In perfect riding weather, the well-known Tasmanian motorcycle and motorsport identity was given a send-off by a large contingent of his fellow bikers aboard their thundering steeds.

Shaun Kelly took his father on the last ride, with an affectionate pat to the decorated coffin mounted aboard a specially made motorcycle sidecar as they set off.

Terence Andrew "Laurie" Kelly, 68, died last week after a long battle with cancer.

A contingent of more than 400 friends, family, business associates and members of Tasmanian and interstate motorcycle clubs turned out for his funeral.

With police roadblocks along the route, the funeral procession wound from Moonah across the Bowen Bridge, over Grasstree Hill and on to Mornington, bending the odd road rule along the way. At the Millingtons funeral centre, the crowd spilled out of the building and into the carpark.

Members of the Rebels, Saracens, Ulysses, Remembrance, Devil's Henchmen, God's Garbage, God Squad and Vietnam Veterans motorcycle clubs were represented.

Shaun Kelly said his father was a tough but fair man who was well respected by his large circle of friends.

"Dad was an icon, a legend, a best mate," he said.

"I've had a fair few phone calls over the last week that have prompted me to realise my old man was more than just my old man. He was a great friend to a lot of people.

"He helped a lot of people and he'd take the shirt off his back to help you out."

Shaun said his father would be remembered for his extraordinary mechanical ability.

"In the middle of the night he could build a motor at Bathurst using godforsaken parts. He could make strawberry jam out of the proverbial," he said.

The crowd heard Mr Kelly was not the biggest fan of the police but had nevertheless hosted Hobart's first policemen's ball in his loungeroom - or at least kept a couple dancing until their back-up arrived.

Mr Kelly, a member of the Saracens Motorcycle Club, raced bikes for 55 years and spent the past 15 building bikes and cars. He is survived by Sandra, his wife of 43 years.

When strains of the Eagles' Hotel California faded, mourners held a wake at the Willows Tavern at Risdon.

A biker priest who was a founding member of one of the world's largest motorcycle clubs has died.

The Rev William Shergold, better known as Father Bill, opened up the 59 Club to rockers where it became a famous hangout during the 1960s.

During its heyday, the club was the largest motorcycle club in the world, with more than 20,000 members.

Father Bill died in the early hours of Sunday May 17 at his care home in Wells, Somerset, after a long illness at the age of 89.

Ordained in Poplar, east London, in 1942 during the Blitz, Father Bill rode motorcycles around his parish as a cheap and efficient mode of transport.

At one point he considered ditching the bike as some of his parishoners did not appreciate him coming to services with oily hands and grubby clothes.

But he decided it was the best way to help him do the Lord's work when his motorcycle got him across London on a wet autumn night to the bedside of a seriously ill child to comfort the family.

In the early 1960s, Father Bill was instrumental in introducing a bikers' section into the Eton Mission youth club based at Hackney Wick in London's East End.

The 59 Club was set up with the Rev John Oates and Father Graham Hullett as a church run youth club but it turned into a refuge for bikers to share their passion.

At the time rockers were feared and the club became a place where they were respected and welcomed.

Many stars of the time supported the club and Cliff Richard, Dame Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon went to its opening night.

In 1969, Father Bill moved to Dover where he was contacted by local motorcyclists, who asked him to help the town have its own club, and set up the 69 Club.

After a few years in the countryside, he moved back to his first parish in Poplar, and on retirement carried on his work unpaid before moving to Wells in 1999 to be closer to his family.

Members of the 59 and 69 Clubs each elected him life president.

The 59 Club will hold a memorial service for Father Bill on September 12, which coincides with its 50th Anniversary, where there will be a blessing of bikes.

Father Graham Hullett paid tribute to Father Bill: "Father Bill did so much for the motorcycling fraternity when biking became so popular among young people in the early 60s," he told Motorcycle News.

"A great fellowship developed which was exciting to be a part of and made us proud to be bikers.

"The 59 Club played a major role in making young rockers, blokes and girls, a welcomed part of society."

    Gussie and Addie were intelligent young women in their 20s when they set out from Sheepshead Bay in New York City to begin their transcontinental journey. They left on July 4th and arrived in Los Angeles on September 8th after traveling 5,500 miles over hazardous roads.  There were no superhighways in those days. They would have to be content with dry weather, although washouts, heavy rains, and mud were often the conditions that they had to accept.

"ON a sultry night in Florida 32 years ago, 14-year-old Samantha Morgan sat, entranced, inside a roaring and heaving motordrome, looking down on a man on a motorcycle as he rode effortlessly around in circles, perpendicular to the floor at 60 miles an hour, laughing all the while.

“I saw this guy sideways on the wall, and it was like somebody slapped me,” she said. “It was the coolest thing I ever saw.” When the show was over, she walked up to the owner, Sonny Pelaquin, and asked, “Can girls do this?”

Indeed they could, and at 46 the girl is still doing it, sometimes 13 times a day, on what is known as the Wall of Death. “She’s the best there is,” said Sandra Donmoyer, 27, who learned to ride the Wall from Ms. Morgan. “I’ve never seen a trick rider like her. She’s amazing.”

The Wall of Death motordrome is a 30-foot movable circle made of Douglas fir. It is 15 feet tall and looks like an old-fashioned wooden water tank or silo, and within that circle, motorcycle riders seem to defy both the laws of physics and common sense. They ride a couple of loops around the arena until they are going fast enough to make their bikes cling to the wall. They don’t wear helmets, because the G-force would exert such a pull on the helmets that it would be impossible to hold up their heads.

Ms. Morgan, who also uses the stage name Samantha Morgan Storm, was getting ready two weeks ago for an evening of three shows inside Jay Lightnin’s Wall of Death at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the country’s largest, an annual event that draws more than a half million people. The motordrome is a small part of this event, set up in a parking lot in front of a biker bar and drawing 20 to 30 people per show.

The slight, unassuming Ms. Morgan smiled a big smile when asked why she chose this unusual occupation, and then shrugged. “I fell in love with the wall,” she said.

She and Mr. Pelaquin, who died from diabetes complications in 2002, were inducted into the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame earlier that day.

“Sonny loved the wall,” she said, a look of reminiscence on her face. “He always laughed when he rode.”

Surrounded by her dogs Mischief and Daisy, in an air-conditioned trailer that was a refuge from the blast-furnace South Dakota heat, she confessed to some preshow anxiety. “I feel like a kid before the first show,” she said. “I always have butterflies. Not scared, but butterflies.”

Such feelings, of course, are the coin of the realm for those involved in such pursuits. “If the wheel slips while you are up there on the wall and you catch it and you don’t hit the floor, it’s kind of a rush,” she said.

If you do hit the floor, of course, the rush is drowned out by the pain. And she has hit the floor, dozens of times. There have also been three big hits, which means a broken back. The most memorable time was at a 1992 show in France; she was so broken — pelvis, back, knee, shoulder, rib cage, sternum; “like a swatted fly,” she said — that she couldn’t go home for four months. The upside, she said, “is I speak French now.” The most recent big hit was in 1998, and now she has metal pins and rods in her back, plus one fake vertebra.

The Wall of Death, or the Thrill Arena, as Ms. Morgan prefers to call it, is no carnival trick, but simply the clever exploitation of centrifugal force. Dromes were an outgrowth of mile-long racetracks — similar, but with less steep sidewalls — that were prevalent in the 1920’s. But so many racers and a few spectators died, hence the name Wall of Death, that the tracks were outlawed. The motorcyclists turned to motordromes, and a new phenomenon was born.

Some riders even added lions, creating the lion drome and the Race for Life. Once the riders were zooming around the wall, trained lions would be released, and would charge after the motorcycles, swatting with their huge paws. (They usually wouldn’t catch the bikes.) Mr. Pelaquin’s family owned and operated the last of the lion dromes; that era came to an ignominious end after a drunken carnival worker stuck his hand into the lion cage in 1964 and was bitten by a male lion named King. The police were called, and one bullet later, King was gone and the last lion drome closed.

