The highest recorded mileage on an automobile

Irv Gordon bought a new Volvo P1800 in 1966 and drove it 3.2 million miles. The car could have gone farther, but Irv died in 2018, so that was it for the mileage streak.

He said he just did regular maintenance on it.  Wow.

Dad Joke CCLIIII

Today's Dad Joke is visual.  It's also about Florida, and motorcycles.  Win-win-win!

 

Is Tesla's autopilot mode killing motorcyclists?

I don't know, But I Just Want 2 Ride sums up what's going on.  If you're a two-wheels-down sort of reader, you should go check it out.

In other news, I Just Want 2 Ride is still posting.  I think the first time I linked there is seven years ago which is pretty long for the blogsosphere.

 

Gregg Allman - Midnight Rider

I rode the Harley today, for the first time in months.  I didn't ride it far.  The problem is that the drivers in Florida are simply terrible about running over motorcyclists.  Every week or two there's another biker that gets hit, either by some elderly resident of God's Waiting Room or some punk-ass kid looking at their phone.

Damn, I used to love riding.  We'd go from Castle Borepatch to Gettysburg by back roads, 3 or 4 times a year plus lots of regular rides with the HOG chapter.  It doesn't look like there's a good chapter down here and so we just haven't gotten out much.  Heck, I don't think The Queen Of The World has even been *ON* the bike since we moved here.

Le sigh.  As buddy Eagle likes to say there are old riders and bold riders, but not many old, bold riders.

But we need a song for Saturday and I don't think I've ever done Gregg Allman.  His brother Duane was killed on a bike (damn, can that have been a half century ago).  

Seen oot and aboot

The Costco parking lot got a pretty sweet visitor.

It looks like a Willys MD, otherwise known as the M38A1 Truck, although repainted in Florida beachy colors.  If I'm right on the model it would be from the mid 1950s.

Seen near Borepatch Lenai

1957 Chevy Bel Air.  Pretty sweet restoration job.

Pontiac Fiero.  Not sure the year, looks like the 6 cylinder model.  Restoration seems to be a work in progress, but it was unusual enough seeing one of these that I pulled over and snapped a photo.

Florida, baby.  They don't salt the roads here.

 

Screw it - let's ride

This is an awesome advert from Taiwan.  It isn't selling motorcycles, and it's not really about motorcycling.  It's entirely awesome.

Hat tip: American Digest.

Willie Nelson - On the Road Again

The Queen Of The World and I are on the road, on the Florida panhandle in Navarre.  This is the place where we had the motorcycle accident a while back.   We're staying at a place that is less than a mile from where I dumped the bike.

All in all, I'm enjoying this visit a lot more than the last one.

But being on the road calls for road music, and I find myself surprised that in roughly 700 (!) country music posts I've never posted country music's greatest road song.  Take it away, Willie.

Stay frosty, boys

It's January 1, and so it was time for the Frosty Balls ride with the local HOG group.

It got up to 40°, so it wasn't bad.  A little brisk, but that's why they call it the Frosty Balls ride ...

Sunday, puppy Sunday

Your thought for the day

Harley will build motorcycles in China

This seems like brand damage:

Harley-Davidson has found a new partner in China as it ramps up efforts to sell more motorcycles abroad.

The company said Wednesday that it’s teaming up with Qianjiang Motorcycle Company to make a small motorcycle that will go on sale in the country next year. Qianjiang is a subsidiary of Geely, which owns Volvo and has a joint venture to assemble cars in China with Mercedes Benz parent company Daimler.

The tariff war with the EU is hurting them, so I can see how they might look for a non-US manufacturing facility.  I can also see how they would want a lower cost, smaller bike than the typical hog (which generally starts at nearly 1000 cc's and goes up to almost double that.  This makes their bikes expensive, and so they are crowded out of the emerging markets.

But so much of their brand is caught up in the idea of Milwaukee Iron that I hope they introduce a different brand for these motorcycles.  East is East, and West is West, and all that.

More on Rolling Thunder

This is what it looked like on Sunday.  It is the off-ramp from I-395 to get to the Pentagon.  We were stopped there for a half hour because the Pentagon parking lot was full of motorcycles and there wasn't any place to put us.

Everyone rolled with it pretty well, though.  Pun intended.

Who knew that Keanu Reeves started a motorcycle company?

Via #2 Son we find Arch Motorcycles, a custom bike shop founded by Reeves.  They look like bikes for young men with money.  Still, it's an interesting view into the non-Harley biking world: these are very different bikes.

Ride as if everyone on the road is trying to kill you

The Queen Of The World and I rode the bike up to Gettysburg yesterday with  some friends.  The weather was perfect - sunny and 74° and we were all itching for a ride.  On the way back we were reminded that life is sometimes defined by moments and inches.

A truck pulling a flatbed trailer was stopped on the side of the road.  The trailer's ramp was down, and a couple of older guys had just unloaded some sort of farm equipment.  I was fairly far back from a line of cars, because I like to ride *very* defensively.  The pickup truck at the back of the line drifted to the right, its passenger side wheel went up the ramp, and it was launched across the road.  It almost - almost - flipped, but ran on the two driver's side wheels until it pitched into a ditch.  A fair amount of debris scattered across the road.

Being pretty far back I was pretty easily able to avoid the wreck and the debris.  We pulled over and parked, as did everyone going in both directions.  One of the guys who  had unloaded the gear off the trailer and I ran over to the truck.  A young guy who seemed pretty dazed got out.  We told him to kill the engine since there was some smoke coming from under the hood, although it might have been steam from the cooling system.

The older guy was calmer than I would have been in his place.  If the truck had been a foot or two more to the right it would have killed him and his friend.  It didn't seem like anyone was hurt which seems a bit of a minor miracle - the truck was completely smashed up.  I'd never seen a wheel twisted 90° but the axel was snapped off.

