Though my 2022 Harley Ultra Limited is a very comfortable motorcycle, past experience has taught me that being able to change my position from time to time is definitely important.

I have used this same set up for over 100,000 miles and it was an easy decision to put them on this motorcycle.

https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/shop/long-angled-adjustable-highway-peg-mount-kit/p/50500167

Description:

Stretch out for added comfort. This Adjustable Highway Peg Mounting Kit can be set for shorter riders, and it can be reversed to reach far forward for those with long legs.

• 5-inch angled peg mounting kit in gloss black finish

• Angled design allows the arm to reach back and around to clear fairing lowers

• Arm can be raised and lowered for a custom fit

• Mounting clamp firmly grips the engine guard, and the locking design secures the peg at the desired angle

 There are two versions of the Angled Highway Peg Mounting. A short and a long version. I am using the long version.

 They are available in Black which I am using and Chrome.

 There are numerous styles of foot pegs that can be used with this set up and they can be found on Harley’s web site.

https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/shop/kahuna-footpegs/p/50501225

Description:

Understated but powerful, the Kahuna Collection’s rich gloss black surface is surrounded by deeply grooved, rich black rubber that provides grip and traction where needed.

• Gloss Black finish.

 Installation:

 If you work on your own motorcycle and have some basic tools this should be an easy install.

Tools:

 3/8 Drive Ratchet

3/8 Drive 5/16 Allen Socket

3/8 Drive 1/4 Allen Socket

 You will also need Blue Thread-locker (243)

 Position the Mounting Clamp Halves around the engine guard. The head pin should be upward. The cogged face of the clamp should face the extension arm.

During The Following Steps I Suggest Tightening Parts Tight Enough So That They Do Not Move But Can Be Adjusted Before Final Torque.

 

  Position the arm so that when footpeg is installed it will not interfere with the foot controls or hit the ground when cornering.

 

  Sit on upright motorcycle and test position of assembly. Adjust as necessary.

  Repeat procedure on opposite side of motorcycle.

Measure both arms are the same height from the ground and pegs rotated to a comfortable position. Put Blue Thread-locker on footpeg bolt and Torque to 21 Foot Pounds

Install the setscrew into the lower of the two holes on the back side of the arm and adjust until the angle of the footpeg is comfortable for you.

 Torque assembly to 55-60 Foot Pounds.

 

 

Edwin X Berry, PhD, Theoretical Physics

Then, he presents the usual extensive list of weather-caused damages since 2012.

“The report was clairvoyant. The report was exactly what a climate report should do: Warn us about the future in time for us to adapt before the worst stuff happens.”
But Borenstein and Oppenheimer go off the scientific cliff by concluding these IPCC predicted damages prove that our CO2 emissions caused these damages.

 

Events do not prove CO2, human or natural, caused the events. Furthermore, climate is a 30-year average of weather, so the use of weather events to argue a human cause for climate change is unscientific. The fundamental scientific principle – that events do not prove their cause – ends all arguments that events prove human CO2 is guilty.

The IPCC claims these three (false) theories are true:
1.Human CO2 causes all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
2.The CO2 increase above 280 ppm causes global warming.

 

Let’s look at the big picture of climate alarmism.

This figure shows the three scenarios for Natural and Human CO2.

Climate change is the most divisive, misunderstood, critical issue in the 2022 election

America’s only hope is that the Republican Party will support climate truth. The absence of a Republican challenge has allowed the Democrats to gain voters on the climate issue.

Now, in mid-September 2022, the November election does not look good for Republicans.

 

1.Nature controls the climate.
2.Our CO2 does not change the climate and is not a pollutant.
3.Global temperature controls the CO2 level.
4.We need more CO2 because more CO2 grows more food with less water.
Our national energy plan should include:
1.Making natural gas our primary energy source.
2.Making nuclear energy our growing primary energy source.
3.Drill, baby, drill, with added incentives to keep our offshore oil rigs in top condition.
4.Make high-tech coal our secondary energy source.

1.Eliminate all climate laws, regulations, incentives, and treaties.
2.Eliminate all subsidies for EV’s, heat pumps, wind, and solar energy, thereby forcing them compete on a level economic playing field.
Carbon capture may be the most insane and counter-productive peacetime undertaking in human history.
Don’t waste good energy to put atmospheric CO2 in the ground.

Montana Republicans have not supported climate truth.
Nineteen Republicans entered Montana’s 2022 primary election for Congress. Montana Free Press asked these candidates to answer questions on climate change.
Sixteen Republican candidates (85%) agreed with the Democrats on climate change. They did not read Berry’s book, Climate Miracle.
Democrats have filed multiple redundant climate lawsuits.

In 2011, Dr. Berry filed an Intervention to a Democrat climate petition in Montana’s Supreme Court. His Intervention caused the Court to reject the petition, thereby saving Montana billions of dollars per year thereafter and making him the only scientist to defeat a climate lawsuit. The Montana Supreme Court ruled,

De. Berry’s attorney, Quentin Rhoades, wrote,

Montana’s defense attorney for Held v Montana thinks they must defend against the plaintiffs’ direct claims.

The scientific method says if your prediction is wrong then your theory is wrong. This proves the scientific basis of the Democrats’ 2022 climate lawsuits is wrong.

 

Republicans must lead a new revolution against the climate fraud.

Now is the perfect time for Republicans to promote climate truth because people want to stay warm this winter and want to keep the costs of energy, travel, and food low.

© 2022 Edwin X Berry, PhD – All Rights Reserved
To comment on this article, please click here.
Dr. Ed Berry is CEO of Ed Berry LLC, author of Climate Miracle, and editor and publisher of https://edberry.com based in Bigfork, Montana. He has a PhD in Physics, is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, and an expert in climate change who takes the position that our carbon dioxide emissions are insignificant to climate change. His peer-reviewed paper, published on December 14, 2021, proves climate alarmism is climate fiction. 

At the same time, you’ll want to move everything into one place—ideally your garage or storage unit. The fewer places you keep your collection, the easier the process becomes. And be prepared for the entire process to take far longer than you imagined. Considering the obscurity of certain motorcycles as well as the small pool of potential buyers for some of the more expensive ones and unpredictability of the market, it can easily take years.

Likely, selling off the parts will prove most challenging and time-consuming. You can’t donate them to charity or sell them at a Mecom’s-type auction as you can with a complete motorcycle. Your best bet then will be to sell them to another collector and EBay is an obvious way to do so. Museums might want them, but generally only if they’re free.

Finding that person can take time as well. We all know people who know motorcycles just as we know people who know money. But it’s essential that whomever you choose has your best interests in mind rather than their own. For that reason, you’ll want to involve an estate attorney or estate planner to create a Directive to Heirs or Beneficiaries which lays out how you want your collection handled as part of your Estate.
Once you’ve created an estate plan, make sure that you assign or title each motorcycle to your Trust so as not to get tangled up in probate.

Organization

Lights

A torch setup

Digital calipers

A high-quality tap set
The ability to create an accurate threaded hole is key to just about any fabrication project. It’s also important to be able to clean out or restore threads on vintage parts to ensure proper fit. Not all taps fit the bill, however. This is the first entry that includes a disclaimer: high quality. Taps are made from very hard material and the thing about that is if they break off in a hole you are in for a world of frustration. I personally think you have two options for acquiring taps: Buy the big set and cry once at the check you just wrote, or buy what you need as you need it. This all comes down to what kind of cash you have on hand at the time. I came into ownership of a cheap tap set and it just sits in the back of the toolbox these days as anytime I need to cut threads I will purchase a high-quality piece of tooling in the appropriate size for the project and then index it in the toolbox for the future.

Welder
Left for last because it’s the most obvious. Just about any DIY enthusiasts without a welder lusts after one, and for good reason. A welder can be a great problem solver and there is no reason not to have one these days with 110v models being more powerful, smaller, and more affordable than ever. Plan on burning a small spool or two or wire on scrap metal before joining any projects you care about. Best to make friends with your local metals or welding shop to see if you can pick their scrap bin once a week to get material to practice on.

Adding these eight tools and disciplines to a basic tool kit makes you more than prepared for any home DIY project. Have a recommendation you think should be added to the list? Post it in the Comments Section below.

1. Comment from a Hagerty reader pointed out an important “tool” – the “Fire Extinguisher”. The author has acknowledged this critical element which should be included no matter the size and capabilities of any garage. We will publish a story on types and applications of Fire Extinguishers shortly.

This lifelong lover of two wheels grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, a decade marked by civil rights uprisings and antiwar protests. Fax’s parents sought to give her and her siblings a leg up and a foot out the door so the kids could achieve the life they aspired to, even if the social representation wasn’t there.

“We were actually very poor,” Fax recalls. “We didn’t have anything but a lot of hand-me-downs. We really weren’t able to get new clothes. We had old bicycles. But my father and my mother were insistent on making sure that we were exposed to things that most African American children were not exposed to.”

From a young age, Fax found herself the odd one out in most extracurricular activities. Her skin tone aside, she was a tomboy and often the only girl. She’s used to surprising people. Case in point: Her first experience behind the handlebars was a minibike race against a bunch of boys. Fax was 8. She learned the basics of the bike only minutes before approaching the starting line.

And she won her race.

When she was 13, her family moved to a small town in Ohio. A city slicker, born and raised, Fax was invigorated by the wide-open spaces and the chance to get lost in the landscape with her younger brother riding on the back of her dirt bike. They chased down long, rural roads and returned home with more than a few skinned knees. That’s where she finally figured out how to work a clutch. That’s where she came into her own as a rider.

Her first vehicle had been a moped at age 10 while living in Los Angeles. Then she upgraded to the 175 Honda dirt bike. With Ohio highways summoning Fax like a siren song, she needed something with more power.

“Went from the 175 to a street bike because I could go farther,” she says. “I got a 1969 350 Honda twin with a two-tone tank, red and white. By the time I was in college, I’d put 100,000 miles on that thing.”