Motordromes are nearly extinct. There are just three left in this country, Ms. Morgan said, including that of the California Hell Riders, which is based, incongruously, in Swansea, Mass. There are perhaps 15 overseas. One of Ms. Morgan’s pastimes is riding in as many existing dromes as she can find, and so far she’s ridden in 11. An ornately carved drome in Munich stands out.

Jay (Lightnin’) Bentley, a trick rider from the Bay Area, built the one used here. Finished in 1998, it is the first new drome constructed since 1958, he said. “Building it took two years, night and day,” he said. “My neighbors thought I was Noah building an ark in the backyard.” Mr. Bentley tours with his drome, to shows like Sturgis or Biketoberfest in Daytona Beach, Fla., or Evel Knievel days in Butte, Mont.; the five performers — who also construct the heavy drome each time it moves — do 2 to 13 shows a day, depending on the crowd’s interest.

Just before 7 p.m., with a molten sun sinking behind the Black Hills, Mr. Bentley announced over loudspeakers that the first show was about to start. The riders, including Rick Ransom on a kart, and the motorcyclists Wahl E. Walker, Ms. Morgan and Mr. Bentley, revved up.

A few minutes later, Ms. Morgan, the star of the show, was doing her act, in black stretch pants, black boots and a black tank top. Her long silver-blond hair, with two small braids amid a thatch of hair framing her face, blew straight out behind her in the 60-mile-an-hour wind, and a big smile flashed across her face.

The sight was unusual enough to stir the crowd of grizzled, beer-can-holding bikers whose heads swiveled in unison to keep their eyes on the lady. “This is full-blown, not right in the head, something you have to see for yourself, once-in-a-lifetime insanity,” said Rick Krone, a bearded ample-bellied biker from Fargo, N.D. Continuing her act, Ms. Morgan rode no-handed, and then taped the throttle open and turned sideways, riding with her hands and feet splayed out.

The motorcycles and karts flying around the wall created a down-the-rabbit-hole perceptual twist. No other experience comes close.

Ms. Morgan’s fascination with this extreme sport began early. After running away from a troubled foster home in Long Island when she was 11 and living on the streets of East Coast cities for a few years, she ended up at a carnival in Dade County, Fla. The barkers for Sonny Pelaquin’s show, Hell on Wheels, waved her inside. She was hooked. Now her repertory of tricks is among the largest. “She’s one of a kind,” said Mr. Ransom, who has been taking a few pointers from her.

Ms. Morgan rides a 1975 Harley-Davidson 250, but only because her favorite “wall” bike, a 1931 Indian 101 Scout named Beth, needs a new front end. Beth is big, has a low center of gravity and holds the wall much better, which also means Ms. Morgan can do more tricks. If she falls, though, the hefty bike can spell trouble. “When the Indian lands on me, it breaks me in half,” she said. In September, she’ll head off to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to try to break the land speed record, which now stands at 130.115 miles an hour, on an Indian Chief.

As she continues her maverick pursuit, Ms. Morgan worries it may be the end of an era for women in the dromes. There were as many as 30 in the dromes’ heyday, she said, but now there are no young people coming up to take her place. She knows only one other female rider, Ms. Donmoyer, who rides for the Hell Riders and is known as Sandra D.

But Ms. Morgan will continue zooming defiantly around the Wall of Death for some time to come. There is no retirement program for these riders, no health insurance plan, just the dollar bills that flutter to the ground after the spectators are asked to donate toward medical costs; at one point in the show, Ms. Morgan rides with no hands to pluck the proffered bills.

But when it comes down to it, people like her ride the wall to taste that potent mix of G’s and adrenaline. To taste the freedom, for a few fleeting minutes, from the problems afflicting the earthbound. “When I am on the wall,” she said, “is the only time all the pain goes away.”

(Footnote: Sadly our Miss Morgan passed away April 24th 2008 at the age of 53 in her West Palm Beach farm due to complications from the numerous back injuries and broken bones she had sustained in her long illustrious career.)

On a clear, crisp Friday afternoon last December, Ernie and Armando Magri, Shorty Tompkins and Jack Gormely sat at their customary table in Classic Burgers on Fulton Avenue, talking about motorcycles and the good old days, talking about how nothing could stop Armando Magri. Nothing. "Sacramento's Iron Man," they called him on the motorcycle racing circuit in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He wasn't blazingly fast; he just kept coming on that big Harley-Davidson of his. When everyone else had broken down or dropped out, there was Armando, taking the checkered flag. He could ride forever, Armando Magri.

He did ride forever. They'd been meeting at Classic Burgers for years, flirting with waitresses and jawing about bikes. They had plenty to jaw about. Ernie, 88, and Armando, 86, still rode their Harley Sportsters to lunch. Shorty, 80, and Jack, 67, preferred to travel by car, but like the Magri brothers, they'd spent most of their lives around motorcycles. But no one had spent more time around motorcycles than Armando. After his racing career ended, he'd owned and operated the Sacramento Harley-Davidson dealership for more than 30 years, establishing a reputation for fairness and honesty with customers and employees alike. Thereafter, he was known as Mr. Harley-Davidson. For more than half a century, he was at the center of the Northern California motorcycling universe. It wasn't just hogs Armando dealt with. Anything with two wheels and a motor obsessed him. When Harley-Davidson began producing a small bike in the 1950s, he pioneered the sport of dirt biking in the north state. He was larger than life, Armando Magri, a man with 10,000 motorcycle stories. Over the years, Ernie, Shorty and Jack had heard them all. There was the one about the time he'd ridden his Harley-Davidson 2,800 miles from Sacramento to Marion, Indiana, to compete in the miniature TT National Championship motorcycle race in 1938. Rode his Harley five days to get there, then raced the very same bike to first place in his heat race and third place in the main event, beating out some of the best riders in the country. Would have won the damn thing if he hadn't got caught napping in neutral at the start.

