MotoBrief

Motorcyclists love their machines. Many of my friends in the VinMoto groups have a dozen or more bikes in their garages.

That same passion for the machine can be found in the work of Daniel Peirce, whose Up-N-Smoke Engine Project (named after the Texas BBQ joint where Peirce’s motorcycle club would meet) perfectly captures the beauty of the motorcycle power plant. He has photographed dozens of meticulously restored classic engines and each is really a work of art. Peirce manages to show how unique each one of them is. I know I’ll never look at an engine the same way again.

High quality metallic prints of the collection can be purchased directly from Peirce in a variety of formats. I may order one for the MotoBrief.tv studio.

The Cyril Huze blog reports that Steve McQueen’s 1940 Indian Scout will be sold at auction during the Legend of the Motorcycle show in Half Moon Bay, California. The bike is currently owned by seat-maker Mike Corbin.

I’m a big fan of science fiction and fantasy films and books and I love the steampunk genre. So how awesome is it that a California artist has created a steampunk motorcycle?

Artist Tom Sepe has done a fantastic job. Pretty cool.

Via Boing Boing.

How to get your bike into the van. Amusing video trickery via YouTube.

We’re into the second week of the MCN Fantasy Road Race 2008, and I’m in second place. There are plenty of races coming up, so it’s not too late to sign up and try to win an Arai helmet. MotoBrief.tv will also be giving away a helmet camera to the second place finisher.

All you have to do to participate is go the the Fantasy Road Race website, create an account and pick your team, then send me an email and tell me your team name. I’ll send you the code necessary to join the MotoBrief.tv league and you’ll be in the running for a new (and pretty awesome) helmet.

WFTV 9 in Florida is reporting that Bike Week has already racked up two fatal motorcycle accidents.

Bike Week is a massive event. It gets a lot of attention. And it’s a shame that attention always includes articles focusing on Bike Week fatalities. Even this article closes by noting the eight deaths last year.

The two accidents cited here aren’t attributable to wild Bike Week partying. One rider lost control in a corner and the other had a vehicle pull out and collide with him — the most common cause of single vehicle and multiple vehicle motorcycle crashes, respectively. These accidents could have happened anywhere. They do happen anywhere, every single day.

Still, I wish someone at Bike Week would take a more active interest in motorcycle safety. The annual BMW MOA Rally, which draws a fraction of the Bike Week attendees, often has motorcycle rider training available. (In fact, the BMW MOA home page is currently asking for MSF-certified RiderCoaches to facilitate some ERC classes.)

I couldn’t find a single event listed on the Bike Week site that was focused on improving rider skills. Why not? I can’t believe that they wouldn’t fill up some ERCs in a heartbeat, given the number of people at Bike Week. Come on, Bike Week organizers, it wouldn’t be the end of the world is some of your guests spent a few hours at a motorcycle class instead of a bar, right?

(And if there is some kind of rider training available, then you need a serious redesign of your website. Actually, a redesign wouldn’t hurt either way.)

For years I’ve been left out of fantasy sports. I just don’t care about football, baseball or basketball so there’s never really been much allure. But now MCN is hosting Fantasy Road Race 2008 and I’m ready to go. They’ve made it free to play. There are prizes for each round and a grand prize of a 2008 Kawasaki ZX-10R (although you are only eligible for prizes if you’re in the UK — tough luck for those of us in the U.S.).

You can also join private leagues to compete with other players. I’ve created a league for MotoBrief.tv and I’m going to figure out some decent prize for whoever comes out on top in the MotoBrief league. I can’t give away a motorcycle, but I promise it’ll be some neat gadget or piece of gear. So go create your team today and then join private league number 38.

UPDATE: Don’t forget that I don’t have anything to do with MCN, other than being a fan of the site. I won’t have any information about who you are when you join league 38, and I won’t have any way of contacting you should your team come in first.

So please, add a comment here telling me your manager name and your team’s name (and include an email address — it won’t appear with your comment and won’t be shared with anyone), or send me an email at tom@motobrief.com.

Motorcyclist has a good interview with Scott Summers, who has been tapped to manage the BMW team in the Grand National Cross Country series through 2010. He seems pretty impressed with the G 450 X.

You never know what you’re going to find when you move. You start boxing things up and pretty soon you’re stumbling across stuff you’d forgotten about years ago. That’s what happened to Lee Sutton. An amateur motocross racer in the 70s, Lee uncovered a stash of photographs he’d shot during his time at the tracks of Northern California.

Unfortunately, about half the negatives were ruined. After all, in 1975 there wasn’t much for someone to do with a bunch of pictures like this. You could share them with friends — provided they lived nearby and you got together to have a look. You could submit the best of the best for publication somewhere. Or you could put them in a box.

Today, things are different. Lee picked out the best of the surviving photos and did what anyone would do — he uploaded them to a Flickr photoset. Within days knowledgeable fans had annotated the pictures with details and reminiscences of racetracks, riders and their machines.

I love the Internet.

Gizmag has an article on Dainese’s motorcycle airbag. It’s a revolutionary system — the high tech gear does not require a connection to the motorcycle like the airbag on the Honda Goldwing. Instead, accelerometers and gyros identify movement that looks like a crash and deploys an airbag stashed in the hump on racing leathers.

The idea of an airbag on a motorcycle has always struck me as kind of crazy, but the airbag has already been used in an actual race. It was used for the first time in the Valencia MotoGP 125cc world championship. Let’s go to YouTube for the action: