“Wise guys” usually means mafia members, at least in popular culture, but there’s another group this term applies to. It’s male motorcycle riders wearing baseball caps or with bear heads. “Wise guys” is a half-joking term–the outlaws branded this way in movies and court documents aren’t so wise. Neither is this group of male riders who feel their faces or hair are so cool or alluring to women that they don’t want them covered up by a simple protective device that could save their lives or their families by keeping their brains intact.

Sunday I was bicycling by the river and two wise guys passed on their quiet, windscreen-equipped cruisers. The second guy had a young girl, under ten, on the back–with no helmet. That’s not cool.

It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been motorcycling or how careful you are. There are circumstances beyond a rider’s control that pose unavoidable dangers. If that rider and his daughter stop at an intersection and the driver of a big sedan behind them is stone drunk, or has a seizure, or a stroke or catastrophic mechanical failure and can’t apply the brakes, they’re getting hit. And it doesn’t matter if he’s Gary Nixon or Valentino Rossi or Travis Pastrana, there is nothing he can do about it. That little girl is going off the back of that bike and the odds of her head hitting metal or pavement or glass are high.

The responsible parent in this situation already acted by fitting her helmet properly and then his own. The wise guy, if he lives, gets to look at his injured daughter or her picture and fight his conscience for the rest of his life.

Yes, there are people in the world who rail against helmets, including those who say the forces a helmet imposes on a child’s neck can do as much harm as an impact. But forces that great only arise in a collision, at which point everyone on the bike is airborne. Hitting the pavement with a helmet on your head is better than slamming it with your skull directly. Plus, helmets have gotten much lighter since parents who crashed with unhelmeted kids that were lucky enough not to be injured started making that argument.

Pro football players are tougher than the rest of us. They get knocked out wearing helmets. The road is harder than a defensive tackle. Don’t be a wise guy. Protect your head and protect your child’s. And spouses–if you can’t convince your biker husband to wear a helmet, make sure your family’s life, auto, and health insurance policies have you and the children protected in case Harvey Wallbanger or Mac Adam comes calling.

Had lunch with a friend today who finally parted with his Honda sport tourer.  He’d owned it since new and had reservations about lettin’ the ol’ gal go (–ol’ beautiful, fast, responsive, fun gal.)

The buyer ultimately made the decision easy and underscored the reason you sell valuable goods with a cashier’s check, not a personal one. He showed up a couple weeks ago when there wasn’t quite snow on the ground, but still frost and cinders and the usual hazards. My friend, let’s call him Lance, said, “you wreck it, you bought it.” Most sport-bike sellers adopt this policy because of how easy it is to turn Slim Pickens aboard an errant missile.

Lance’s driveway has a puddle at the bottom of it, about which he warned the speed-hungry buyer. The warning did not improve the buyer’s willpower. He got to the end of the driveway,  pointed the bars left, and cracked the throttle with the rear tire in the puddle. The tire did what friction-limited rubber always does when you throw too much juice at it–it broke loose, and since the front tire wasn’t in front of it, the rear end kicked out and bike and rider pinwheeled across the road.

Shaken, scraped and wobbly, he apologized to Lance. “No problem,” my astute friend replied. “It’s your bike.”

Seeing it all scraped up eased the whole post-partum issue, allowing Lance to watch the new owner ride off with bent bars and clutch lever, loved-one-who-saw following him in the family car.

This story brought to you by Doh!

Gotta shop? Got no ideas for a couple guys on your list? You could throw down for that fake fish that sings when you push a button. You could buy a wall clock shaped like a car. Another hat? Those items might be used, might be appreciated, might get re-gifted.

What about a car book? If the text in interesting and the pictures are good, it’s a nice thing for any car enthusiast to thumb through and read, bit by bit or all at once. And once you’ve got from it what you want, you can put it on the shelf and pull it down again later. A book never becomes clutter; it becomes part of your library and remains a reference and a source for ideas and inspiration.

Here are five readily available books any car enthusiast is likely to enjoy.

1) Dream Garages. Features 21 profiles of garages (in the US, England and Italy), the collections they contain and the owners behind them. Photos are by top automotive snappers like Peter Vincent, James Mann, Robert Genat and Dave Gooley. Favorite car and motorcycle author Peter Egan wrote the forward and I can vouch for the text because I wrote it–and because it’s been a bestseller for Motorbooks, the world’s largest car book publisher. :^)

2) The Cobra in the Barn. Tom Cotter’s breakthrough “barn-find” book recounting tales of rare and wonderful cars “discovered” in barns and garages and often snapped up by the lucky finder.