Not to mention the time he helped KCRA-Channel 3 scoop the national networks on the 1960 Winter Olympics. A lot of guys garage their bikes at the slightest hint of snow. Not Armando. He threw a chain on the back wheel of his Harley and rode up to Squaw Valley and back through a blinding blizzard to retrieve film footage of the opening ceremonies. Or the time he and some riding buddies manhandled their 500-pound Harleys through the boulder-strewn Rubicon River Canyon in 1940, long before the area became popular with four-wheel-drive enthusiasts, carrying the bikes by hand over rocks and other obstacles after they could ride no farther. He was a damned gladiator, Armando Magri. Literally. At the 1938 California State Fair, he and two other riders donned purple flowing robes and rhinestone-studded headbands to race makeshift chariots, each powered by two Harleys bolted together, around the mile dirt track, broadsliding and crashing into each other like something out of Ben Hur. Ernie, Shorty and Jack had heard these and countless other outlandish stories, and the crazy thing was, most of them were true. Nothing could stop Armando Magri, not retirement, not old age. Armando's friends were so certain of this, they had taken to dubbing any man who demonstrated similar superhuman traits an "Armando." It was a token of affection for a man who was both loved and admired by his friends and associates. Everybody wants their hero to live forever. But even Armando wasn't an "Armando," and Ernie, Shorty and Jack had no way of knowing that their December jaunt to Classic Burgers would be Armando Magri's last ride. Ernie and Armando Magri grew up in Chico, the first and second sons of Italian immigrants. Their early life was disrupted by the divorce of their parents in 1920 and the premature death of their father in 1927. Shortly after his death, their mother moved into a house a block down the street from a gas station run by Jean Boutin. Jean Boutin was 19; her father owned the station. She had a boyish figure, close-cropped hair, and wore men’s work shoes. The fact that she was a tomboy didn’t bother Ernie and Armando, who were 16 and 14 at the time, in the slightest. Jean had a 1926 Chevy roadster. She had a pilot’s license. A woman definitely ahead of her time. Best of all, she had a 1924 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The three of them became thick as thieves, and Ernie and Armando took turns teasing each other about who had the biggest crush on her. “Hey Ernie, you got any money?” Armando asked. “No, I’m flat-busted, just like your girlfriend,” Ernie deadpanned. It was Ernie, by the way, who discovered Jean was a good kisser. Jean rode Ernie and Armando on the back of her Harley through Chico’s dusty streets, teaching them how to push in the clutch on the left floorboard while simultaneously using the left hand to operate the gear shift lever mounted beside the gas tank. This entailed removing the left hand from the handlebar, a maneuver that didn’t exactly inspire confidence in new riders. The first time Ernie took Jean’s bike out on a solo run, he ran over a dog and crashed. Armando had no such problems. From the beginning he was a natural on a motorcycle, already pulling away from his older sibling. Both brothers purchased their own motorcycles shortly thereafter. Armando picked up a 1921 Harley-Davidson for just $6, using money he had saved working summer jobs in the fields and orchards around Chico. Ernie got an Indian Scout--an interesting choice, considering the fierce rivalry between the Harley-Davidson and Indian factories. Eventually, Armando upgraded to a faster, more powerful 1927 Harley-Davidson, and he and Ernie became enthusiastic members of the Chico Motorcycle Club. By 1933, California was firmly in the grip of the Great Depression, and Armando chased jobs all over the north state on his Harley. He worked as a firefighter, a lumber truck driver and a service station assistant. He picked fruit, knocked almonds and pitched hay. He worked as a stonebreaker, a stonecutter and a laborer in a rock quarry. Not able to find work in 1934, he attached a sidecar to his 1927 Harley and started his own motorcycle delivery service. He’d deliver any article weighing less than 50 pounds anywhere in the city for 10 cents. It wasn’t lucrative, but it helped pay the bills until better jobs came along.

Once a motorcycle thrill show came to town, and the owner asked Armando to perform the “egg trick” in the group’s performance. Armando got on his Harley, took it up to 25 mph, stood on the seat with a .22 rifle and tried to shoot the eggs that the owner threw up in the air as the motorcycle passed by. He crashed, much to the crowd’s delight and his own humiliation. A medium-sized man with thick, dark hair and matinee idol looks, Armando enjoyed playing to the crowd and had a real nose for the spotlight. He took up boxing, winning his first bout, losing the second after being pummeled by a supposed has-been boxer, and fighting to a draw in his third and final match. Next he tried wrestling, taking on professional grapplers in the carnivals that constantly toured the small towns. He got trounced in his first match, but got lucky in the second. “Do you wanna wrestle for real,” the professional asked, “or do you wanna put on a good show?” Armando had brought several girls to the carnival, and remembering how badly he’d been beaten in his first match, decided he didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of them. “Let’s put on a good show,” he said. That they did. The girls pounded the edge of the mat the entire match, screaming, “Kill him, Magri, kill him!” It ended in a draw, Armando pocketed $3.50 for his “work,” and he never let on to the girls that the match had been fixed. Through all of this, Armando never stopped riding. He upgraded to a 1934 Harley-Davidson, and he and Ernie continued their sibling rivalry in local field meets sponsored by the Chico Motorcycle Club. Field meets were friendly competitions featuring various events that tested a rider’s skill at stopping, accelerating and turning a motorcycle. In addition, club members often marked out courses to practice real racing. During one such practice, Ernie passed Armando on a corner, and Armando passed him right back, running over Ernie’s leg in the process. The injury happened just days before a big field meet/Tourist Trophy race in Colfax. Ernie wound up resting his leg while Armando and a few other members of the Chico Motorcycle Club rode down to the event.
Armando took second in the field meet and so impressed the sponsors, Sacramento’s Fort Sutter Motorcycle Club, that they asked him to compete in the Tourist Trophy race later in the day. A TT was a completely different animal from the field meet. The track was laid out on a closed dirt course, with left- and right-hand turns, hills, jumps and other obstacles. Racers competed over a set number of laps; the only object was to get to the checkered flag first. In a typical 50-mile race, a rider might make hundreds of gear changes. Finishing, let alone winning, required equal parts skill, courage, endurance and luck. TT racers sometimes spent hours bandaging blistered hands and splinting broken bones after races. Armando had never competed in such an event before. “If it involves a motorcycle, I’m all for it,” he told the club members. By the end of the day, the members of the Fort Sutter Motorcycle Club were wishing they’d never laid eyes on the Italian hayseed from Chico. Wearing cloth jodhpur breeches, leather boots laced up to the knees and a sweatshirt, he bulldogged the hard-tailed motorcycle (rear suspension had yet to be invented) around corners, up hills, over jumps and into the lead and never looked back. He ran away with the race, defeating some of the best riders in Sacramento. Elated, he returned to Chico--on the same motorcycle he had just raced--to inform his latest girlfriend, Wilma, of his success. She had recently won a singing competition on the local radio station, and he had vowed to come back from Colfax victorious as well. When he arrived at Wilma’s house, her sister told him that Wilma was at the carnival. That’s where Armando found her, in the rumble seat of a Model A Ford, smooching with his brother Ernie. If that was supposed to stop Armando Magri, well, it didn’t. Oh, he stopped dating Wilma, all right. He was sore at Ernie for a little while. But that first taste of victory in a real motorcycle race gave him something else to think about. He was only 21, and he had just beaten some of the best riders in Northern California. Who was to say he couldn’t beat the rest of the riders in California? What was stopping him from trying? Armando attached a sidecar to his Harley, loaded it with tools, spare tires and his brother Ernie, and headed south to Hollister to compete against the best riders from San Francisco in the Pacific Coast TT. After completing the six-hour journey, Ernie and Armando detached the sidecar, removed the headlights and running gear, placed a larger front wheel on the motorcycle, and were ready to race. Armando took fourth place, finishing with both eyes almost completely packed with sand. “Why didn’t you quit?” Ernie asked. “I couldn’t,” he grinned, beaming through sandy slits. His performance didn’t sit well with the Bay Area riders, who tried to cheat him out of the $40 awarded for fourth place. Timely intervention by a local CHP officer secured Armando’s winnings, and Ernie drove the sidecar back to Chico, so Armando could get some sleep. After all, he had to get up in the morning and run the motorcycle delivery service. This was the epitome of Class C, “run-what-you-brung” motorcycle racing in California, and Armando became a regular on the circuit during the last half of the 1930s. Class C was just beginning to attain the status of Class A speedway racing, which regularly drew crowds of up to 10,000 people to Sacramento’s Hughes Stadium on Friday nights. Armando began placing consistently in the top five, attracting the attention of Frank Murray, the Harley-Davidson dealer in Sacramento. Murray wanted Armando to race for the shop, so he hired him as an apprentice mechanic in 1937, granting Armando his first steady paycheck in years as well as access to the latest Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Shortly after joining forces with Murray, Armando earned his first nickname. On the way to Saugus to compete in the Southern California TT on a brand new 1937 Harley-Davidson, he hit a patch of oil on the freeway near Fresno, spinning out and crashing. Badly bruised, but not broken, Armando located the local Harley dealer, repaired the motorcycle, then continued on to Saugus, feeling like he’d been run over by a Mack truck. The track was brutal, pounding more than one rider into submission; but Armando hung on, surging ahead of Hap Jones, a national-caliber rider out of San Francisco, on the final laps to take the victory. The next day in the papers, they were calling him Sacramento’s Iron Man. In 1938, Sacramento’s Iron Man was tending Murray’s store when in walked a cute, petite high-school girl wearing a blue angora sweater, a blue skirt and white bobby socks. Her name was Ludella Tritten, and one look told Armando everything he needed to know. He and Lu were married in September 1939, but not even that stopped Armando from entering a race at Ascot Park during the Southern California leg of their honeymoon. In fact, it was beginning to look like nothing really could stop Armando Magri. He and Lu had good jobs, a cozy little rental house in Rio Linda, and Armando’s racing career was going full bore. After third place at the miniature National TT Championship in Marion, the Harley-Davidson factory provided him with travel expenses and a motorcycle for the 1941 Daytona 200, the premier event in American motorcycle racing. Armando lead the race early on, before his transmission locked up on the sixth lap. In June, he won the Pacific Coast TT Championship in Hollister. The winner was awarded a large perpetual trophy, which, if the competitor won the race a second time, became his for life. Armando never won the race a second time, but he ended up keeping the trophy anyway. The United States entered World War II, the Hollister TT was canceled and never held again, and Armando’s dream of becoming a championship motorcycle racer was thrown into limbo. Something had finally stopped Armando Magri. Or so it seemed. As America geared up for the war, Armando quit his job at Frank Murray’s to work at McClellan Air Force Base as an aircraft mechanic. Then he learned that John Harley, one of the Harley-Davidson heirs, was serving as an instructor at the Army’s motorcycle school, based in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Armando knew Harley well, so he wrote and asked about becoming an instructor for the school. Harley told Armando that if he came to Fort Knox immediately, the position was his. Armando quit his job at McClellan, moved Lu in with her parents, threw a big going-away bash, and rode his motorcycle to Fort Knox to join the Army. He ran into Harley as soon as he arrived but Harley ignored Magri. “It’s all a bunch of bullshit,” he told Lu on the phone that night. “He doesn’t have any more pull down here than I do. I’m coming home.” “You mean you moved me in with my parents, had a big going-away party, and now you think you’re coming back!?” Lu scolded. “You might as well join the Army, because you’re going to be drafted anyway.” Armando enlisted, the captain of the school noticed his extensive motorcycle experience, and assigned him to be an instructor after all. To give soldiers experience on motorcycles in the field, the Army conducted motorcycle endurance runs in the woods surrounding Fort Knox. In one particularly muddy, grueling event, 105 riders started and only six finished. Guess who finished first? It was the closest Armando would get to racing for a long time, as he was shipped out to Okinawa after the first two years of his hitch were up. He spent the final year of the war on the Pacific island, serving as an artillery mechanic in a maintenance and supply outfit. It rained 200 days a year, and the camp was a constant quagmire. Kamikaze aircraft screamed overhead, crashing into the American ships anchored in the harbor. The outfit’s position was shelled nearly every night. Once, a shell landed close to Armando’s tent, killing one of his buddies and causing permanent hearing loss in one of his ears. He wrote Lu every chance he got, and she wrote back, sending pictures of herself in swimsuits, or with the hem of her skirt pulled up just over her knees. Those pictures sustained him through the end of the war. He returned to the United States to discover that Lu, on her own, had built them a small cottage on her parent’s property in Rio Linda. It was quite a homecoming.
The job at McClellan was waiting for him when he returned, but so was the job at Murray’s. The McClellan job paid a lot more and came with full government benefits, but it didn’t involve motorcycles. Armando cut Murray a deal. He’d come back to work for him if he gave him a new Harley-Davidson free of charge and a week’s vacation to go fishing with his buddies. Wartime rationing was still in effect, and motorcycles were in short supply, so Armando figured Murray would turn him down. Much to his surprise, Murray accepted, and Armando was back in the saddle. In 1948, Armando was 34 and hadn’t raced professionally for seven years. His racing buddies were bugging him to get back on the circuit, but Lu was against it. She hadn’t waited and worried all those long, lonely nights in Rio Linda during the war just so he could get maimed or killed in a motorcycle racing accident. But his buddies kept egging him on and, against Lu’s wishes, Armando entered the 100-mile TT race at Box Springs, near Riverside. In typical Sacramento Iron Man fashion, he hung on to finish fourth. It was his last race. Later that year, Lu gave birth to their first child, Terrie. It was time to start planning for the future. Murray had placed Armando in a managerial position after the war, and by now, Armando was completely capable of running the business himself. As it turned out, that was exactly what Murray had in mind. In September 1949, he called Armando into his office and asked him if he wanted to buy the dealership. Lu and Armando spent four frantic months raising the money, and in early 1950, they became the new owners of Sacramento’s Harley-Davidson dealership, located at 815 12th Street. Success, of course, had its price. Armando and Lu worked long, hard hours at the shop, taking few days off during their first 10 years. Somehow, Lu found time to have another child, Ken, in 1954. Ernie came on board as sales manager in 1963 and wound up making a career out of it. In 1964, Armando and Lu took their first vacation, a family cruise to Hawaii in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary. While Armando was the gregarious figurehead of the dealership, bringing in customers and keeping them satisfied, family members will tell you that Lu was a major factor in the business’s success. She worked side-by-side with her husband for more than 30 years, providing the administrative support and business acumen that enabled the dealership to end each year in the black. It was no mean feat, considering that from the mid-1960s on, the Japanese motorcycle invasion was in full swing, pushing Harley-Davidson to the brink of bankruptcy by the late 1970s. In 1973, they moved the dealership to its present location at Arden Way and Evergreen Street, into a brand-spanking-new 13,000-square-foot structure they’d built to realize one of Armando’s long-standing goals: to make the experience of buying a Harley-Davidson the motorcycling equivalent of purchasing a Cadillac. By the time Armando and Lu sold the business to Mike Shattuck in 1983, the dealership was well on its way to achieving that goal. Retirement failed to slow down Sacramento’s Iron Man. He and Lu traveled to Europe, then toured the western United States via motorhome throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He took up freshwater sport fishing, setting several world records with salmon he caught in Alaska. But mostly, he continued to eat, drink and breathe motorcycles, competing in long-distance touring events, attending Harley-Davidson rallies, and restoring classic bikes that held special significance for him. His world-class collection of Harley-Davidsons mirrors his history with the marque. A 1921 WJ Sport Twin was similar to the bike Jean Boutin taught Armando and Ernie to ride on back in 1928. A 1936 61-cubic inch OHV knucklehead marked his late Chico and early Sacramento years. A 1938 WLDR racer, with a 45-cubic-inch engine, a chrome-plated frame and Armando’s favorite No. 2 plate, recalled his glory days as a motorcycle racer. He restored nearly a dozen bikes in total; many of them are still on display at Sacramento Harley-Davidson, and all of them run. He was riding the 1912 Twin one time when the clutch on its ancient engine flew apart. Shorty Tompkins helped find the rare replacement parts. By far his favorite classic bike to ride was a 1950 sidecar rig. Painted in Harley orange and black, it was a showstopper, and Armando never lost the ability to sniff out the spotlight, whether it was driving a two-star general around in the sidecar during a 1995 retirement ceremony at McClellan Air Force Base, or delivering the Easter Bunny to Country Club Plaza in 1998. Got his picture in the paper both times. The sidecar also generated one of Armando’s last, great motorcycle stories. In 1987, he was driving it back from Reno on Interstate 80 one morning in the pouring rain. Lu was asleep in the sidecar, which was covered with a tarp to keep the rain out. Suddenly, a pickup truck swerved in front of Armando, clipping his handlebar and knocking him off the bike. He landed in the middle of the lane on his butt. Fortunately, no traffic was coming, and he got up to chase the Harley, which was motoring down the freeway under its own power. The motorcycle veered to the side of the road, hopped the curb, and came to a gentle stop in a patch of ice plants. Lu, wondering why Armando had decided to go off-roading, peeked out from under the tarp and casually turned off the ignition. It was one of Lu’s last rides, but Armando continued motorcycling despite the deteriorating effects of aging. In 1998, when his legs grew too weak to reliably hold up the 1984 FXRS he rode daily, he traded it in for a lighter, more nimble Sportster. On that crisp, sunny day last December, Armando fired up his Sportster and rumbled past the finely manicured lawns of his Carmichael neighborhood to meet Ernie and the boys at Classic Burgers for lunch. They ate hamburgers and French fries and talked about motorcycles. Then he rode home and parked the Harley for good. He’d been fighting a long battle with pulmonary lung disease and had only a few months to live.
Armando and Ernie talked about everything those last few months. They talked about motorcycles and women and luck. They talked about the time they drove the sidecar down to Hollister and a country bumpkin from Chico by the name of Magri took fourth place in the big race. They talked about Jean Boutin and Wilma and Lu and Ernie’s wife Rose, who passed away in 1998. “If you hadn’t held out for that motorcycle from Frank Murray, you probably would have retired from McClellan instead of owning your own business,” Ernie once enviously told his brother. Strange, how fate can place one brother in the other’s shadow. Not that Ernie minded that much. To be around Armando wasn’t just to be along for the ride, it was to be a part of the story. Besides, someone had to be there to make sure Armando got the story right. He kept right on telling stories until the very end. On a Saturday in April, in a Kaiser hospital room, he talked about motorcycles while taking strained breaths through an oxygen mask. “I was racing at San Pedro, and my front tire blew out doing 60 mph,” he reminisced. “I lost control and the spectators were lined up three-deep around the track. I didn’t know whether to jump off, lay it down, or ride it out. I sure didn’t want to hurt anyone. I held on with every last bit of strength I had, and then, like Moses parting the Red Sea, the crowd separated and I rode straight through.” He paused to take some breaths through the mask, and someone asked why he rode motorcycles. “The fresh air,” he said. “Coming around a mountain bend, the sun coming up, the fresh air in your face.” He passed away the next morning with Lu, daughter Terrie and son Ken at his side. There were hundreds of Harleys at the funeral. Knuckleheads, panheads, shovelheads, flatheads, Evos, a couple of new Twin Cams. Metal-flaked choppers, chromed-out dressers, slicked-back cruisers, a few crusty old hogs and a smattering of sidecars. Just about anyone who’d ever owned a Harley-Davidson in Sacramento was there. Mike Shattuck delivered the eulogy, using words you don’t often hear associated with businessmen, such as “honesty” and “fairness.” At Classic Burgers the following Friday afternoon, they were still talking about the man who wasn’t there. “He wasn’t exactly the most sensational rider to watch,” Ernie recalled. “He just sat there and sawed wood. But he was there when it was over.” “He was an iron man, the bastard,” Shorty agreed. “He had stamina,” Jack said. “If he had a gift,” said Ernie, “it was that he was tough.” It was an unusually hot spring day in Sacramento; the sun was beating down mercilessly on the old men gathered around the concrete picnic table. They talked about motorcycles, flirted some more with the waitresses, then Shorty and Jack got into their car and left. For a few moments, Ernie seemed at a loss for what to do, like somebody or something was missing. Then he got on his Harley-Davidson Sportster and rode away.