“I rode that bike all the way back from Hazard County, Kentucky, to the little town in Ohio that I lived in,” Fax says. “Everybody kept telling me my life was going to change after I bought the Harley. Let me tell you something: Everything changed. Being a female on a big V-twin, alone, I think was astounding enough. The fact that I was an African American female on the bike made it an even sweeter deal — it was like the circus came to town …

“That motorcycle opened up more doors than I ever could have imagined.”

Today, Fax’s daily rider is a 2001 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic. She also owns a 1995 Honda XR250R dirt bike and a 1999 Sportster 883 Hugger that she turned into a bobber “for banging around town.” She’s currently rebuilding the Shovelhead.

Fax’s unabashed drive to reach for her dreams (and beyond) has led to a life packed with accolades that include appearing on the covers of biker magazines; starring in documentary films (Biker Women and The Litas); performing bass with the band Klymaxx on MTV and Soul Train, and becoming an entry point to motorcycling for so many other women riders around the globe. Earlier this year, she was invited by Polaris to join the company’s new Empowersports Women’s Riding Council, which was formed to increase representation, inclusion, and participation of women in Powersports. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her partner of 25 years, has a master’s degree in education, and works as a K-12 teacher. In light of Covid, she now teaches physical education online, concentrating her instruction on basic survival skills, health, safety, and teamwork until group activities are permissible again.

We caught up with Fax to find out more about what compels her to choose two wheels and live life in the wind.

What was your first bike?

I started riding when I was 8, but I didn’t get a “motorcycle” until I was 10. My dad had his own company as a painter and decorator, and he was working for Philip Fowler, who owned Southern Comfort Whiskey at the time. He was on a job, and Philip was giving him a walk-through. My dad happened to see this moped — basically a motorbike — in Philip’s garage.

Philip says, “We imported that from Italy five years ago. It’s been sitting in the garage since. If your daughter can get it running, you can have it.”

You’ve said motorcycles opened up new doors for your career. How so?

There were not many African American women on motorcycles, and even if they were, they certainly were not on Harleys. I became kind of a unicorn. It got me seen — for the first time, people were actually seeing me instead of me being invisible.

I ended up gracing the covers of American Motor Scene magazine, Harley Women, Girl Guide, and Black Rider. In doing those covers, I landed a few more modeling jobs, a few more commercials. I appeared in Biker Women, a documentary that was aired on the Discovery Channel. Within one week, it went international … All of us were on billboards. We were on the sides of buses. This was the biggest thing any of us had ever done, and it literally blew my head off my shoulders.

How do you hope to inspire other women through your endeavors?

What’s your favorite biker ritual?

I call it a circle of love or a circle of safety. Before I take off on my motorcycle, I walk around my bike very slowly, and I check everything on it to make sure everything’s good before I get out on the road. It’s also a form of meditation and prayer.

Where would you love to ride to next?

I want to go coast to coast. I haven’t done that yet. And then I want to go to Alaska.

The best thing about living life in the wind?

Honestly, I can’t breathe unless I can ride. I didn’t realize how much of a release it is for me until I was injured at one point and couldn’t ride for a while. I almost went crazy — at least, that’s what it felt like. Heaven forbid I become blind because that would be the worst. I would have to hire somebody to drive me around in a sidecar.

Somebody said to me, “Well, now that you’re getting older, do you think that you may not ride anymore?”

I am basically a gear head. I have always been in love with the internal combustion engine. They fascinate me, especially old ones. My dad taught me four cycle theory when I was about 7. I watched him overhaul his flathead Ford in 1952. The truck was only two years old and ran fine. I don’t know why he wanted to overhaul it. He had to pull it with the tractor to get it started because it was so tight. It ran fine after that though. Dad was a natural mechanic and I guess I got it from him. He was trained on tanks and other military hardware in the army.

He landed at Normandy and fought all the way to Berlin with Patton. I found out years after he passed away he had to clean bodies out of tanks and salvage parts to keep them running at the Battle of the Bulge. He never talked about that stuff to me.

He got dysentery that winter (1944). Colon cancer killed him in 1961. I’m pretty sure that affected the cancer.

I had two years of auto mechanics and one year of welding and general metals in high school so when I graduated, I had some basic skills which have carried me my whole life.

I joined the Navy as soon as I graduated and they trained me in aviation electronics. I had an aptitude for that, but I didn’t like it as well as working on cars and motorcycles.

My first job after the Navy was working on utility trucks the electric companies use. I perfected my welding skills and built some custom springer front ends and about four girder front ends from scratch in 1969 and 1970.

Over the years I have been an oil field welder, a heavy truck mechanic and I’ve worked for Chevy dealers and Ford dealers as a heavy line technician and an automatic transmission technician.

For fun I built hot rods and choppers. I should have stayed with the aviation electronics. I could have retired from Lockheed Martin. Oh well, hindsight’s a bitch.

In 1929 they had a 420 cubic inch straight-eight with 325 horsepower. It was big and heavy but would outrun anything on the road then. All those old engines had compression ratios of around 6 to 1. If they were brought up to around 10 to 1 and we installed modern carburetors, they would make serious power.

In 1917 Nash had an overhead valve six that was about like Chevrolet’s in the thirties. Chevrolet had a V8 based on the Curtiss aircraft engine in 1918. They only produced them for one year. Nearly all the design used in today’s engines was actually developed from 1915-1930. Much of it came about because of war.

The Liberty motor originally developed for heavy WW1 bombers is a 1100 cubic inch V12 that looks like 6 Harley-Davidsons staked together. It had 12 individual cylinders on a long common case, single overhead cams driven by shafts and bevel gears, rocker arms and hemi heads and was running strong in 1917. As soon as the war was over, they were sold as surplus and most found their way in boats. It was the rum runner engine of choice. There were still a lot of them running in the late 1940s.

In 1932 Ford decided to build a V8 for the common man. Cadillac ran Flathead V8s for years in their Lasalles. They had overhead V12s and V16s in their big cars. Those cars were for the rich only.

With the advent of the depression no one could afford cars like that. The Ford V8 is a horrible design, but by installing 2 water pumps and huge radiators on them, they would run for years. It was only 221 cubic inches and had 85 horsepower, but the cars were so light they were fast. That is why they made such great hot rods. I have a full fendered ‘34 right now with a 350 Chevy in it and it only weighs about 2500 pounds.

The problem with the Ford engine included the exhaust ports all the way around the cylinders through the water jacket and out the bottom side of the block. This really heated the water and was prone to cracking exhaust ports. It’s hard to find a good flathead Ford block. Because they were so cheap, they were everywhere in the ‘50s and started a huge aftermarket industry of speed equipment. Thanks to nostalgia this stuff is still being made today.

Cadillac had a much better flathead V8 that came out in 1937. It was 346 cubic inches and had 150 horsepower at 3600 RPM. Not bad for the times.

They are very reliable and durable engines. Many are still running without ever being apart. They had the exhaust ports come out the top right beside the intake ports. They had beautiful black porcelain coated exhaust manifolds right beside the carburetor. They also had hydraulic lifters. They are very quiet and smooth.

The trouble is they weigh over 800 pounds. Hot rodders were not interested until the new overhead valve Cadillac V8 came out in 1949. They and the ‘49 Olds were the engines of choice for hot rods everywhere. They were stuffed into ‘49-‘51 Fords that ran moonshine. Norm Grabovski put one in a bucket-T and it became the Kookie car on 77 Sunset strip. All that stuff fascinated me and still does. I want to build a rod with a nail-head Buick right now.

The cars and motorcycles of today run awesome and last a long time, but they do nothing for me. People who can work on those old engines are few and far between. We are a vanishing breed. In a few years if a collector wants to keep the old stuff running, he will have to get out the old manuals and train some young guy with an aptitude for it.

Along with the current global hoaxes of, for instance, humans causing climate anomalies, Biden getting more legal votes than Trump, jury duty being not a duty but a privilege, Gavin Newsom having an IQ, Kamala Harris having an awareness level higher than a house plant, Ocasio Cortez being able to answer a question, the annual cold and flu season being a species-threatening pandemic, lip-synching being an actual anything, journalists being writers, bureaucrats giving a shit about non bureaucrats, that you don’t think you have to actually pay for the “20% FREE” product in the extra-large detergent container, cops ever having read a book, kids being health threats to granma, granma not having a problem dying alone surrounded by “privilege”-hating psychopaths who DO get to see granma while her own family can’t – along with all these is the myth that Kim Jong Un is a threat to anyone other than to his food tasters. And he must have a lot of those, judging from his size.

Kim Jong Un is probably the least threatening to the world and most feared by journalists…..dictator of clueless idiots…. in human history.

And yet the news hacks….well, let me put it this way: you’ll wait a very long time before you see The New York Times, or any news outlet that worships The New York Times, which would be all of them, you’ll wait a long time before any news hack ever comes out and admits that every photo of Kimmy that they publish proves 1: that news hacks are worthless assholes who never tell the truth, and that 2: Kimmy is a happy clown actually going out of his way to see how far he can test journalist stupidity and worthlessness.

Every time Kimmy allows a photograph of himself to be released to the Worldwide Idiot Journalist Cult he does everything possible to admit via the photograph that he’s totally full of shit. And yet every photo is diligently broadcast by the Idiot Journalist Worldwide Press Sewer and proclaimed to be everything Kimmy says for them to proclaim them.

Here’s just six reasons even a dead cat in the roadside could see that Kim Jong Un is merely a bloated bilious balloon filled with bilge water and barf particles.

1: He is surrounded in every photo buy a dozen 90-year-old skinny men in baggy military attire, all of them smiling, and all of them jotting down notes into a small Spiral notebook police sergeants used in the ‘50s. None of them have cell phones. They can’t just fucking record what Kimmy is saying. Probably because Kimmy probably doesn’t allow his worshipping subjects to know cell phones actually exist. If any of them knew cell phones actually existed they would all die of fright thinking the Supernatural Demon of Magic had just taken over the planet. They’d react to cell phones the way Swahilis reacted to matches in 1850.

2: He claims to have hydrogen bombs even though he actually goes out of his way to prove that he doesn’t. Tell that to the “American” press.