3) The Hemi in the Barn. The follow-on to Cobra in the Barn, with stories just as interesting and cars just as rare. America’s best known car enthusiast, Jay Leno, penned the intro on this one and one of the great finds ever–Leno’s discovery of the legendary Duesenberg sitting in a Manhattan parking garage for seventy years–is included.

4) Cannonball: World’s Greatest Outlaw Road Race. Although several years old now, Brock Yates’ stories and photos of this, er, unsanctioned dash across the United States–which spawned the movies Gumball Rally and Cannonball Run–is worth every penny.

5) McQueen’s Machines. If you think Steve McQueen was cool and are curious about what cars he actually owned and drove in his personal life–along with many bikes–this book by his son Chad has the inside story and photos. Good stuff.

There’s a notion in the world–promoted by its subjects–that bikers are tough. Is it true, or just so much hype to sell leather jackets and X-Games tickets?

Consider the case of Darrick A., my neighbor, fellow two-wheeler, and a man determined to get by you on a dirt bike. (Also author of some of the funniest emails that will never be posted on this site.)

Last week he entered a hare scramble to benefit another rider hurt in a crash. (A hare scramble is an offroad race over rough terrain that can last several hours.) Darrick crashed in the benefit and made the sport’s basic instantaneous assessments: I’m not unconscious. My bike still works. Better get moving!

Once the race is over and you’ve beaten as many opponents as you can, it’s time to take off your boots and learn, as Darrick did, that you’ve broken the end off your tibia.

No worries. Doctor screwed it back on last week.

Shakespeare cautions, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”** Easy advice when you’re neither a borrower nor a lender. But I’m a borrower, and using the simple formula, my income times my debts divided by my wife, I cannot get another motorcycle.

As soon as being short of funds stops a motorhead from dreaming about his next vehicle, let me know so I can stop breathing–no sense wasting the effort since only in death does this ever happen. With leaves turning and temperatures dropping, it’s the perfect time to start fantasizing about that basket-case BSA, Triumph, or Norton you’re going to rebuild in your basement over the winter.

If ten skull-rappingly lucrative freelance projects materialize in my inbox during the next couple months, I’m going to hunt down a BSA Shooting Star. This is my pet resto quest for a few simple reasons: they look cool; they’re not stupid expensive like Bonnevilles and Commandos; and they’re lightweight–light enough, in fact, that my wife isn’t scared to consider learning to ride one because she can pick it up if it falls over. The overarching dream here is to get her motorcycle-compatible because only with the little lady on her own ride can a married guy get all the wheel time he really wants and needs.

Restoring a bike would be really cool in and of itself. Tearing apart and rebuilding a car is great fun too and a must, at least once, for any classics fan. Yet cars take up a lot of room, you can’t carry them down into your basement where it’s warm and there’s a toilet, and they have a lot of parts. A bike you can take down there in pieces and have a great time cleaning up the wheels and the frame, gathering missing bits, polishing and painting stuff, and ultimately mocking up a finished bike (remembering not to assemble the whole thing down there because you’ll have a miserable time getting it out).

If you want to learn to ride, why not learn the pieces of the machine as well? How satisfied will you be then, once the spring comes? So, search the ads, find a project, wrestle it home and start pulling stuff off and taking it down to your work bench. Oh…but clear this idea with the missus first. ;^)

**Actually it’s Polonius who says this, but I only know the line because they performed Hamlet once on Gilligan’s Island.

It’s Friday again. We know this because yesterday was Thursday and the pattern’s been pretty consistent. But even without calendar memory (like muscle memory, but requires no heavy lifting), we can feel Friday. It’s in the air—which is fresh and weekendy, in our guts—which are unknotted and ready for a beer around 5, and in the innate sense that even our bosses will be cool if we adopt a more relaxed pace for the rest of the afternoon.

It’s dress-down day. How much can you enjoy that if you’re all worked up about productivity? If employers wanted that, they’d call Friday “Dress for Success” day and walk around with a box of steak knives or a first-rate fake Rolex for the person who worked the hardest. They don’t. They’re dressed down too, watching funny pet videos on youtube and emailing them to other bosses with re: lines like “Fourth Quarter Earnings,” “Yesterday’s Meeting,” and “Time Slips.”