He may be a retired 4 times motorcycle world champion, but Eddie Lawson is still unbeatable even on four wheels. During the Super Stars of Superkarts event at Laguna Seca Raceway. Lawson racing a Yamaha superkart started on pole and then led every single lap and went on to beat Sam Zavaglia. This the third time Lawson has won the event that runs in conjunction with the famed American Le Mans series.

At the scene of her motorcycle crash last week, 80-year-old Margaret “Peggie” Blais, covered in blood, hobbled by broken bones, and laying on her back between two guardrails, made a simple request to the hovering paramedics: Don’t cut off her leather jacket. It was classic Peggie. The redhead from Danvers, gone a bit gray, has been a rebel on two wheels since the 1950s. She practically raised her nine children in black leather. And from the beginning, Blais was not content to ride on the back of her husband’s bike. She’d have her own. But there was nothing Blais could say last week to persuade authorities not to cut away her leather jacket; her injuries were too great. In the single-vehicle crash on Route 62 in Danvers last Tuesday afternoon, Blais lost control of her three-wheel bike and was thrown to the ground, smashing her right arm in multiple places, breaking her left leg, and causing severe facial lacerations that initially left her hard to recognize. Now listed in fair condition at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Blais is talking to family while fellow bikers talk about her. In text messages, e-mails, and phone calls, every biker seems to want to know how the matriarch of Massachusetts motorcycling is doing. “She embodies the whole spirit of freedom, the ability to take control, to do things your own way,” said Vince Silvia, secretary of the Massachusetts Motorcyclists Survivors Fund. “Not only did she ride with her husband, she wanted to be in control herself. She wanted to ride herself, to step up. ‘I’m woman, hear me roar,’ type of thing. And she did. She roared.” Blais, the daughter of an electrician and part-time waitress in Marblehead, was not amused when her husband, Robert Blais (pronounced like “blaze”), first brought home a motorcycle in 1949. Women simply didn’t ride motorcycles back then, recalled her oldest son, Larry Blais, now 61. And it wasn’t like the Blais family had money to throw around. Peggie Blais cleaned houses and did others’ laundry to help make ends meet. But she soon changed her mind about biking. In an interview last year with the Salem News, Peggie Blais said she came to like the feeling of the wind in her hair. Motorcycling became a family hobby. The children were often dressed in matching pink and black outfits and helmets. The youngsters rode in side cars while Peggie Blais cut a striking figure straddling a bike of her own. It was pink and black, too, and adorned with a donkey. The joke was that Blais was as stubborn as a mule. “She had screaming red hair and she liked to dress us up and parade us around,” said Larry Blais. “Sometimes, us kids would get bored with it. But I don’t know how many people would stop us and compliment us.” By the late 1950s, the family was well known at motorcycle rallies, including Laconia Motorcycle Week in New Hampshire, where family members won awards for their matching get-ups. But life soon intervened. Peggie and Robert got divorced. With nine children to raise, Peggie Blais had less and less time for riding. And even though the children kept up the family tradition - each one of them learned how to ride - Peggie essentially stopped. She grew old, and had a heart attack and two knee-replacement surgeries. Friends died and so did her former husband, in 2006. By then, Landon Blais, Peggie’s youngest son, said his mother seemed ready “to sit around the house and be old.” And that’s when Landon made a decision that not all his siblings agreed with: He gave her a new bike, adding a third wheel to make it safer. “Some people think I’m crazy for letting my 80-year-old mother ride,” he said. “But you know something? It made her feel 60 again.” It was pink and black and adorned with a donkey, like her original. It said “Mom” on the side, and Peggie Blais loved it. She rode it around Danvers, in her signature pink and black helmet, and began to recapture a slice of the fame she had known long ago. In August, she was named marshal of Nelson’s Ride, a motorcycle run to benefit the Massachusetts Motorcyclists Survivors Fund. She led 1,200 riders out of Salisbury Beach, all smiles in a leather vest, and returned to Laconia this year, riding with her children again. “She’s just a doll,” said Charlie St. Clair, executive director of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association. “Just a really, really down-to-earth, nice person. And she’s obviously, like any mother, just thrilled to be with her kids.” Now her children are trying to determine what happened to her on the road last Tuesday as she drove to a local clinic for a regular check-up. State Police are investigating. But Landon Blais, and some of her other children, say they have no regrets about letting their mother ride again, and they believe she’ll be back on her motorcycle soon. “She’s a tough old girl,” said Larry Blais. And, according to family members, she has her priorities in order. In her first conversation with her children after the crash last week, Peggie Blais said she was worried about one thing. Her bike.
 