Enclosed are two pictures of Kimmy and his entourage of edentulate skeletons scribbling notes calmly while encircling what the press insists is a hydrogen bomb. They’re meandering around a fucking hydrogen bomb! Even though it LOOKS like an aluminum or plastic replica of a very large flood-control valve or conduit-joint for a nonexistent oil pipeline, since there ARE no oil pipelines in North Korea because there are no automobiles in North Korea because there is no industry in North Korea or filthy fossil fuels from dinosaurs in North Korea or jobs to drive to in North Korea.

And if you think the world’s semi-industrial nations, stupid though they may be, would allow the most sociopathic member of the most destitute country on earth to possess a working fucking hydrogen bomb…..you just ain’t thinkin’. Still, however, you’re doing more thinking than the world journalists and their bosses are.

If that idiot EVER had anything larger than a pipe bomb at his disposal you can bet that either Russia or China marched in there long long ago and took it away from him OR from his dad OR from his grandfather 100 years ago.

North Korea has one export and it’s not nuclear threats: its teenage Korean prostitutes being shipped-out for the world’s potentates and mini potentates such as one might find in the Congresses, and Senates and States and city governments and national governments of the world. Because ANYTHING is better than living in North Korea where there isn’t even popcorn. Even being a prostitute in Iran.

So, forget about Kimmy having hydrogen bombs. Do you think that even one journalist on the world-media scene who has written about that aluminum water valve that everyone with two eyes on earth has seen by now has ever said it’s NOT a hydrogen bomb? Or at least has implied via the text that the accompanying picture to the article about Kimmy having more hydrogen bombs than Trump says “yuge” that is actually a water valve to nowhere…..and not actually not a hydrogen bomb?

Well, you would be wrong. That is supposed to be a hydrogen bomb that is leisurely resting in a hallway next to a parking lot and being casually strolled-about and written-about in prehistoric notebooks with fucking pencils. A hydrogen bomb, with men in Korean War Surplus clothing and writing in schoolroom stationery next to a hydrogen bomb they’re casually perusing outside a hallway in a cafeteria for transport by hay wagon to the show-and-tell at the next Workers Plumbing Commune Tea-With-No-Crumpets mandatory attendance festival.

A hydrogen bomb. That empty hollow thing with a clump of wires to nowhere is a hydrogen bomb. Yeah ok.

3: Ecuador could conquer North Korea. And all Ecuador would have to do to accomplish that would be to make the announcement that they were on their way. Kimmy would be in the one plane that actually flies and heading for Macau or Monaco with ten cauldrons of boiling gold on board and ready for distribution to all his welcomers.

4: Kimmy would never provoke an attack because he knows all his worshippers are useless combatants because he knows they are braindead idiots and have no idea what combat even is. As an example of their childlike boneheadedness, everyone in North Korea is convinced that Kimmy’s huge blubbery fat-packed body is what happens when you are dying of malnutrition. No: REALLY.

I know what you’re saying: no one’s that clueless.

Hey, we here in America think the annual cold and flu season is a “great and mighty plague.” We think that making ice cubes is heating the earth. And the Koreans think that balloon-sized arms, legs, belly neck and face are what happens when you don’t eat enough. They ain’t all that different from us in some ways.

It’s called “believing your ruler is NOT a sociopath.” Or “being a citizen” in other words. Or comrade. Depending on what branch of socialism you live under, Secret Society socialism, “Christian” socialism, Marxist socialism, Hindu socialism, Buddhist
socialism, or Islamic, or more accurately, ancient Assyrian, socialism.

So, yes, North Korean citizen-comrade-all-in-this-together people don’t see a swollen, fat, gluttonous, munchkin, waddling, thunder-thighed fuckhead apparition when they see Kimmy: they see an emaciated starving selfless, saintly godlike creature giving his life via fasting and abstinence to save theirs. Kind of like a Commie Jesus, more or less.

5: Every “rocket launch” photo is a childish concoction so amateurishly sloppy it wouldn’t fool a chimpanzee, forget about a human. It gets right past America’s, Canada’s, England’s and Australia’s journalists, however. They are convinced that they are seeing the New Galactic Emperor in action, showing his mighty wares to the trembling earth inhabitants; his interstellar annihilators against which we have no hope of survival flying upward like V2 rockets from 1945, the very latest in warfare.

Kimmy sits at the end of a runway since that’s where rockets take off from and it’s just him, the 1950 news photo, a pair of binoculars not made in North Korea and the world’s journalists declaring this scenario a mighty war machine to be reckoned with. Delaware could reckon with Kimmy’s mighty war machine.

6: Kimmy has one known pal: Dennis Rodman. Dennis Rodman!! If this doesn’t prove Kimmy’s seeing how far he can push Western gullibility, nothing ever will.

–J.J. Solari
Bikernet War Expert
Pentagon

Evel Knievel had a stock answer for reporters when they asked him: Well … why? “There’s three mysteries to life,” he said, with practiced conviction. “Where we came from, why we do what we do, and where we’re going to go. You don’t know the answer to any of those three, and neither do I.” Standing next to the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974, as crew members prepped his water-powered rocket cycle to fly the chasm in what would be his ballsiest cheat of death yet, he added: “I’m going to jump it to get to the other side, and I don’t want to drive across that damn bridge.”

A half a century later, we know some of the answers to the three mysteries of Knievel, including where he came from and where he went. We may never really know why, but he probably gave us his best clue in Idaho: “I don’t want to drive across that damn bridge.” Like everyone else would, like mere mortals would. Wherever Evel Knievel would go in life, he planned to fly.

Since Snake River, many of Knievel’s motorcycle jumping records have been toppled with ease. Lighter bikes, miles of suspension travel, and broad dirt ramps have produced YouTube spectacles that are both thrilling and safer. But no one has done it with the showmanship or command of hyperbole that captivated 1970s Malaise-Era America. Knievel in the white star-spangled suit never quite showed all of his cards—but then again, he never really had any, refusing to use a speedometer, a tachometer, or any pre-jump calculations. It was all gut. He ripped shots of Wild Turkey hidden in his diamond cane and then set sail, arcing through the air like a comic book superhero while straddling America’s number one escape vehicle.

His star turns on color TV as well as the 1971 film, Evel Knievel, produced so many iterations of half-truths and exaggerations about his life that it’s hard to separate fact from fiction, and that’s just fine. The film catalyzed the daredevil emperor’s conquest and spun him into a national phenomenon with intense command over the social spotlight. Such command, in fact, that even 50 years after the film’s release, we still remember him.

The Lord almighty gifted Robert Craig Knievel to the world on October 17, 1938, in Butte, Montana. Once called “The Richest Hill on Earth” for its position atop veins of copper, silver, and gold, Butte in the 1940s and ’50s was a jagged place. Shafts bored the landscape into Swiss cheese. Big machines, big money, big egos. The youngster with the German last name, pronounced Kin-evil, was a handful, his natural recklessness stoked by the rough-and-tumble mining town.

At 18, he wound up in jail—it wasn’t the first time, nor the last—after evading the police but ultimately crashing his getaway motorcycle. There he shared cell walls with a William Knofel, and prison guards labeled the convicts “Awful” Knofel and “Evil” Knievel. The name stuck, but Knievel changed the “i” to an “e” because, despite his misconduct, he didn’t want to be considered evil. He eventually slipped the bars and joined the Army, but his service didn’t last long, and the dropout returned to Butte, where he landed a job at the copper mine. He was promoted to surface duty, but soon he was fired for pulling a wheelie with the bulldozer and knocking over Butte’s main power line.

He was an adrenaline junkie before the term existed. To feed his habit, he dabbled in skiing, rodeo riding, and motorcycle racing. At 19, Knievel formed his own semi-pro hockey team, the Butte Bombers, then somehow persuaded the Czechoslovakian national team to play an exhibition—in Butte, no less. The Czechs destroyed the Bombers, 22 to 3, while Knievel passed a plate around, urging spectators to defray the Czechs’ travel expenses. After the final buzzer, everyone was shocked to find the money gone, along with Knievel.

During those formative years, he also burglarized businesses from Montana to Oregon. In a 1971 interview with The New Yorker, he confessed his sins. “When I was stealing, I’d go into a store and ask if they had fire-and-theft, pretend I was selling insurance,” he said. “If the man in the store said he already had insurance and if his attitude was bad—if he told me to get the hell out—then I’d go back that night and rob him. I never carried a gun, never hurt anybody except the insurance companies, and they’re bastardly thieves anyway.” (Knievel spent a few years of his life as a legitimate insurance salesman.)

Soon enough, the law closed in. “I had a terrible breakdown when I was about 25. The police chased me across four states—I was in a Pontiac Bonneville, going 120 miles an hour, and after that, I just couldn’t stand the pressure.” So, he gave up the life of crime.

Why we do what we do? It was 1966, and after some brief stints selling insurance and Honda motorcycles, Knievel stepped into the sideshow stunt world of county fairs and other regional events. His father had taken him to see the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show, an automotive circus featuring cars jumping, cars on two wheels, and cars on fire.

In Washington, Knievel decided to start his own stunt brigade on motorcycles. He partnered with a Norton distributor, dressed in bumblebee-colored leathers, and briefly reinstated the “i” in his stage name. “Evil Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils!” Their first show took place during the 1966 National Date Festival in Indio, California, somewhere between the dog parades and a performance by the Southern Pacific Railroad Band.

Knievel’s self-promoted events, plus a brief spot on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, spooled interest so quickly that barely a year after the Date Festival, he found him-self in Las Vegas at the top of a ramp at Caesars Palace, ready to rip 141 feet over the fountain of the newly opened resort.

He had already ditched the Daredevils, reinstated the “e,” adopted the patriotic leathers that would become his brand, and learned that jumping bikes paid decent money if it was paired with enough show-biz spectacle. Even so, he had to con his way to the top of that ramp by barraging Caesars Palace founder Jay Sarno with a series of phone calls. In each call, Knievel impersonated a lawyer, a broadcast company, or anyone else who might plausibly feign interest in his proposed jump. His blitz earned face time with Sarno, and the two agreed to a jump date.

After a suitable buildup that included Knievel wheeling his Triumph Bonneville T120 back and forth before the huge crowd, he gunned the throttle and barreled toward the launch ramp. But the daredevil felt the power suddenly sag as he hit the ramp. It was too late to back out; rider and bike sailed high over the pluming fountain, Knievel standing on the pegs, almost seeming to try to pull the bike up against the gravity that was closing in. Instead, he clipped the landing ramp short with the rear tire, the front tire slammed down, and—wham!—he somersaulted over the front of the bike and onto the pavement, a bouncing, skidding, tumbling, instantly comatose mannequin of shattered bones.

Knievel had the entire jump filmed by actor John Derek and Derek’s then-wife, actress Linda Evans. Evans’ gruesome reel, shot from beyond the landing ramp as Knievel spilled, garnered global playback. “Nobody wants to see me die,” Knievel used to say, “but they don’t want to miss it if I do.” For a man who spoke in headlines and hyperbole, this was an unexaggerated truth. It was only in 1967, when he smashed at Caesars, that people began paying attention to the huckster from Butte.

Knievel vaulted over his motorcycle’s handlebars on to late-night talk shows, and the well-spoken, cowboy-handsome fabulist captivated Technicolor audiences with ease. It was on The Dick Cavett Show where Knievel, seated in a New York soundstage, jazz cat Dizzy Gillespie to his right, joked, “I think the thing that upset me most at Caesars Palace was I bounced into the Dunes parking lot and they never paid me for making an appearance.”

All the right people took notice of the burgeoning star, including actor George Hamilton. The debonair dreamboat, known for mushy roles in By Love Possessed and Light in the Piazza, was working on a story about a rodeo rider turned motorcycle stuntman. The story, however, pivoted when the actor learned of Knievel and saw him as a more compelling real-life protagonist.

Hamilton commissioned a script from John Milius, a young screenwriter from Missouri who in that same decade went on to write epics such as Jeremiah Johnson and Apocalypse Now. Milius doubled-down on Knievel’s bravado and further embellished the tales from Butte. (See Knievel busting through sorority house doors and riding up the staircase to kidnap his future wife.)

For the film’s climax, Knievel was to fling his ethyl-chugging XR-750 Harley-Davidson 129 feet over 18 Dodge Colts and one Dodge van lined up inside California’s Ontario Motor Speedway. At this point in his career, he wasn’t yet the main attraction—many of the 80,000 fans packing the grandstands of the newly built $25 million racing palace east of Los Angeles had come for a NASCAR race. No matter. His high-flying act and subsequent movie starring Hamilton as Knievel would launch the real stuntman from opener to main attraction.

The Ontario jump was a smooth spectacle. Only years later, in the biography by Leigh Montville titled Evel, did we learn of the calamity that day. According to an interview with Hamilton, who spent time in the stuntman’s trailer prior to the jump, Knievel was drunk off Wild Turkey and his hand was broken from a practice accident the day before. Worried, Hamilton asked him, “How will you jump with a broken hand?” Knievel replied: “I’ll tape it to the handlebars. It’s logic, George. If your hand is broken, you tape it on.”

We also learn that the weather conditions were better than usual. California’s Santa Ana winds, known to blow over 18-wheelers on the highway adjacent to the speedway, were calm. It was those forceful gusts that blew stunt cyclist Debbie Lawler off course while she attempted a similar jump at Ontario in 1974.

Hindsight is 20/20, though, and in a split second, Knievel’s 300-pound Harley floated down to the landing ramp. Knievel rode away, A.J. Foyt won the race, and America rejoiced. Hamilton’s movie, Evel Knievel, premiered later that June, 50 years ago this summer. Perhaps the film was too goofy, or playboy Hamilton wasn’t rugged enough. It put up decent box-office numbers, but critics were lukewarm. “The life of Evel Knievel contains the same seeds of self-doom as Dostoevsky characters,” said Roger Ebert. “That’s what I miss in the current George Hamilton movie version.” Two stars.

Notwithstanding the lack of cinematic clout, Hamilton’s 1971 Knievel biopic was responsible for one life-altering effect. Knievel was no longer a stuntman, he was a silver-screen superhero, and as Montville, Knievel’s biographer, put it, “the made-up story, added to his own story, pushed his exploits further into the main stage spotlight that he always craved.”

Producers even spliced home-video footage into the movie. By the time the audience left the theaters, they couldn’t parse out truth from Hollywood. The movie, projected 40 feet tall across every drive-in screen nationwide, cast Knievel as an American icon, and now everyone knew his name. What the world didn’t know was that he was just getting started.

A year later, miles from Hollywood, in a nondescript factory on the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 184th Place, in Queens, New York, assembly lines were producing miniature versions of the stuntman. Despite the drab digs, the Ideal Toy Company, famous for its Shirley Temple dolls, was already valued at over $71 million. Looking for more, it brokered a deal to produce an Evel Knievel action figure (Knievel receiving 10 percent of the cut). The doll sold well, but it was the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle—a 1973 release that put a plastic Evel on a small windup motorcycle that raced off—that was a midair somersaulting license to print money.

It was the industry’s top-selling toy in back-to-back Christmases (indeed, you can buy a rereleased version today on Amazon). The daredevil had reached an unthinkable level of stardom, and like the Greek gods of yore whose images were enshrined in marble statuary, Knievel was immortalized in red, white, and blue plastic. Television and movie stars had their own lunchboxes—only superheroes, G.I. Joe, and Knievel had their own action figures.

All told, Knievel netted an estimated $10 million from his toy deal. By 1973, the merchandising fly-wheel was spinning faster than ever: board games, playing cards, bicycles, pinball machines. He was flush with cash and spent as such. He bought yachts, leased planes, and commissioned coachbuilt Cadillacs and a $91,000 semitruck to haul his bikes around.

He arrived at events in police-escorted cavalcades. (See Knievel in a pre-jump parade, in Texas, with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith riding shotgun in the stuntman’s Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona. Goodbye, modesty—not that there ever was any). Gone, too, were the Nortons, Triumphs, and American Eagles. Knievel exclusively rode Harley-Davidsons, and the firm’s iconic red, white, and blue “1” logo was painted and stitched everywhere. His outfit swelled to match his swagger—rings, chains, furs, massive collars and French cuffs. The cape grew longer, the “EK” belt buckle larger, and his cane became a diamond-encrusted gold scepter; it was metamorphosis into a superfly sovereign.

And his subjects roared. Despite the lavish effects, Knievel preserved his plain-spoken, working-man image. He talked about morals and being “true to your word,” and he wore Old Glory on his back. The public bought in, might have even elected him president in a different era.

But this was the era of the 55-mph sign, of new rules and regulations and oil crises and inflation and Watergate. The fences were going up everywhere, yet this stuntman rode from the shadows of the stadium tunnels into the spotlight on his chrome-tipped Harley and launched over everything like Captain America, a red, white, and blue middle finger to the establishment. He flew—the corrupt elites, the nannies, and the naysayers, they took the damn bridge.

Knievel was also literally fighting regulations. Since the late 1960s, he had been haggling with the U.S. government over a plan to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle. Negotiations dragged on for years. As the Hollywood trade rag Variety put it, the two sides had “not yet decided who collects should the flight not prove horizontal.” They never agreed, and the talks subsided. Instead, Knievel—now a millionaire—purchased his own gorge, leasing 300 acres of the Snake River Canyon in Twin Falls, Idaho, for $35,000. Again, screw the system.

As Knievel sorted the jump location, a team of builders, led by engineers Doug Malewicki and Robert Truax, developed a missile-shaped steam-powered two-wheeler prototype called the Skycycle X-1. Steam power was chosen for its simplicity. Behind the cockpit, 77 gallons of water would be heated to 740 degrees, and the resulting steam buildup would be released via a rear-mounted nozzle, propelling the craft to an anticipated 350 mph. This 13-foot-long water rocket would take off from an almost-vertical 108-foot-long metal launching track and carve a steep parabola over the 600-foot-deep canyon. Knievel would deploy a parachute from the cockpit to land on the other side. Or, at least, that was the plan.

By spring 1974, a fall date had been set for the Snake River Canyon spectacle. A pilotless X-1 was launched into the canyon to test the ramp, and Truax was hard at work on the X-2, the rocket that would carry Knievel across the great divide. To the dismay of those investing in the launch, Knievel was flying his Harley more than ever. He completed four massive jumps in various corners of the U.S., despite the fact an injury could delay, or outright cancel, the rapidly approaching pay-per-view event at Twin Falls. Also, America had found other daredevils—or “phonies,” as Knievel labeled them. Rival stunt cyclists came roaring out of the gates with Knievel in their crosshairs. Maybe Knievel felt the need to defend his crown. Regardless, he couldn’t shy away from the spotlight, an intense beam that was burning hotter with each appearance.

As the Skycycle X-2 neared completion, Idaho law required it to be registered as an aircraft. Knievel’s pre-jump speeches developed a bombast and started to sound more and more like screenwriter Milius’s handiwork.

Prior to a jump at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, Knievel addressed the crowd: “It’s my canyon. They cannot take that away from me. And the only way they’re going to stop me from jumping is with an anti-aircraft gun. They’re going to have to shoot me out of the air!” The militant, over-the-top Hollywood lines had crept into the real Knievel vernacular. He had become his own caricature.

By the time Knievel was hoisted into the vertically positioned rocket on September 8, 1974, the scene on that cliff’s edge resembled a debauched Woodstock. A semicircle of humanity, miles wide, drawn out from the 50-foot-high dirt launchpad, was densely packed with dehydrated fanatics, fed-up reporters, hippies, biker gangs, and anyone else who could pay $25 for admission to the party. Sideshow acts included a blindfolded motorcycle-riding psychic, a woman suspended by her hair from a helicopter, and a high-wire act near the canyon’s edge by Karl Wallenda of the Famous Flying Wallendas.

Since the pre-jump theatrics and the jump, itself were largely put on for customers watching in theaters on closed-circuit, the atmosphere at the launch site was unstable. It was “a circumstance that further agitated the spectators who pressed together in the sunbaked horse pasture drinking beer impatiently,” as a reporter for The Spokesman-Review of Washington noted. “By noon a noticeable number of young men, dirt-streaked and perspiring, staggered over the dusty ground, wearing the same surly look they had arrived with in Idaho.”

Amenities were lacking and tension was thick. One newspaper reported that “bored and restless” campers stole 4000 cases of beer from concession trailers while others set fire to portable toilets. Over 30,000 pushed and shoved their way toward the canyon’s mouth in anticipation of Knievel’s launch.

At 3:36 p.m., with an explosion of white steam, Knievel was thrown back into the seat of the Skycycle X-2 as it cleared the launch track. In a split second, missile and man were soaring high above the canyon. The only snag was quite literal; upon takeoff, the parachute prematurely evacuated the fuselage. Knievel was a passenger in a rocket-powered kite. As the X-2 crested its parabola, a 15-mph wind pushed the vessel back toward the launch ramp.

The crowd gasped as Knievel and rocket dropped like Wile E. Coyote in slow motion. After bouncing twice on the rocks and landing in a foot of water on the canyon floor, he was able to get out. In a mixture of relief and exhaustion, he provided few words to reporters: “I sat in it and gave it my best. I don’t know what to tell you.” Knievel may have not cleared the canyon, but he did clear an estimated $20 million from the escapade, and despite the failure, he was riding an all-time publicity high.

Just a year after Snake River, Knievel took his North American dominance across the pond in what would be labeled by many as the beginning of the end. By the time Knievel was prepped to vault 13 London buses in front of the 80,000 people packing Wembley Stadium, he seemed dejected, forlorn, tired. ABC broadcaster and close friend Frank Gifford spoke to him before the jump. “He was a little wacko,” the late broadcaster recalled in Montville’s biography. “I kind of admired him.” According to Gifford, Knievel confessed to his TV friend that he couldn’t make it over the London buses.

Gifford urged him to cancel the event. Knievel refused to back down. “Well, I may not be as good as I always was, but I’m as good once as I ever was,” he told a worried Gifford on ABC’s Wide World of Sports prior to suiting up, like a cowboy who had already seen his best days. Knievel landed short and splattered onto Wembley’s paved floor. Gifford thought he had witnessed his friend’s death and rushed over to the motionless pile of bloody flesh and torn leather. To Gifford’s surprise, Knievel was trying to speak. Prepared to hear the stuntman’s dying words, Gifford bent down to Knievel’s battered face.

“Frank …” said Knievel.
“Yes, Evel,” replied Gifford.
“Get that broad out of my room.”

Despite a broken back, Knievel refused the stretcher and instead asked to be propped up and carried to the top of the landing ramp, where he addressed the stunned audience. “I’ve got to tell you that you are the last people in the world to see me jump because I’ll never jump again. I’m finished.” Knievel was finally retiring.

His retirement only lasted the plane ride home. Perhaps he didn’t want to end his career on a crash. Perhaps he had obligations to Harley-Davidson. Or perhaps, in those silent hours above the Atlantic, worry crept in about what he might do, might become, after jumping was no longer an option. One reporter wrote, “Of course, someone waved a few million under his nose to bring him back to the real world.” Regardless of his motives, the minute he touched down at JFK, he announced he would jump later that fall.

In the four years since the movie debuted, since he was shot into the celebrity stratosphere, Knievel had been caught in a whirlwind of victories, defeats, alcohol, prostitutes, chronic jet lag, incessant media coverage, and hospital beds. Those four years had aged the man tremendously. Grays were starting to poke out of his slicked-back sandy quaff, and the 36-year-old limped like a reanimated corpse.

He would attempt a record jump at Kings Island, an amusement park in southeast Ohio. Up and over 14 Greyhound buses, one more than the jump that nearly killed him in England.

In what was the most-watched episode of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Knievel soared over the Greyhound buses at Kings Island on October 25, 1975. Nielsen said that just over half of all U.S. homes tuned in to watch Knievel clear 163 feet (a personal best and a record that stood for 24 years). Not even the famed 1976 title fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier could dethrone King Knievel’s ratings from that day. The force of the landing snapped the frame of Knievel’s XR-750 in half, but he was able to ride back to the landing ramp for his interview, where he told old pal Frank, “I have jumped far enough.”

Knievel’s jumping career didn’t end like the 1971 biopic, clearing the ramp and riding off into the sunset as the camera pans skyward. Reality was less graceful. If Kings Island was the apex, the daredevil still had to land. And he landed hard.

In 1977, Knievel was still riding the fame wave and produced the film Viva Knievel!, where the untrained actor played himself battling a Mexican drug cartel. It tanked.

The same year, CBS also aired Evel Knievel’s Death Defiers. Critics were ruthless. A reporter from a small Kansas newspaper, The Manhattan Mercury, matched many sentiments when he wrote: “In a desperate and irresponsible bid for ratings, CBS is permitting the ego-ridden exhibitionist Evel Knievel to appear and wrangle top billing by gunning his motorcycle over a huge salt-water pool of man-eating sharks.” He crashed in practice, fracturing his left arm and collarbone, and never jumped the sharks.

As if 1977 couldn’t get any worse, Knievel found himself on the wrong side of a judge’s gavel in November. In an act of what Superior Court Judge Edward Rafeedie called “frontier justice,” Knievel infamously beat his former press agent, Sheldon Saltman, with a baseball bat after reading Saltman’s tell-all book, Evel Knievel on Tour. The book provided a look behind the showman’s curtain and—according to Knievel—portrayed him as a villain. Knievel was ordered to spend six months at the Wayside Honor Rancho correctional facility near Los Angeles.

Explaining why checks he sent in 1977 to fund an Indy 500 team had bounced, Knievel wrote from prison: “I have not lost the race. I’m in the pits now getting fuel and changing tires, but the boost is going up and when I come back, they better get their ass out of the way.” He never did come back in the way he promised, performing small jumps here and there in the twilight of his career, eventually surrendering the Knievel spotlight to his daredevil motorcycle-riding son, Robbie.

Knievel succumbed to pulmonary disease on November 30, 2007. This was not the fantastic ending he, or even Milius’s screenplay, envisioned. The stuntman who once seemed immortal was buried in Butte at the Mountain View Cemetery, his grave marked by a tombstone he commissioned for his Snake River jump. The engraving read: “A mile-long leap of the Snake River Canyon from this point on September 8, 1974 employing a unique ‘Sky Cycle.’” While we don’t know where he went in his journey to the great beyond, it’s safe to assume he didn’t drive across the damn bridge.

Ladies and gentlemen of America; I want to tell you how much I cherish the honor of having been the President of what was once the hope of the world but is now scheduled to be the next conquest of the global Islamic/Marxist Jihad: the United States of America.

The United States is united in what way exactly….. at this point it is impossible for me to say. Over and above the fact that passports will soon be required to go from State to State with armed guards at every border-crossing, half the Country wants liberty….and the other half wants lockdowns, facemasks, riots, black supremacy, white guilt, mandatory-Islam which is basically one word, Communism, equality – meaning everyone having nothing, – hopelessness, bums in the street, human feces in the street, a reversal of progress which they call “progressivism,” the abolishment of fuels that get the job done by fire and fission….. to be replaced by air and sunlight NOT getting the job done. At least not at night or on windless days.

Half the Country wants to live life via productivity and reward for effort and to work our way to the stars….. and the other half wants to live life via punishments for
productivity…..and rewards for indigence and sloth….. and to return to living in tents and praying to the earth like pagan primitive prehistoric Pleistocene Australopithecines.

They want to punish the healthy for not being sick by quarantining them, and they want us to work our way, not to the stars, but back into planet earth, probably in caves, and into the year 20 million BC. They even want to get rid of BC.

We are in a battle where both sides, the Republicans and the Democrats, are now both fighting for the same thing: Marxist/Islam. The difference is one side, the Democrats, want it now and the other side, the Republicans and the Conservatives, want it down the road but not now, but they don’t know what they do want now so they just drift along with whatever current is carrying them at the moment, time enough later to figure it all out.

I came into the world of politics and government and bureaucratic chaos from the world of business. Business: which is taught in government schools to be evil. And it is declared evil because it is where agreements are voluntarily made between individuals with clearly stated agreed-upon goals and voluntary terms of finance all for the purpose of pleasing …..voluntary customers…… and I left that world and I entered a world of compulsion and discord and deception and forced payment for nothing-specific via compulsory taxation and mob rule, where there are no agreements, where there is only the minority giving tyrannical orders to the majority, which the Left then grandly declares is Democracy. Which is taught to be a caring and sanctified way of life in direct proportion to the degree of forced obedience.

When you’re in the world of business, at least as an owner, but not necessarily as a CEO – you must talk normal. You can’t say things like “mitigate the moment” or “flatten the curve” or “lessen the gradient of the achievable slope” or “be existentially aware of the overarching threat if we don’t turn the corner on the unresponsiveness of the commonly held belief of the teachable mandate.”

The first three years of my administration were spent with the House and the New York Times and the CIA and whatever else is called “intelligence” around here….. trying to convince America that Vladimir Putin and I conspired to rig the election. Vladimr Putin wanted to have to deal with me rather than with Hillary like I want to deal with Pelosi rather than with showgirls.

The final year of my administration had to deal with a flu that emerged two days after the Senate tore up Pelosi’s and the so-called-intelligence community’s collusion caper.

And now, mysteriously, the guy who could not attract more than 200 people to an event and whose entire political platform was “Wear a mask” has won an election that the Squad is going to usurp. Not that they’re not actually running things already. Ocasio is in full Marxist overdrive and her three Marxist sisters from an emotional and spiritual and intellectual hate-factory even Satan would envy are already making lists of who to execute Che Guevara style.

You could be on that list.