We think that the kid was looking at his phone (maybe texting) because there was no last minute jerk to the left or sudden brake lights to avoid the trailer.  He just ran on autopilot into what was almost his last moment on this good earth.

Moments and inches.

Which is exactly why I ride so cautiously.  Giving room between me and whoever is in front of me gives me more inches and moments.  Fortunately most people are not as moronic as yesterday's kid, but you can't tell when you run across them.

And I should have taken a picture.  The wreck was pretty spectacular.

Not a recommended approach for carrying on your motorcycle

Woah.

That does look like my Road Glide (well, it looks like a Road Glide from a similar year as mine), but I wouldn't recommend the leather tank cover holsters.  You'd have to move the guns to your actual holsters if you parked and had to go to the Little Harley Room, if you know what I mean.  That'd be violating Tam's "Stop Touching Them" rule.

And you'd definitely have to be in an Open Carry State, and one where the PoPo takes Open Carry laws seriously.

LOLwhut?

Interesting news in the world of motorcycling this week.

A riderless motorcycle:

At CES this week, BMW provided demonstrations of its self-riding motorcycle. First unveiled back in September, the motorcycle can start, slow down, turn, and stop by itself. All of this is accomplished via a suite of proprietary software housed in some hard pack cases mounted on the back of the bike — an otherwise stock-looking R 1200 GS, save for the inclusion of a tall radio antenna on the rear.

Ooooooh kaaaaaaay ....

In other news of the WTF, Harley unveils an electric motorcycle:

Let’s just get it out of the way first. The bike’s MSRP comes to $29,799. That is an expensive bike no matter which way you look at it. Do the specs justify the price? Read on to decide. 

Outstream Video

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The all-electric LiveWire will apparently hit 60 from a stop in 3.5 seconds. There is no clutch and no gear shifting, which will definitely make riding an extremely different experience. And riders will be able to slow down using the power regeneration mode in addition to the brakes.

So it's fast as hell off the start line, Harley expensive, and doesn't have a transmission.  Here's the kicker:

Then we get to the range. Harley estimates 110 miles of urban roads on a single charge, which... isn’t great. And you can expect that mileage only to drop on the highway, as motorcycles aren’t the most aerodynamic. 

One of the advantages of motorcycle ownership is their superior mileage over cars. You’re supposed to be able to fill up less frequently and go further. This bike is less than a Honda Rebel, which gets an estimated 200 miles between fill-ups.

It takes forever to charge - 13 minutes of range per hour of charging - unless you get a Harley expensive special charging station.  This means that you can ride it 50 miles before turning around to go home.  Not exactly going to replace a Road Glide.

Am I the only one who looks at all this "technology" and asks WTF?

UPDATE: Jalopnik finds some Harley electric concept things that it likes on display.  But even this ends with a pessimistic note:

Knowing Harley, however, they’ll be too expensive, too slow, and not offer enough range to compete with existing electric two-wheeled products.

Yeah, probably.

Have yourself a Tactical Christmas ...

My Stepson sent this bit of awesome Christmas cheer:

Err, the stocking, not the pillow.  It was filled with tactical goodies: paracord and such.  A selection is shown here, which will soon find a place in the Harley:

Shown clockwise from the top: a flashlight with adjustable wide-angle to tight-focus flashlight, a multitool with a boatload of nut drivers, a Swiss Army knife, and a "Monkey" wrench which has different wrench sizes (in the middle).  It also has hooks to wrap earbud cords around and a slot - put a credit card in and it converts to a tripod that you can set your phone on.  If you have a flashlight app on the phone (and hey, who doesn't?) you can prop a flashlight/phone to illuminate your subject while you hold the actual flashlight in your mouth.

Hope your Christmas was equally awesome!

Wolves protecting sheep

Via Claire (by way of Zendo Deb and  Wirecutter) we find this story of biker gangs providing security for refugees from the California fires:

To the world at large, their leather club jackets mark them as something to be feared, but to the evacuees, it means safety and a watchful eye. On one, a sharp knife sits holstered on his jeans next to a walkie talkie clip. On others, tattoos and heavy skull rings rest around fingers that grip boxes and lug medical supplies around the shelter. “What we do best is to stand there and look ugly,” Strausbaugh joked. “We look hard and we are hard, and if pushed we can push back in a way that isn’t pleasant. But we also have a soft spot for the little guys.” 

Between five to 12 men from the various clubs are on patrol at all times. When they heard complaints about cars being broken into, the men adjusted their patrols to include the parking lot and the dirt lot next door. They found used needles next to an area where children were playing and “gently escorted” those people out, Dunbar said. 

“We saw a need and came and filled it,” Dunbar said simply. “Bike clubs are often involved in things like this but they’re not the type of guys to go and blow their own horn.”

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's been around bikers.  Zendo Deb muses on Thomas Hobbes:

People say that Thomas Hobbes was an unrealistic pessimist. But I think the state of that church/shelter before the bikers reestablished some level of order was exactly described by Hobbes’ State of War.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Well, until some hard but good men show up.  Men with a realistic view of the world:

For Strausberg, it’s simply a matter of putting the club’s skills where it’s needed most. They’re well aware of their reputation and the way they look to the world, but as he puts it, “We’re like the wolves protecting the lambs. Sometimes it takes a wolf to protect people from the other wolves out there.”

But Claire reminds us that prepping is more than building up stockpiles:

It seems “good citizens” are as unprepared mentally as they were physically.

A moment of Zen

Last week's ride.

Photo by The Queen Of The World

Off to a Jimmy Buffett concert now.  Hopefully I won't blow out my flip flop ...