- First woman over 200mph on a motorcycle at Maxton
204mph 9/06
- First woman over 210mph at Maxton
210mph 03/07
- Fastest woman in the world on a motorcycle
218mph 03/07 - bumped up to 222mph 09/07
- First woman ever to enter a 200mph Club on a motorcycle
207mph 04/07
- 200mph "naked" club   207mph 04/07
Top speed 222 mph, 207mph unfaired.
Hold 1 unfaired record at Maxton
- Best 1/4 mile E.T.  9.70@153mph

"An article from a 2002 edition of Neurosurgery that tells how a brain surgeon who unsuccesfully operated on Lawrence of Arabia after his fatal motorcyle crash was inspired to research and design crash helmets that now save thousands of lives.

T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a hero of the First World War who worked as a covert agent leading a revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and was immortalised in the 1962 film.

Lawrence was also a fan of motorbikes. Sadly, his interest eventually led to his death after a motorcycle crash in Dorset.

The Neurosurgery article tells the story of Hugh Cairns, a young neurosurgeon who attempted unsuccessfully to save Lawrence's life as part of the surgical team who treated him.

His experience led him to research the benefits of early crash helmets on Army motorcycle riders during the Second World War, finding that they were one of the major life-saving factors.

He later went on to use his knowledge of how the brain becomes damaged during impact to design and test various types of crash helmet that could best protect against these forms of injury.

Cairns' work was a major influence on both the legal system, that has mandated helmets in many countries, and the design of the headgear itself - preventing thousands of fatal brain injuries in the process."

"Indian" Larry Desmedt (April 28, 1949 - August 30, 2004) was a noted bike builder, stuntman, and innovator in the world of custom motorcycles. Indian Larry was born Larry Desmedt in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. He became interested in motorcycles at an early age, and became a fan of artist Kenny Howard (aka Von Dutch). He later moved to California to apprentice under legendary hot rod builder and pop artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.
Early life and building bikes Desmedt was convicted of bank robbery and struggled with alcohol and drug abuse in his youth. He decided to leave his tumultuous early life behind and focus on his bike building talents. Desmedt founded the Gasoline Alley custom motorcycle shop in New York City in 1991. His "old school" choppers quickly won renown in the motorcycling world. The Coney Island Psychoholic Side Show debuted in Richmond, Va at Cycle Expo 1998, which featured English Don and The Coney Island characters Combustible Kira, The Pain Proof Rubber Girls, Fredini The Great and his soon-to-be wife, Bambi The Living Mermaid. This event spawned all the rest of the special appearances of the motorcycle customizers who came to be known as master builders, celebrity builders and feature builders at events across the United States. No one ever came close to the character and quality or the public appeal of Indian Larry. His motorcycle "Grease Monkey" was named Easyriders magazine's Chopper of the Year and he was a winner of three Discovery Channel Bike Build Off Trophies. His second trophy was cut up and shared with his opponent Billy Lane and the audience, when he unexpectedly announced an exact draw after winning. His last build was the Chain of Mystery bike, in which the frame was made of welded tow chain. This amazing bike proved itself, as all of Desmedt's bikes did, by maintaining speeds well in excess of 100MPH for sustained periods of riding. After his death another Discovery Channel's Biker Build-Off episode a tribute bike was built by his long time partners, Paul Cox and Keino, Billy Lane and Kendall Johnson. Indian Larry is credited with re-popularizing the stripped down, tall handlebar, foot clutched, jockey shifted, no front brake or fender, small gas tank, open piped, kickstart only, stock rake choppers that prevailed in the 60s, before long front ends became popular. [edit] Films Indian Larry was also an accomplished stuntman and actor. Desmedt played himself in the film Rocket's Red Glare. He performed stunts for the films Quiz Show, Muscle Machine, My Mother's Dream, and 200 Cigarettes. He also appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. One of his famous trademarks was a tattoo on his neck, just below his chin. It read "In God We Trust - Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord - No Fear" The middle two lines were in reverse so that he could read them when looking in a mirror. [edit] Death Indian Larry was performing a motorcycle stunt at the "Liquid Steel Classic" and "Custom Bike Series" in Concord, North Carolina on August 28, 2004. In the stunt, he was standing on the moving motorcycle. As the stunt progressed the bike began to wobble out of control and he was thrown from the motorcycle, sustaining serious head injuries. He was then taken to the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he died on August 30, 2004 from the head injuries sustained in the mishap. Larry was not wearing a motorcycle helmet at the time of the accident. Two books were published on Indian Larry in 2006 including "Indian Larry: Chopper Shaman," by Dave Nichols with Andrea "Bambi" Cambridge and photography by Michael Lichter as well as "Indian Larry" by Timothy White. His autobiography, Grease Monkey, The Life and Times of Motorcycle Artist Indian Larry, written shortly before his death, is scheduled for publication.


Have a look at the tribute clips on youtube HERERIP ...

Arlen Ness is one of the best-known builders in the world of custom motorcycles. He went from customizing his own 1947 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead in the late 1960s to becoming a trendsetter whose designs have been studied—and copied—by everyone from other bike-builders to factory engineers. He also founded a mail-order empire that bears his name.

Ness grew up in Oakland, California. He was always attracted to hot rod cars and motorcycles.

“When I was in high school, there was a kid who had a Harley, and I thought that guy was cool,” Ness recalled. Under pressure first from his dad, then from his wife, though, Ness was locked out of the two-wheel world. “I was into cars—hot rods. On Friday nights, we’d cruise East 14th Street. That was what you did back then.

“There was a place where all the guys with bikes would hang out. I’d go by that place 20 times a night just to look at the bikes. I didn’t really know one from another, but I knew I liked the ones that had a low-slung look.”

By the mid-1960s, Ness was married to his wife, Bev, and the couple had two children. Ness was working as furniture mover. He also competed in bowling leagues that paid prize money and he saved his earnings from bowling to buy his first motorcycle.

“I used to keep that money tucked away in the back of my wallet,” he says. “Then one day, I was driving through Oakland, and I saw a bike sitting there with a for-sale sign on it. The bike was $300, and that’s what I had saved up, so I bought it.”

Ness took a lot of grief at first from Bev for buying the old Harley, but the modest purchase would ultimately change the path of his life forever. He immediately set to work on the machine, giving it a new look with a stretched gas tank and custom paint. Then he entered it in a show, where it earned the attention of magazine photographers.

The attention his custom bike got from the show led to him being asked to paint other bikes. That gradually led to a motorcycle painting business that allowed him to quit his other job. As a one-man operation, Ness put in long hours, but his hard work paid off and his reputation grew.

There was just one problem. With a family to support, Ness had no money to buy another bike that he could build into a new showstopper. So he turned to the ’47 Knucklehead again and again.

“I kept recustomizing it every year,” he says. “I’d paint it and fix it up so a magazine could shoot it, then I’d redo it for another magazine.

“Finally,” he says, “I saved enough money to buy a second bike.”

Years later, Ness restored his first Knucklehead to the way it was in the late ’60s. It is now the heart of a California lifestyle exhibit at the nearby Oakland Museum.

Soon after he opened the shop, Ness added a new line to his business: custom parts. Today, that’s the heart of the company. But not back then.

"There wasn’t much you could do to a bike,” he notes. “You could make a bobber by putting the front fender on the back tire, but there weren’t many parts available for customizing.”

Ness started small, getting some used wheels chromed and offering “ram’s horn” handlebars that he designed.

“I was living on the paint jobs,” he says. “When I’d sell some parts, I’d just take that money and buy two more. I didn’t take any money out of the store for a long time.”

But then came an incident that changed his mind about the future of the parts business.

“A guy I knew was in the military, and he was about to ship overseas,” Ness says. “He found out that he got something like $2,000 for shipping out, so he came into the store and bought a whole lot of parts.

I made $100 profit on that stuff in one day. I took my wife out for a drink to celebrate, and I remember thinking that if I could make $100 a day regularly, I’d be a millionaire.”

As his parts became known in the custom-bike world, Ness started to get calls from customers wanting to buy things that were only available in his store. So he created his first catalog.

“Actually,” he says, “it was just a list that Bev typed up. We had the ram’s horn bars, some glass fenders—stuff like that, with a price next to each one.”

Ness admits that he had no background in business, so he had a lot of new knowledge to accumulate.

“I had to learn about shipping and all that,” he says. “For a while, I would run everything down to the UPS office every day. Then I found out they’d come and pick it all up. I had to learn every step of it.”

He got into the business at the height of the late-’60s chopper era, when the Captain America bike from “Easy Rider” was the height of cool. Ness built his share of choppers, but he had a different vision.

“I liked the dragbike performance look—stretch ‘em out and lower ‘em down,” he says. “Still do to this day.”

Ness developed that style in bikes like Two Bad, a double-engine Sportster with hub-center steering and a frame longer than many cars.

That look, combining performance and style, would become a hallmark of Ness design. It was, in many ways, the opposite of the laid-back chopper. An example of one of Ness’ concepts was the twin-engine, dual-supercharged, four-carb, 2,100cc machine with dual belt drive and red bodywork reminiscent of a Ferrari.

Then there’s the Quad Cam bike, an engineering exercise with a Harley-style V-twin motor sporting a pair of toothed belts driving dual overhead cams. The Ness County Fire Truck, built in early 2001, looks like a custom tourer, complete with fairing, saddlebags and a fire-engine theme carried through in red paint, gold-leaf insignias and painted gauges. But underneath is a 100-cubic-inch V-twin with a supercharger and a nitrous bottle.

He’s kept those bikes and dozens more—every showbike he’s ever built. Many have become significant enough that they’re on loan to museums and collectors. Together, they form a timeline of the custom-bike movement in America.

Although Ness’ machines were some of the wildest customs of their era, the earlier bikes still incorporated plenty of stock parts. But then came a revolution in the custom-bike field, resulting from the introduction of CNC machining. Ness was among the first people in the motorcycle industry to recognize the potential of this technology, which he picked up from hot-rod fabricators. He quickly tested it with carved-billet aluminum mirrors. The question, though, was whether anyone would pay the premium prices billet parts would command.

“At the time,” Ness says, “our mirrors were probably $50. And we thought, ‘Who’s gonna pay that for a mirror?’ But we made some, and they sold.”

So did the billet grips and levers and engine covers and triple clamps that followed. And what started as a small, typed order sheet turned into a major, 270-page four-color catalog.

In time, the company built around Arlen Ness’ painting skills was gradually transformed into a national mail-order house with dozens of full-time employees, including every member of the Ness family. Arlen remains the head of the company, while his son, Cory, became vice president and the man in charge of day-to-day operations. He’s also become a skilled motorcycle customizer in his own right, with his work recognized alongside that of his famous father.

Bev, the woman who slammed the door on Ness when he brought home his first motorcycle, is now the company’s chief financial officer, and their daughter, Sherri Foxworthy, serves as Arlen’s administrative assistant.

Amazingly, all of this growth took place within the company’s East 14th Street headquarters. Walk through the showroom, and you entered a labyrinth of narrow aisles, all crammed with Arlen Ness products.

With the custom bike business booming in the ’90s, Ness took the opportunity to build two of the most memorable creations in a highly memorable career.

The first is officially called “Ness-talgia,” but to just about everyone, it’s the ’57 Chevy bike. It recalls that classic car almost perfectly, with lines that are so flawless, you’d swear the parts came directly off the original. Except for the headlight bezel, they didn’t.

“There’s a guy who does graphic work for us—Carl Brouhard—and that was kind of his idea,” Ness says. “We thought we’d do it for fun, but it ended up being a bike that’s known all over the world.”

Ness-talgia was unveiled in 1995, and a year later, Ness trumped it with Smooth-Ness, a flowing design that is art from any angle. He says the bike was inspired by a bronze that he found of a Bugatti automobile. Ness sketched out the design on paper, then turned over his drawings to Craig Naff, a fabricator who regularly makes parts for his projects. The parts came back so beautifully formed that Ness first showed the bike unpainted.

To many, those bikes represent the pinnacle of the custom-bike world. And even Ness himself admits that if he could keep only three motorcycles from his entire career, he’d chose those two plus his original ’47 Knucklehead—the bike that started it all.

Ness never stopped evolving his company. In fact, in the fall of 2005, after 36 years in the business, Ness moved to an all-new shop that seems more appropriate for what his business has become. Arlen Ness Enterprises’ new home is a 70,000-square-foot facility under construction about 10 miles away in Dublin, California. The building will feature a huge showroom where new parts for sale will be arrayed around classic Ness designs of the past. Behind the scenes, there’ll be more space for catalog inventory and more space for creating new customs.

He’s also branching out in new directions through a partnership with Victory motorcycles. Ness has become a Victory dealer, and he’s created a couple of customs based on that platform. In addition, Victory is selling an Arlen Ness Signature Line of parts and accessories for its bikes, and the company has said that Arlen and Cory Ness will serve as design consultants on future Victory models.

But there’s more. Working with Harley dealer Bruce Rossmeyer, Ness recently opened new Arlen Ness Motorcycle stores in Daytona Beach and Miami, selling various brands of American cruisers plus the full Ness line of parts.

And, he says, “If the stores go well, we might build a motorcycle of our own to sell in them.”

He admits he’s done some preliminary work in that direction, and has a powerplant in mind. The rest of the bike, of course, won’t be a problem. After all, he’s got a catalog full of every part a person might need to build a motorcycle.

“We’re in a better position to make a motorcycle than anybody in the industry,” he says.

What’s perhaps most amazing, though, is that through it all, Arlen Ness, the king of the customizers, remains grounded in the place where it all began. After 36 years, he still turns out new designs in an office that’s only a sidewalk-width away from East 14th Street—the road he once cruised, wondering if he’d ever have a motorcycle of his own.

Here is a guy who knows a few things some need to know

He is Ratbike Milo and proud

a most inteesting artical and site

some us us can only dream what others achieve

hit the pic and smile

Arthur Eugene Arfons, Second World War navy veteran, ordinary blue-collar worker and the man who pushed land speed records to extraordinary levels against the more publicity-conscious Craig Breedlove in the 1960's, has died aged 81.

He achieved extraordinary things through his courage and innate engineering skill and will be buried in his home town - Akron, Ohio - with spanners in his hands and a J79 jet-engine operating manual and a jar of his beloved Bonneville salt by his side.

Art Arfons was one of the giants of land speed record-breaking
His 1960's duels with fellow American Craig Breedlove were the stuff of legend. His 1960's duels with fellow American Craig Breedlove on the Bonneville salt flats in Utah, when they kicked the record from 400 to 600mph with their new breed of jet-cars, were the stuff of legend.

Arfons became hooked on drag racing in 1954, and his Green Monster cars became part of the sport's folklore. He was a muscular six-footer with movie-star white teeth set in a broad, tanned face, whose flat planes and high cheekbones bore testimony to the Greek ancestry of his father, Tom, and the Cherokee Indian of his mother, Bessie.

For many years, he ran the family's grain store in Akron, Ohio, but the world came to know him as the "junkyard genius of the jetset" when he shattered the land-speed record in October 1964.

