up 1986 Kawasaki Ninja ZX1000 campaigned by early F-USA champ Earl Roloff; Yoshimura Suzuki’s Big Papa ridden by Scott Gray and Valvoline Suzuki’s Methanol Monster, ridden primarily by Kurt Hall, to name a few. Rich Oliver and Robbie Petersen even raced factory Marlboro Team Roberts Yamaha YZR500 Grand Prix bikes in the series. There were turbocharged bikes, punched-out 250 Grand Prix machines and Doug Polen once even rolled up to a race with a Suzuki that burned methane (which was promptly banned).

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2003 Wasn’t Such a Bad Year, Really…

But first, let’s turn the clock back a little farther. It was my turn to write “25 Years Ago” last month, wherein each issue one of us performs the dogged research of finding a 25-year-old copy of CW and regurgitating/interpreting the pertinent contents. Yes, we get paid for doing this, and it should be hazardous duty: It’s so easy to waste hours when you start going through these thick bound annuals looking at old bikes, ads and the people who’ve populated the magazine over the years. When I came to work at CW for the first time almost 20 years ago, “25 Years Ago” dealt with people and motorcycles I’d never heard of (mostly because 25 years before 1992, CW was just getting off the ground and so was I). Suddenly, “25 Years Ago” is beginning to attain personal relevance: The late ’80s was about the time I began to accept the fact that I’d probably never amount to anything, and so began cultivating a serious relationship with motorcycles.

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The GP-inspired 1986 Suzuki GSX-R750 made other sportbikes of the era look almost general purpose.

We’re coming up on the 25th anniversary of the American launch of the Suzuki GSX-R, undoubtedly the most successful sportbike of all time.

One of Suzuki’s strategies on establishing the sporting credentials of the GSX-R in America back in 1986 was by paying generous contingency payouts to winners of club races who rode the new Gixxer. Winners of 750cc and Open Production classes in club events across the country could win $1000 per race. While $1000 doesn’t sound like a ton of money today, let’s put it in context: You could buy a new Suzuki GSX-R750 retail for $4299 and go racing. An AMA Superbike podium (third) at the time only paid $1900, and you’d have to have a motorcycle with at least $15,000-$20,000 invested to have a realistic shot at scoring that AMA podium. Also, Yamaha had a very successful contingency racing program for its FZ750 and FJ600 the year before that paid $500 per win. With mathematics like that, it’s easy to see why a lot of riders in 1986 decided to go the Suzuki route.

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