Meanwhile I have actually been considering colluding with Putin for real. He has 11 time zones in his Country, most of which are open scenic wonderlands. What with all the ice melting I might try and teach him real estate development tips and we can collude for real and create a land where normal people can live in peace. Russia and the USA are already colluding in space with the space station and have been for years, but apparently the failed novelists who call themselves journalists don’t consider that a threat to the rule of the so called 4th estate. But me chatting with Putin one on one is of course a threat to the rule of the so-called 4th estate. Which would be the failed novelists of journalism.

In case you don’t know what the 4th estate is. It’s the branch of government journalists – or failed novelists – have created. Which in many ways is actually, in fact, the operating governmental mechanism of the United States. Who no one apparently knows how to handle. Except maybe one person.

I had one particular pest for four years begging me to make him “Press Hack” as he calls the position of press secretary. I should have done it. I might still be President. We are heading toward a one party system. The difference between libs and conservatives is that libs know government is a con.

Normal people call this imprisonment. Libs call it “you doing your part in not overwhelming the health care system.” Like, that’s your job now: not overwhelming the health care system. …..by being immune to the flu and therefore “a risk to the community.” No one apparently is ever going to ask “why is it my job to keep the health care providers from being overwhelmed? Maybe they should work faster. Would that fix things? If they actually made an effort?” No one asks that.

Another thing no one asks is “Why is my not being sick a threat to others who are not sick?” No one asks that. Critical thinking is apparently as extinct as the passenger pigeon.

Speaking of the “healthcare system,” you ever see some of these great and mighty warrior-slugs on the so-called healthcare “front lines”? You would think American
combat veterans and combat personnel would be irate over the press hacks calling someone sitting at a desk and overflowing the chair with hanging sheets of body
fat….”the front lines.”

What are the “front lines” of the annual cold and flu season? The press is even calling the cashiers at the supermarkets “the front lines.” You’ll notice the cashiers are all still alive at the treacherous front lines of the check-out, one year into the global plague of unstoppable death. There’s not a high body or casualty count at the front lines of the supermarket. Brenda is still right there, like she has been for 10 years, right there at the front lines and charging you for a bag.

The air conditioners DO change the weather. The weather affecting YOU. Oh, but you being comfortable on a hot day is not fair to the people who can’t afford an air conditioner. So your air conditioner has to go. And instead you have to make the earth cooler.

That is your assignment, citizen: make the earth cooler by not having modern conveniences and make everyone safe by not overwhelming the health care system by staying at home. Without air conditioning. And eventually in California, without electricity, natural gas, gasoline, or running water.

Mayors and governors and city councilmen and county supervisors know how to alter planetary climate via your obedience, but they don’t know what a sidewalk is for. A sidewalk is a place on the side of the street where people can walk.

Mayors and governors and city councilmen and county supervisors think a sidewalk is a place were people can live in blue tents, with stolen propane tanks, with free needles and narcotics, where cement is a toilet, where fingers – theirs or someone else’s, it doesn’t matter – are toilet paper, where stolen shopping carts and stolen bicycles accumulate faster than the fleas and plague rats that are accumulating there……speaking of disease, have you noticed that the mentally deranged and criminally insane denizens of the sidewalks are exempt from all social distancing rules?…from all shoplifting laws, from all public sex laws, from all mask laws, from all arson laws, from all stabbing laws, from all assault laws….and it’s your fault because you won’t house them in your living room.

So private hotels have to be confiscated so that the so-called homeless – who are living a more fun life than you probably are this year – can contaminate the building and ruin it’s interior with urine, dung, blood, precious bodily fluids, pus, saliva and any other kind of putrid liquid they can muster from their inner anatomy and cause the former owners to commit suicide from despair….and you are being blamed for all of it. Because you keep resisting new zoning laws that will turn your nice neighborhood into a spitoon. And what you can’t resist gets taken from you in taxes – allegedly “for our kids” to pay for the upkeep of these dregs who have more rights than you do.

Yet the people encouraging this aboveground sewer system….know how to cool a planet’s climate. And know how to “keep you safe” from the annual cold and flu season.

The same people that don’t know how to chase-off people living on the sidewalk and don’t know how to keep them from defecating on the floors of supermarkets and in your yard and don’t know how to keep them from starting fires with their renegade and probably stolen propane tanks and which fires you are getting blamed for for driving your car to work….. they don’t know how to do those things…..but they know how to alter climate and the weather.

All they need is your obedience. Your cooperation. Your getting on board their high-speed train to stagnation. They refuse to use atomic power because that would solve too many problems and the Democrats are not in the business of solving problems. They are not in the business of business. They are in the business of shutdowns and elimination and stagnation and who you can stand next to at a six-foot distance and a return to the Pleistocene, which they proudly are calling The New Normal.

They pour out their adulation for every primitive culture on the planet…. and curse Western Civilization. They claim to revere art but, like Hitler, if it’s a sculpture of
someone they don’t like, down it comes. Columbus; Junipero Serra; Jesus….these statues represent people that do not meet the rigid moral standards of the Left.

The Left defines morality as…. doing what they say. They are the standard of morality. If you don’t obey their tyrannies…..you are immoral. They say eternally “you can’t judge a man by the color of his skin.” Unless you’re a lib: then black is beautiful, brown is iffy, white is ugly and they don’t say squat about the asians. They don’t dare. The asians would be in their face.

I have been criticized by the failed novelists – or journalists as they call themselves – for being self-centered. The cure to being self-centered to the Democrats is to be self-sacrificial. A good example of which is the bizarre and Declared Moral Mandate to isolate yourself rather than “be a threat” to others. Who the others are you are advised not to be threat to is never explained.

But I can explain it. The “others” are everyone but you. You in particular are being ordered to protect others. Especially if you’re not sick. Who the others actually are is never made clear. The lockdowns and shutdowns and arbitrary costume changes and antisocial distancing decrees-from-out-of-nowhere are not for the purpose of keeping “others” safe. They’re for the purpose of keeping you poverty-stricken, dependent on “stimulus checks” and to visibly demonstrate to the tyrant petulant nobodies who found themselves a job in the public sector your spineless and clueless compliance. They want a visible proof of their lordship. Facemasks are a good start: easy to see, making it easy to reinforce their encouragement to inflict more crap.

It’s arbitrary clothing and arbitrary attire and arbitrary voodoo religious costuming that is decreed and declared and commanded to have the magical voodoo power to
“slow the spread.” And who knows, it could actually be doing that. It’s slowed it for a full year so far. The annual cold and flu season is now a year long. We’ll be wearing masks for the next ten thousand years at this rate. And all of this bull is so that there will be no “disadvantaged”….. financially or materially or by not being possessed of a functioning immune system.

Everyone will be equal. Equally poor and equally destitute, equally masked and equally begging some crazed, wild-eyed bureaucrat, many of whom look
even nuttier and worse-dressed than the homeless….. for a handout.

While I have not been re-elected for one reason or another (chief among them being
mandated-voting-chaos and a restructuring of the normal polling procedure into a bewildering banana-republic, Iranian, Red Chinese bounce castle of who the hell knows what for the purposes of staying safe from a flu that emerged one day after the Senate tore up the impeachment papers……) while I have not been re-elected, the reality of my one-term as President should be enough to encourage others from the real world of Actual Employment (as opposed to coming from the legal profession….) to either follow
in my footsteps….or else stay the hell out of politics forever and try to encourage Elon Musk in his efforts to transport normal humanity, if there is such a thing, to another planet.

Planet Private, as I would like to call it. My Presidency – and I have to admit my highly criticized personality – has enlightened at least half, and I am sure a lot more than half, of the American population to the reality of the degree of the total utter vagrant-level of degradation inhabiting the souls of almost everyone in the public sector with the exception of firemen, policemen, and servicemen……these three jobs being jobs which Americans would do voluntarily because they are actually necessary. As opposed to every single other present job description in the public sector.

Do you really need the Department of Motor Vehicles in your life? Do you really need the IRS? My Presidency has shown to many who never noticed before….. that wanting to make life better for the citizenry rather than for the bureaucracy – which is basically the goal of everyone in business as opposed to everyone in government – is a no-go zone as far as the bureaucracy is concerned.

Never underestimate the cunning of evil: the real war against me was to discourage other normal people in the real world of commerce and profit-and-loss and industry and employment….from running for office.

The flu hoax, I am now convinced, was a desperate ploy by the Swamp and their failed-novelist allies….. that they never dreamed would be successful. They clearly did not realize the level of avarice and dreams of sadism of America’a governors, mayors, city council members, county supervisors and the new species of bureaucrat called the unelected health advisor. These spiritual monstrosities, declaring themselves guardians
of the public health, issued decrees more ruinous than any flu, and declared the “healthcare providers” as your responsibility to protect.

You are ordered to protect the health care providers. By staying home. And leaving your grandparents and elderly spouses to die alone. So that you don’t by virtue of your selfish antibody-collection “overwhelm the system” by “contaminating” others with your functioning immune system.

Go right now and sneak over to a hospital. Try and find a bedlam-center in it. While the failed novelists are publishing photos of Chernobyl workers in lead suits and
clean-room technicians at NASA in full sterilized mode and pictures of mass graves from World War Two and staged and arranged photos of coffins lining the streets….try and find any of this on your own.

The current mantra is “We are all in this together.” Which is true. But we are not in it voluntarily. We are all in this together by command. That’s the part you are not suppose to pay attention to. Yeah: we’re all in this together. Against our will.

Nobody asked us to be all in this together. It got decreed. It got decreed by our great and mighty governors and mayors: they can control the weather….and they can control disease. Just like witch doctors and voodoo chieftains.

The two great forces of Planet Earth, the weather and biology: these the bureaucrats can control. But they can’t move bums off the sidewalk and onto an island. And controlling biology and the weather they need your obedience to do. There’s a reason your elected and non- elected officials are blaming your children for being threats: their own cowardice. They don’t want to be prosecuted for “not slowing the spread.” Like that’s working.

They don’t want to be blamed for you getting sick. They don’t want to be blamed for anything. They just want you to obey them. Politics is the revenge-job for the bullied in grammar school. Politics is the go-to career for born
sociopaths.