Friday’s purpose is to go easy, relax, slide into the weekend with a smile so you can return to your desk on Monday with renewed vigor. And what better way to relax the mind than by pondering important car and bike questions.

I think we can all agree that in this subject area, one question stands with all others:

“So, what kind of motorcycle did Fonzie ride, anyway?”

If the internet has a true calling, it is to conjure forth fast, furious and often specious details on just such pressing queries. In a world where surfers are king and misinformation is also king, though of a different country, you can find lots of valuable information on trivial things.

Here’s what the hacks, typists, and enthusiasts seem to sort of agree regarding TV’s most famous motorcycle. In the early episodes, Fonz traveled by Harley Davidson. Some say this was a Sportster; others contend it was a Knucklehead. The difference is significant because Knucklehead production ended in 1947 and Sportsters first appeared in 1957 (and are still made). A Knucklehead’s an old bike. So, cool if that’s what the early one was based on.

In later episodes, “experts”—which now encompasses anyone who posts things on the internet in a convincing prose style—now agree that Arthur Fonzarelli rode a Triumph and possibly the occasional BSA. Both of these marques now fetch good collector money, which we can only attribute to an international nostalgia for the Cunninghams, Ralph, Potsie, Arnold, Pinky Tuscadero, jukeboxes, bobby sox, and of course, the original cool guy, Fonz.

Here’s a few sites to take your mind off work (site 1, site 2, site 3). Do your employer a favor and read up so you’ll be nice and refreshed on Monday.

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Answers to Oct. 19 Friday Fun movie and TV quiz:
1. Green 1968 Mustang GT
2. Black 1968 Charger 440 R/T
3. Red Sunbeam Tiger
4. White Dodge Challenger R/T (1970) Extra credit: they got a first gen. Camaro to bend over the bulldozer blades.
5. Dodge Charger, 1969
6. Yellow Camaro (1970, without front bumper) You see different wheels on the cheap one they roll on its top.
6a. Ferrari Daytona spyder
7. Delorean.
8. Bike descriptions above.
9. First gen. T-bird, red.
10. Lincoln Futura show car
Bonus: Mad Max

Some people are into Vincent motorcycles. Some are way into them. Steve Hamel from St. Paul falls into the latter category. You can’t show him a piece of Black Shadow or Black Lightning and not have him know exactly what it is, where it goes, what it does, what its stress limits are and whether it can be tweaked for more go. Speed records have fallen from that competence. More will fall.

Steve (right) and friend Dyo prepare to fire up the Vincent.

In less than two weeks, Steve will take his own modified Vincent with its huge suck-up-a-flock-of-geese Mikuni carburetors out to the most famous dry lake bed in the US and try to hit 161 miles per hour, a class record for a modified gasoline powered cycle. (Dyo, in the photo above, has had some thrills on two wheels too. In about 1962, he rode a BSA 250 over the arch on the Robert Street Bridge. Today that stunt would land you one of two places: the river, or jail.)

Making 100+ HP at 7500 RPMs requires big carbs and a lot of air.

Until race day Steve will work to wring another 5 horsepower out of the engine, which already makes 105 ponies at the rear wheel. Add 5 and he’s super confident he can hit his mark. Right now? Doubt he’d go out there if he thought she’d fall short, but he’ll keep wrenching in search of horsepower insurance.

“I think I see some trapped horsepower right here.”

So does a bike like this get skittery on the salt at those speeds? Nope. Hamel says it’s solid, which at a hundred-’n'-a-half-plus must lend some comfort to the effort. Biggest concern for the racers this year is water, which is presently puddled on the course. All they can do is wait for the desert to do what they do. Dry up.

(I covered Steve, his garage, and his Bonneville pursuits in Dream Garages.)

A few posts ago I told the tale of my friend Dave, from the local caffeinated watering hole, who body-surfed a stretch of pavement following a motorcycle operating error. Had no pics then, but Dave was holding court at Sovereign Grounds in South Minneapolis again today, with bike and cast on hand—that is, bike on hand and cast on hand.

Tank slapper! Dent comes from bars whapping into it.

So here’s the consequences of getting off your motorcycle before stopping. Casts always look cool and get a little sympathy–though a contractor doesn’t need a broken hand.

Hand vs pavement: winner, pavement.