Breedlove's Spirit of America cost $250 000; Arfons's ingenious Green Monster used an improvised spaceframe chassis with a '37 Lincoln axle up front, a Ford truck axle at the rear, and steering courtesy of a Packard
Breedlove's Spirit of America cost $250 000 - Art's car $10 000. For $32, Arfons built a machine to hand-build the body for less than $1000. For $3, he rigged up a shotgun to fire the braking parachutes. Excluding the forged aluminium wheels and rubber tyres contributed by Firestone, the projectile cost Arfons $10 000.

He acquired the engine – a damaged General Electric J79 from an F-104 fighter – for $625. "When I got it home I called GE and asked them for a manual," he recalled.

"They said no, you can't have one. Next day I had a colonel from the military stop by and he said '...that's a classified engine, you're not allowed to have it'. I said: 'Well, here's my piece of paper, where I bought it, because you guys didn't want it and had thrown it away'."

Arfons stunned the military by rebuilding the engine without assistance. "The first time we tied it down and ran it we dried up a small creek out behind the shop and it was blowing boulders away! One time, a guy came after me waving a .45!"

High-speed Russian roulette

At Bonneville in Utah, on October 2, 1964, Tom Green piloted the jet-powered Wingfoot Express, owned by Art's step-brother Walt, to a record 413.2mph. Three days later, Art Arfons donned his trademark black leather jacket and Navy surplus trousers and obliterated that with an easy 434.02.

Over the ensuing months, he and Breedlove played out their game of high-speed Russian roulette. Breedlove achieved 468.72, then 526.28, before Arfons replied with 536.71. In 1965 Breedlove hit back with 555.48 before Arfons reasserted himself with 575.55. Breedlove had the final answer at 600.6mph.

Neither of them had any illusions about the dangers of their calling. On November 17 1966 Arfons's final attempt to beat Breedlove went horribly wrong. The night before the run Bob Hosking, the helicopter pilot due to be filming the event, had a nightmare in which the Monster crashed and threw a wheel up through his chopper's blades.

The following dawn, Arfons sped down the course and was peaking at 610mph when, incredibly, Hosking's dream came true as the right front-wheel bearing seized, pitching the car into a series of rolls that scattered it over 4.5 miles of salt. One wheel really did fly as high as the helicopter but mercifully missed the blades.

'I never sleep before a drive'

Incredibly, Arfons survived with only salt burns. He told rescuers: "Will you call June [his wife] and tell her I'm OK? She didn't want me to go fast."

After another accident on a drag strip, Arfons turned to tractor-pulling with the jet-powered Green Monster, his Bonneville heyday all but over. "I never sleep the night before I drive," he once confessed.

"You think about everything that might happen but I worry most about the other man inside me and what he'll do when he gets into the car because I know that, at that point, fear and caution leave him.

"It's the other me climbing into that car; they tell me I'm white as a ghost. Then the motor starts and I'm in another world. Only after that does the fear crawl in again, like fog, telling me what a fool the other man has been."

He described Bonneville as "like a woman you keep quarrelling with but can't stay away from".

"When I'm at Bonneville I can't wait to get away but, once I'm away, I can't wait to get back."

Arthur Eugene Arfons, racing driver: Born Akron, Ohio, February 3 1926; married June LaFontaine (two sons, one daughter); died Akron December 3 2007. - The Independent, London

you know this Guy ...

Go see HERE

Memories
Motorcycle mechanic Gina Currid sits on the 1996 Harley Davidson Heritage Softail that belonged to her husband, who was killed while riding it three years ago. She has his face tattooed on her arm. (Sun-Sentinel/Angel Valentin / November 21, 2007)


Mark Wolosz nearly died in an October 1994 motorcycle crash that fractured his skull and back, collapsed both lungs, ruptured his bladder and nearly severed his right leg.

It wasn't enough to keep him off his bike.

More than 30 surgeries later, Wolosz, 54, owns and rides a 1996 Harley Davidson Road King and a 1987 Harley Davidson Low Rider, each with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer
For riders like Wolosz, biking is such a passion that near-death experiences aren't enough to persuade them to give it up.

"Every time I heard the sound, I would get goosebumps," said Wolosz, a firefighter/paramedic for the city of Miami. "I knew I had to get back on. It's like my firefighting job: If your buddy got killed in a fire, and the next day you had another bad fire, you would go right in. Anybody who is passionate about it, they are going to keep doing it, no matter what."

Motorcycle accidents claimed the lives of 76 bikers in the past two years in Broward County, according to the medical examiner's office. Statewide, injuries jumped from 5,101 in 2001 to 7,934 in 2006.

Those numbers are daunting, but severe injuries don't always stop dedicated riders.

Scott "Tank" Rohrbach, had to re-learn how to walk, eat and function independently after he flew over the handlebars of his 1988 Harley Davidson FXR in May 1999. His speech is permanently impaired and he has difficulty with numbers and reading, said his wife Theresa, 47. Rohrbach, 39, of Sunrise, can't work a regular job and relies heavily on family to assist him with communication.

He speaks haltingly, but his message about riding is clear:

"I have to. That's me," Rohrbach said, grinning shyly.

And ride he does. Every week. With his wife's blessing.

His motorcycle is the equalizer that helps him revisit the whole person he once was.

"It's his only connection to his past life, before this accident," said Theresa Rohrbach. "That's why he can't stop riding that bike. He feels that's the only normal thing he has left. Everything else normal was basically taken away."

On his bike, she said, his disabilities disappear.

"It doesn't scare me. I actually do believe now it doesn't matter if you are on a bike or in a car. I figure, whatever is going to happen is going to happen," she said.

Gina Currid, of Cooper City, is another wife who wasn't afraid to let her husband back behind the handlebars. Her husband, Brian, was left with a prosthetic leg after a 2004 crash. Nine months later, he was back on the road on a custom-made trike she built for him when he got into another accident. This time it was fatal.

Currid, a motorcycle mechanic, kept her own 1996 Harley Davidson Heritage Softail parked for two months after the tragedy. Then she hopped on and took a 19-day, 3,800-mile road trip.

She never second-guessed her husband's decision to keep riding.

"It was really a passion for him. To take something like that away, you may as well have stuck him behind prison bars," said Currid, 46, who will mark the third anniversary of her husband's death on Nov. 28.

Such devotion is about personal identity, not thrill-seeking, said Julio Licinio, chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami's School of Medicine. It's about people who love what they do so much they define themselves by it.
"They have to go back. If they don't, they are not Joe Smith anymore, they are not a person," Licinio said. "I think in this case, the hobby is not so much a hobby — it's the core of who they are as people."

The president of the southeast chapter of the motorcycle rights group ABATE sees it all the time.

"It's because they do what they love to do," said James Lesniak, a rider for more than 20 years. "People who get hurt doing something and continue to do it, it's their passion in life. There's something about it, they would risk life and limb to do it."
Lake Worth resident John Wright, 48, wasn't expected to live after he was ejected through the windshield and 50 feet over the handlebars of his 1991 FXRT Harley Davidson Superglide in July 2001, but he did. Wright awoke after a 38-day coma, unable to read, write or walk. Rehabilitation was arduous.

"I pushed him and pushed him and pushed him," said his wife, Heidi, who spent 30 days with Wright in an intensive care unit. "That's why he's a walking miracle today."

Today, the father of three grown sons still rides, but only if he has someone else with him. He takes anti-seizure medication twice a day, experiences memory loss and tires easily. His wife, Heidi, who also rides, has become his caretaker. She doesn't let him go if he shows any signs of fatigue.

Wright, known by his fellow bikers as "Thirsty," knows he got lucky. He also knows he can't give up riding, even if it kills him.

"My mother asked me, soon after I got out of the hospital, 'Are you going to quit riding?'" said Wright, who is president of a motorcycle club.

His answer was a firm "no."

"I'm not a biker up here,'" Wright said, as he touched his head. Then he laid his hand on his heart.

"I'm a biker here," he said.

Sallie James can be reached at sjames@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2019

Source