What I wanted to do was make America great again. What Joe Biden wants to do is make America wear facemasks. What his soon to be successor Kamala Harris wants….well, nobody really knows what she wants but they might want to find out because she could become President-elect before I even finish giving this speech.

And if you find out Biden wants to put you in facemasks like he said he does, Harris wants to put you in jail. That’s all she knows how to do. She’s a prosecutor. Her job is putting people in jail. And she likes that job. And if you have a gun: that’s likely where she’ll put you.

“Oh but the 2nd Amendment!!” Well the First Amendment didn’t stop the Flu
Tyranny, and the Second Amendment won’t stop President Harris.

Gavin Newsom just before Thanksgiving ordered all children over 2 years of age in California to wear mandatory facemasks. So, they won’t spread the flu. So they will have guilt complexes all their lives, when Gavin and his successors tell them they killed millions during their childhood years by not wearing facemasks as ordered-to by sociopaths.

That’s right, kids: you killed gran’ma. Gavin Newsom and his ilk said so. I hope you’re proud of yourselves, kids: being murderers and all.

Here’s how it works in Lib World, kids: we get to kill you, that’s right, as long as it’s before you change locations from inside of mommy to outside of mommy.. But you don’t get to kill us. So, you have to wear a mask. Because you’re immune. And your natural immunity is a threat to us adults. And that’s not fair. Welcome to earth, kids. And that birthday party you wanted to have with all your friends? I don’t think so. You’ll all be superspreaders. Because you’re all bad.

Gavin Newsom wants everyone over 2 years old to be responsible for everyone else over 2 years old. We’re all responsible for everyone else not getting the flu. It’s your 3 year old’s job……to do the government’s job. Of keeping people safe. Or whatever the government’s job actually is. Since no one actually knows. What government’s actual duties and responsibilities are is never made clear. A magician couldn’t figure it out. Apparently it’s government’s job to order people not to give other people the flu. No wonder crazy people run for office. It’s designed for crazy people.

Joe Scarborough said I should be tried for manslaughter for not having everyone around me wear masks. He has not been laughed out of a job. He is being hailed by
Democrats and his failed-novelist peers as a warrior as brave and fearless as Alexander the Great. This is what is known as the perversion of right into wrong and wrong into right. According to my Bible that’s usually the last straw for the slow-to-anger Deity Who claims to be the actual Owner of this planet. And Who single-handedly determines the climate.

I think my plan – to make America great again – appealed to a majority of Americans but if the ballots are correct….it didn’t appeal to enough of them. Apparently it didn’t appeal to a majority of Americans who is actually larger than the majority of Americans. Ghost
Americans, apparently.

I – who wanted to make America great again – was defeated at the polls by someone who wants everyone to wear a facemask. Maybe Americans really want stupidity over greatness. If there is one lasting positive aspect of my Presidency it will be to inspire other members of the private sector to enter into the public sector of the Swamp to try and drain the soft sand and refill it with solid ground, as I think Jesus suggested would be a good thing to do in all areas of human progress.

I like to think I broke the mold by leaving an actual job to try and fix all the millions of messes people who never had an actual job and are being voted and appointed into
office….are creating: if creating is the right word for making everyone equally poor and miserable which is the Progressive, Democrat, Liberal goal; from each according to his ability to be enslaved….. to each according to their claimed need….. until everyone is equally-in-need. Except for the Gavin Newsoms and the Governor Sisolaks and the Lori Lightfoots and the Cuomo Families of the world.

The problem with the public sector is that except for the military and the fire department and the police department and possibly NASA….not one other public sector job would ever be filled by volunteers. Because no one would pay to have those government services performed unless forced to by law and by threat. Because except for those jobs mentioned, public service jobs are what are commonly called in legal circles and Mob circles as featherbedding.

Public office, as you are perhaps learning if you live in California for example, is apparently an attractive nuisance for sociopaths. Since there is no actual job description to any public sector position other than the three and perhaps four I mentioned, the public sector traditionally attracts people with no empathy.

The failed novelists of the press and ilk like The Squad say I have no empathy. I actually have empathy for an entire nation. I feel its disappearance into a history-obliterated abyss caused by the ilk that destroys statues and burns cathedrals and changes the English vocabulary into Marxist definitions.

I think I have a LOT of empathy. I am saddened by the loss of the United States. I should say the loss of America because the States are still united, and apparently they are united in lunacy. Just look at the Biden/Obama/Kamala/Ocasio agenda, and it will save me a lot of time here, if you wonder where we are heading.

So, while the public sector attracts people who have no idea what an actual job is or what the economic/capitalistic concept of goods-and-services is….I am hoping my Presidency will be a first assault upon the Swamp of DC and its perversion of the
intelligence and counter-espionage agencies into domestic terrorists and de-stablization agencies aimed against Americans instead of against our enemies.

The day I got in…..the Liberal Marxist Islamic Democrat Front went to work: four years of impeachment and flu fraud and a nationwide election fraud got the job done. I know what you’re saying, how could there be a nation-wide election fraud. Well, there’s a global wide health fraud. And there’s a global-wide weather fraud. And they’re going exceptionally well.

So, turning all voting over to a Post Office I more than once threatened to eliminate…would be warmly received by the Postal Workers Union. So, leaving the vote count to the Post Office was not really wise. But it was really strategically cunning by the other side.

Ayn Rand defined cunning as the evil person’s substitute for actual intelligence.

And speaking of unions: what are public sector jobs, created by fiat and not by customer demand, doing with unions anyway?

In closing I would like to remind you that the Democrats want to eliminate the emissions of carbon dioxide. Keep in mind….you exhale carbon dioxide. Eventually a lot of you 8 billion earthlings are going to have to be culled. To keep everyone else safe. And to keep the ice from melting.

Thank you…..and may the God of the guns-and-Bible citizenry bless you all.

For the last 12 years Michael Lichter has put on a Motorcycles Art Exhibit for Sturgis Rally riders at various locations.

 Industry Guests had a special showing on Sunday by invitation only. The event was also open to the public for Free from 2 P.M. to 10 P.M. Saturday August 8 through Friday August 14, 2020

 This year’s show was named Heavy Mettle and like previous years included the who’s who of the motorcycle builders from around the world.

The list of custom motorcycle builders, all who have been building bikes for over 20 years and have built at least 20 were scheduled to present their masterpieces at the 2020 “Motorcycles as Art” exhibit included:

Aaron Greene, Aaron Greene Customs, Willits, CA 
Arlin Fatland, 2-Wheelers, Denver, CO
Bill Dodge, Blings Cycle, Daytona Beach, FL
Billy Lane, Choppers Inc, Nashville, TN
Brian Klock, Klock Werks, Mitchell, SD
Carl Olsen, Carl’s Cycle, Aberdeen, SD
Cole Foster, Salinas Boys, Salinas, CA
Cory Ness, Arlen Ness Enterprises, Dublin, CA
Craig Rodsmith, Rodsmith Custom Motorcycles, Grayslake, IL 
Dan “Bacon” Carr, DC Choppers, Sierra City, CA
Dave Perewitz, Perewitz Cycle Fabrication, Halifax, MA
Don Hotop, Don’s Speed Shop, Fort Madison, IA
Donnie Smith, Donnie Smith Custom Cycles, Blaine, MN
Eddie Trotta, Thunder Cycle, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fred Cuba, Fred’s Speed and Sport, Hastings, NB
Jeff Cochran, Speedking Racing, West Harrison, IN
Jerry Covington, Covington’s Cycle City, Woodward, OK
Josh Soto, Boars Nest Choppers, Oceanside, CA
Kiwi Mike Tomas, Kiwi Indian Motorcycles, Riverside, CA
Mondo Poras, Denver’s Choppers, Reno, NV
Nicola Martini, Mr. Martini Motorcycles, Verona, Italy
Pat Patterson, Led Sled Customs, Dayton, OH
Paul Wideman, Bare Knuckle Choppers, Wright City, MO
Paul Yaffe, Paul Yaffe Originals, Phoenix, AZ
Richard Pollock, Mule Motorcycles, Poway, CA
Rick Fairless, Strokers Dallas, Dallas, TX
Roland Sands, Roland Sands Design, Los Alamitos, CA
Ron Finch, Finch’s Custom Cycles, Pontiac, MI
Russ Mitchell, Exile Cycles, Agoura Hills, CA
Steg VonHeintz, Steg’s Psycho Cycles, Downey, CA
Steve Broyles, Stevenson’s Cycle, Wayne, MI 
Steve Carpy Carpenter, Carpys Cafe Racers, La Mirada, CA
Taber Nash, Nash Motorcycle Co, Los Angeles, CA 
Tim McNamer, “Ballistic Cycles, Blue Mound, WI 
Tom Keefer, Franklin Church Choppers, York, PA
Trent Schara, Atomic Custom, Clancy, MT

Billy Lane: Blue has been with me for over two decades. I started building her in 1998, but she was shoved to the side so that I could take on other opportunities. Everyone has always called her “Blue Suicide” which, fitting as it might be, is a name I’ve avoided using. I lost a close friend in the late 1990s to suicide, and that name was always a reminder.

Michael Lichter noticed and photographed my 1999 custom, “Money Magnet,” at the Charlotte Easyriders Bike Show, after which “Money Magnet” became the breakout success that elevated me to be included, ultimately, in the company that gathers here today. “Money Magnet” sold shortly after Charlotte, but the buyer wanted an EVO engine in place of the 1972 Harley-Davidson twin-carbureted Shovelhead. It was this ’72 that went into the bones of “Blue.”

It sat in a corner as I went back to work on “Devil-in-a-Red-Dress”, “Knuckle Sandwich”, and “Psycho Billy Cadillac”. When I got back to completing “Blue”, she took Best of Show at the 2000 Columbus Invitational Easyriders Show before I even had time to have the flames shot on the tank. Not long after, my brother George dropped a brown bag of cash on my desk and said, “Blue is mine!” to which I agreed, and she left me for the first time. George wrecked “Blue” repeatedly, so I see her beauty in her scars. And somehow, “Blue” keeps coming back to me and she keeps getting more and more scars!