And check this speedometer. If you can wreck one any cooler, and still have it work, you’re a better crasher than Dave. I’m not saying it’s worth crashing to have a speedometer like this…. But if you do crash, and it does look like this–and works–at least you got some art in return for the elbow and knee skin you left behind.

Art Speedo: Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.

A couple posts down is a story on the Liberator Trike, which builder Mark Kallhoff assembles in Canby, Minnesota. Its market is disabled riders. The trike is designed for stability as well as access and overcomes a weakness of the early VW-powered trikes, which Kallhoff described as light in the front end. Some internet searches confirm that this was a problem.

Better confirmation came from a ride up Park Avenue in Minneapolis, where I happened to see a vintage trike with VW power. Its long chopper fork was elevated and the front wheel set into the back of an ’80s Dodge hatchback, which was towing the old trike. I rode my motorcycle right beside it for a close look and sure enough, the entire engine sat behind the rear axle. Whoa! No wonder the woman discussing the history of this similar vintage trike referred to it as the “widow maker.”

Canby, Minnesota, mechanic, fabricator, motorcyclist, pilot and former professional race-car driver, Mark Kallhoff, has set his sights on perhaps his most rewarding venture yet–a motorcycle-trike built for disabled men and women seeking the thrill and freedom of the open road. I did a Locals in Motion piece on him and his vehicle and we needed some photos. While Canby is a neat little town a stone’s throw from the South Dakota border, high resolution digital cameras are in short supply there.

With the deadline pending and nothing sharp enough to do his Liberator Trike justice, I hopped on the ever trusty–OK, mostly trusty–1975 Honda CB750 and pointed ‘er West. It’s 177 miles or so, if Mapquest is for real, and I reckoned I could make it there in under three hours.

This is why I’m not a mathematician. I always get the tip on dinner right, but estimating driving times and miles engages some more primitive, less accurate section of the brain. One seventy-seven in under three hours is not “about 50 miles per hour” as Neander-lobe had calculated, but 59 miles per hour. Try averaging that for the first 40 miles out of South Minneapolis and highway 212 with its traffic signals.

Still, Neander-lobe is all speed, power, go-go-go, and despite its math shortcomings, it knew that a lot of flat, open country lies between Minneapolis and South Dakota. Eventually the distance from the city would grow so great that even the most ambitious McMansion-ite would refuse to commute any further. Traffic would back off and the roads would become as they were of old–rural pathways infrequently traveled by farmers for an errand in town after a long day in the fields.

And so it was. Time squandered sweltering at stop lights returned in a rush of wind and blurry fields as the old CB stretched its legs as it has seldom done. Though she is 32 years old and a little out of tune, the old girl can still cross a country mile and we ate up scores of them. Any heat a temper can take on in heavy traffic blows right out your helmet at speed on a country road.

Without any compromising statements as to velocity, let us say my arrival estimate was not far off.

But this wasn’t about ordinary two-wheeled fun. The point of this journey was to photograph an important vehicle: a motorcycle for disabled riders. Builder Kallhoff, who knows plenty about mechanics and driving and motorcycles and fabrication, answered a friend’s dream of riding a motorcycle after a farm accident left him a paraplegic.

What could be more liberating to a person who typically travels by wheelchair than to settle in behind a set of handlebars, twist a throttle and blur the world in the open air? Kallhoff built his friend a low-slung trike with a car-derived drivetrain out back and motorcycle front end. The friend, Dudley, loves it, and Kallhoff realized he had only scratched the surface of a vast unmet need.

And so Liberator Trikes, LLC, was born.

I met Mark at his Canby shop, saw the trike and snapped enough high-res pics to annoy the most patient newspaper layout editor. He also fired it up and we took a ride–a removable passenger perch drops right in behind the driver’s seat.

The smallblock Chevy purrs and is dead smooth. He leaned over and gestured at the speedometer en route and we were doing 70–or the speed limit, whichever is lower. Felt like 45.

He bought me a burger for making the trek, then I pointed the CB back at the big city and we tore up rural landscape into Gainsborough confetti. Only the patter of little bug-splats tarnished the experience–so much so I had to wheel into an isolated gas station and squeegee the faceshield to keep the road in view. There were so many insect wings stuck to my jacket I probably could have flown if I stuck my arms out.

Anyway, the ride is done, the pics are clicked. Left at 2:30, rode 354 miles, got home at 10:15, and shot photos, had dinner and talked for a couple hours in between.

The open road is its own reward.