That thing got a Hemi?

Back in 2005, the phrase in the title of this post was a popular advertising catchphrase apparently. I dimly recall some car commercials with a couple of doofus cagers in some junky nascar-wannabe car consistently losing to some truck with a Hemi engine in it.

Well, I came upon these pictures on ign.com where they apparently hosted a competition back then for the weirdest thing you could mate a Hemi engine onto.....the winner was this trike:



You can just imagine the looks on the cagers as you rode this sucker down the road! This trike must have had the turning radius of a boat! A large and noisy boat.

Here's a link to the full article, the runner-ups are shown as well. LINK

LINK: Motorcycle Ads from the Past

I saw this posting while perusing past blog postings on Mike Werner's "Bike in the Fast Lane" blog about Motorcycle News. It's one of my daily reads, this site. LINK

The posting that caught my eye was the link to a website where the author has posted scans of cool motorcycle ads from 1971-1972. Makes me kind of wonder why today's ads are not as cool, perhaps the fact that I am beemer-biased and most of the time BMW's advertisers really don't cut it in my opinion. The BMW ads on this site really do their job well, that is, making you want to go and ride one of these motorcycles!

Wunderbike....such a pretty motorcycle

There's other marques on the above link, worth taking a look if you've lusted after Nortons, BSAs, and older versions of several Japanese brands.

The Norton Commando, beautiful motorcycle don't you think?

A Bonny, another example of rolling art. Too bad the British motorcycles of this era had a bad reputation for leakage and dependability, still, very nice to look at.

Now, having gone to the site link above, I invite you to this site where the author has collected what he terms "Late '70s BMW Motorcycle Ephemera". LINK

It's a large collection of sales brochures, magazine ads, magazine reviews/tests and other such material. There's some really cool ads on this site as well, here's one of my favorites:

Sometimes, its worth it to not take the motorcycle

I've been to the Garden of the Gods park near Colorado Springs many times on my motorcycle. Being all geared up, it never crossed my mind to wander very far from my motorcycle as I sought to pose her with large and interesting rock formations in the background.

Last weekend, my family and I took the cage down to Colorado Springs to both see the US Olympic Training Center located there and have lunch at the Garden of the Gods. This was the first time I'd caged it to the garden and I must say it was an enjoyable and different experience.

I was able to wander paths closed to vehicles with my family and take pictures of the same rock formations I'd photographed from vehicle-accessible roads that circumnavigate the park. Different angles rendered interesting and different views.






The boys enjoyed clambering over the smaller rock formations that did not have signs banning climbing and managed to do it without getting hurt. It was all good.



Afterwards, I took them to one of my favorite rides, the South Platte River road near Deckers and we looked at the large boulders in the river. We even clambered up some gravelly slopes towards some larger boulders which have yet to roll down into the river.



We didn't get home till after dark but I believe a good time was had by all. Caging it on routes I usually travel on by motorcycle was different, not as bad as I thought it'd be.

One thing that amused me and my wife is I'd keep saying stuff like: "ok, now we should be coming up shortly on a landmark", whatever landmark it was, we would not reach it shortly but some time later....apparently I move faster on a motorcycle! : )

Mild Weather P0rn

The forecast for this afternoon was 40% thunder showers. Cool!

Errands, shopping by my loving wife and seeing "Streets of Fire" again on TV kept me from departing until it was after 3pm. This worked out good for me since the day had been gorgeous up until then. Since the objective was to get some "weather porn" with the approaching storm front, the timing worked well. We'd just had a week of gorgeously sunny and mostly temperate riding weather but what's the fun in that? : )

I headed South towards Parker using the back roads through the neighborhood suburbs to the West of the town of Parker. I crossed westward on Hess Road and explored some roads I'd not been on before on the eastern suburbs of Parker. The area afforded me some nice, not too heavily built-up locations for shots of Maria with the approaching storm in the background.

Near the Double Angels Baseball Park, Parker

Maria keeps a weather eye out

The storm gets a bit closer

Near home at the Plains Conservation Center

It was starting to lightly rain as I took the last few shots so I scooted on home. The winds were picking up as well but I managed to make it home with no problems.

Hope you enjoyed the weather porn, not very extreme stuff but not bad. I've got to figure out why my camera is not locking in the exposure setting from shot to shot on the panorama shots, it causes those lines between segments.