She fell out of my pickup truck after one rescue, was wrecked by another friend in Sturgis, was stolen in Miami and very sketchily recovered. We ripped countless wheelies at the 100th in Milwaukee, and she became my west coast ride at Mondo’s Denver’s Choppers in Vegas and Jesse James’ West Coast Choppers in Long Beach.

When I went to prison in 2009, I thought Blue might be gone forever, but she came back to me this last time in 2015. She’s very simple, and I still think her lines make a helluva lot of sense. When I look at “Blue”, she reminds me of the mid 1990’s. She’s my longest relationship. Indian Larry told me “Blue” was his favorite of my customs, so I’ll leave you with that.

Brian Klock: This bobber was built for the 2004 “Bob’s Back” exhibition when it was still being staged at the Journey Museum in Rapid City. Michael’s challenge to me at that time was to build a twin cam that would be able to participate and hold up alongside all the Knuckleheads & Panheads from the greatest builders out there. Due to a number of factors, we ended up building this bike in 10-days to capitalize on the opportunity.

The bike you see before you started life as a 2000 Springer and was owned by my good friend Greg Wick. Just as they made a bobber back in the day, we trimmed it down to its bare essentials. Features include a hot rod 95 ci motor, Works shocks, and a twist clutch, all of which make it now my personal favorite bike. (Greg was kind enough to sell it to me.)

Cole Foster: This bike was the second Flathead I did for Chris Huber, the first was a round-town bar-hopper whereas this one is a real road cruiser. I enjoy working with Chris because he has great taste, gives me good input, but also gives me plenty of free reins. While we all may start with the same ingredients, we all cook them a little differently. A basic stock 1941 Harley-Davidson Flathead that I created a convertible for, so sometimes it goes out with bobbed rear fender and 21” up front without a fender, but you are seeing it before you full fendered in its cruiser configuration. The fuel tank was made from scratch as a nod to the 1930s, the speedo is an original Model T, I made the seat pan, exhaust, tail light, handlebars and messed with / massaged everything else on the bike.

For over 3-decades (4-decades if you count the bicycles I chopped), I’ve built both top-level hotrods and custom bikes out of my shop in Salinas, CA. Salinas and the Central Coast of California is a great place to be doing this work with its amazing landscape, weather, and the motorhead history the area has. (Think Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” with James Dean.)

I never thought I could do this for a living let alone travel around the world many times over. As far as I’m concerned, I feel like I’ve lived a charmed life. I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do, with friends everywhere I go, and land in places doing things I could have never imagined.

 Bill Dodge: Back into 2000 when I built this bike, the motorcycle world was all about fat tires, big shiny motors, and so on. I wanted something that was more fun and that reminded me of those times when Larry and I rode the back roads around Sturgis. To make this happen, I asked my friends Mark and Hector who worked in the shop with me at the time, to make me a skinny tire zero-stretch CFL frame. Right about the same time, Charlie from S&S approached me about a new 93 ci generator Shovelhead engine they were prototyping and so they hooked me up with one. (A second engine they were working on went to my good friend Johnny Chop.) As for the tranny, I was working with Bert Baker on a new project that ended up being called the Frankentrans, which is a kick-only spline-shaft style transmission with hydraulic clutch actuation. For the front end, I was very honored that Warren Lane got me a 23” front wheel like he had been using, the first one he ever sold, and of course the first of 23” wheels I have used on my bikes in the years since.

These are just a few of the details that went into starting this project. There is so much more, I feel I could go on forever. Basically, it was so much fun to build this bike and such a piece of history at the time. Obviously, my style has continued in this direction right to my present motorcycles.

I think the reason I love building bikes so much is the sheer happiness I get from the people I build them for. Somehow, they’ve all turned into family, and this is what drives me every day. It doesn’t matter what type of bike it is, chopper, dirtbike, sportbike… I pour my soul into each one. For that matter. as long as I get to make someone happy, and make the coolest thing that I can – I’m in!

If you look hard, you can see my soul in this bike. Putting it in there is what really makes me go.

Aaron Greene: The custom bike building path is not always the easiest one. On three different occasions since 1997, I have given up creature comforts to live in my shop, or in a cabover camper, to make sure I followed my passion first and kept my shop going. Why? Because, simply put, bringing life to the ideas in my mind literally feeds my soul. This is my own form of therapy within a world that keeps building squares, but hungers for curves. This passion for machining, fabricating, shaping a new creation, and allowing that creation to take root in the minds of those who stand before it is what has always kept me going. And now…”Cherry Bomb”. The bike you see before you was built for the 2005 Easyriders Celebrity Bike Tour.

I have long been entrenched in the Hot Rod culture and Hot Rod Harleys. I wanted an over-the-top, custom built, power driven hot rod with an outlandish motor. The manifestation of that inspiration came in conjunction with the launch of our newly patented HCH frame, which was able to accommodate the wider tires being built then. The HCH frame was the natural choice for the backbone of this incredible bike. We had already created the first 280mm bike, but here with “Cherry Bomb”, we pushed it even further, becoming the first ever built with a 330mm rear tire. We pioneered new territory by pairing unbelievable power with the far-reaching custom chopper feel, including an insane hand-crafted tank, and our patented integrated hard lines and offset bearing support.

“Cherry Bomb” is chock-full of our one-off custom parts throughout and comes fully into view with a brilliant in-house hot rod custom paint scheme. Please feel free to take a picture and share with your family. Aaron Greene (2020)

Don Hotop: He built his first custom back in 1973 and he’s been building them ever since. (Out of his Don’s Speed & Custom since 1975.) The Auction Special, as he calls this bar-hopper is a recent build using a Revtech 110 ci engine in a Daytec rigid frame and was in the Heavy Mettle exhibition at the Sturgis Buffalo Chip. Don wrote about his career; “I built my first full up custom in 1973 and then opened my own shop in 1975. I was never particularly interested in what is trendy, but rather, just built bikes to ride with lots of attention to detail.

In my entire career, I have only entered two bike shows. Whether at these shows, or more likely when I, or a customer, was out riding one of my bikes, parts that I designed caught the eye of people at Drag Specialties. In the many years since, we have developed a close working relationship where I do my design and Drag manufactures (and sells) my parts.

I’ve survived the many ups and downs of the economy through hard work, long hours and dependable bikes, that you can ride. Like I always tell people that I build bikes for. It’s not for show, JUST RIDE IT!”

 Cory Ness: Our family has been in the motorcycle business for 50-years. Fueled by pure passion for custom motorcycles, we have all worked hard, but like all businesses, there have been many ups and downs. Nothing has been taken for granted and we are still learning every day. We are constantly making changes to survive in this business and will continue to carry on my dad’s legacy as long as humanly possible and to this end, I will pour my heart into making the best customs I can.

The custom you see here today was a build I have wanted to do for some time. When Indian Motorcycles was re-launched by Polaris in 2014, many builders were customizing them, but the Ness family stayed away from the brand due to our business alliance with Victory Motorcycles, as it was also owned by Polaris. When Polaris eventually decided to go with Indian exclusively, it opened the door to this project.

Starting with a wrecked 2014 Indian Vintage, I kept the engine assembly and a few key electronics and that was about it. Everything else was hand fabricated or CNC machined. The bike features traditional Digger styling that my dad perfected back in the day. It has lean minimalistic design that features a single-sided front and rear suspension with 23″ offset-style billet spoke wheels. Another design feature of the bike is the small steel tubing used throughout the bike. I started with the gas tank mounts and instead of hiding them as we do on 99% of our builds, I chose to have them be in your face as a design que. I was so happy how they came out that I decided to use that tubing throughout the build. If you keep looking, you’ll see lots of details like this throughout the bike.

This was a very challenging build when it came to hiding all the electronics a new Indian is equipped with. Since I wanted an open space under the seat, I had to find a new home for many large components such as the electronic computer module, electronic throttle to cable converter, external fuel pump and much more.

Lots of thanks to our crew at Arlen Ness Motorcycles and a big thank you to everyone for their support throughout the years. We could not have done this without you.

 Some of the other motorcycles in the show that were very qualified but I do not have any information on are.

 

 

This year’s show included artwork by Scott Jacobs, David Uhl and Michael Lichter

 

Scott Jacobs: With a career now spanning three decades and counting, artist Scott Jacobs has consistently reached and then surpassed new heights. First recognized by Harley-Davidson Motor Company for his artistic talent, he was signed by them to a long-term fine art program in 1993. Since then, Scott has expanded into different genres entering himself into the mainstream of the fine art community. Included on that list is imagery of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Corvette, Ford GT and Mustang, exotic cars, wine still life’s, flowers, and many more.

The common theme of his work; regardless of the subject is his hyper-photorealism. It is his mastery of this style that has enamored audiences around the globe. People from the West Coast to Eastern Europe and beyond enjoy his work as it currently hangs in more than 90 countries and has been displayed in over 30 museums.

Scott’s medium of choice is acrylic and oil paint on Belgian linen and his tool is a paintbrush smaller than a pencil. Scott works from photographs but draws each and every subject out freehand with a pencil. He then begins the blocking in process and blending of multiple colors to achieve the desired values for a particular work. It is an arduous procedure that few artists would dare undertake. His reward is witnessing his collectors’ reaction when they see the finished product for the first time. With that, Scott has had a career of success few artists can claim.

After years of achievement as an artist, Scott decided to get back into the retail business by opening a large gallery in Deadwood, SD called the “Jacobs Gallery”. This is a place where the public can view Scott’s originals, large collection of vintage motorcycles, limited edition prints, and his very own apparel line. The gallery also includes a studio where Scott paints when he’s not traveling the world making appearances.

Michael did not make it to his show this year and the position of Master Of Ceremony’s was taken over by Chris Callen the editor of Cycle Source Magazine and I do not think a more qualified person could have been chosen.

Though the motorcycles are they main part of this get together it is also an opportunity for many in the industry to gather for so socializing and catching up with what is going on in each other’s lives and the world we live in.

 This article includes statements from the builders, Scott Jacobs and Michael Lichter.