Note: I’m not pretending that this is the definitive work on winding down your collection or living your life. But if it gets you to at least consider what steps should be taken, and how, the article will have done its job.



As motorcycle fanatics, we’ve all laid awake nights wondering how we could add to our collections. At some point in our lives, doing exactly the opposite probably makes more sense. The reason, of course, is advancing age while hanging onto a deeply misguided belief that our family shares our passions.



Two things often happen after we kick the bucket. First, our supposed bros come over and try to bully your family into selling them your prized possessions cheap. “He promised…”



“Sure pal, we’ve heard it all before,” Should be the Redhead’s response. “Now, hit the road.”



The second would likely come from the kids who put up with your 2-wheeled passion for 40 years. “Get rid of this shit,” said your favorite son or daughter, who’s only passion is video games. Get the picture?


John Stein produced this DVD on the history of motorcycle drag racing after he wrote the book. The book is sold out, but sometimes available on Ebay.

Okay, so where’s your current attitude? You could cherish every piece as a treasure that deserves respect and be must be highly valued. Or you could say, “Fuck it. I’m going to party with my stuff until I’m gone. Then it’s their problem.”



In this article, we are going to take the previous notion and treat everything as a treasure to be respected and valued.



Step 1
Inventory: Create a document inventorying all the motorcycles and parts you own. Include their condition, location, history and estimated value.



If you have units on display in museums, friend’s homes, offices or restaurants, make a list and keep it up to date. Wait, what about that 45 flathead in a shop 2,000 miles away. Write it down and include a photo.



As appropriate in your situation, give copies of the inventory to a trusted family member, attorney, financial planner, etc.



Document Storage: Make sure you have all documents, titles, and insurance papers stored in a secure location. Additional documentation could include photos with captions. A title is cool, but without a photo she might not know what the hell it looks like. It could be the vintage Indian in the bedroom.





Step 2:
Selling your bikes and parts. This info might be helpful to downsize your collection. Or it can help guide the beneficiaries of your collection when you’re gone.



Considering the obscurity of certain motorcycles, as well as the small pool of potential buyers for some of the more expensive ones, it can easily take years. Or you could find a buyer right away. Documentation and history is important, including memorabilia.



In all likelihood, selling off the parts will prove most challenging and time-consuming. You can’t easily donate them to charity or sell them at a Mecum’s-type auction as you can with a complete motorcycle. Your best bet then will be to sell them to another collector, and there’s always EBay as an obvious way to do so. This could be daunting or a fun learning experience. Each part is valuable to the right builder. There are also forums for various motorcycles where only the owners go looking. There are also places like Facebook Marketplace.

It is unlikely Museums will want parts, but art and memorabilia could be valuable.

When you put out feelers, make sure they include overseas markets as well. A friend of mine has an enormous collection of parts for early Yamaha road racers, which he’s found move very slowly in the states but really well in England and Australia. Uncollectible parts in the US can be extremely valuable to Japanese builders.



Keep an eye on the markets. If they are flooded with parts from a collection, suddenly your rare parts are not sought-after. On the other hand you might learn that complete, rebuilt Knucklehead engines are going for $19,000…



Never forget the code of the antique dealer. If you want to sell a used Linkert carb they aren’t worth a dime, maybe $25.00. But if you called the dealer the following week and needing to purchase a used Linkert carb and they’re suddenly rare as hen’s teeth. He might be able to find you one for $625.00.

It’s a game. You can advertise a garage sale on Craig’s list and sell everything to empty out of the precious shop. Now your kids can make a killer game room out of it. Bada bing.



Step 3:
Estate planning: We all need to visit an estate planning attorney and check all the boxes. A will is good, but your heirs will have to go thru probate and pay the piper.

Another tool in estate planning is to set up a revocable living trust. You put your assets into the trust and remain in full control of them as long as you are able. When you die or become unable to handle your affairs, the items in the trust easily get turned over to your designated beneficiaries.
If you decide to do a trust, make sure that you title each motorcycle to your trust so as not to get tangled up in probate.



Separation anxiety? Not really.

Having recently begun the process of paring down my own collection, I’ve discovered a few things. After having sold some motorcycles I’ve owned for decades, I expected to mourn their loss–which hasn’t been the case at all. And I just removed one annual registration, insurance and maintenance fee from the to-do list.



There’s actually something therapeutic about it. Not only
will you have more money in the bank, but fewer things to step over in the garage. And not to belabor the point but there’s the very real satisfaction that comes with removing a tremendous future burden on your family. Plus, what about the fees for storage buildings?



That said, you may want to keep certain motorcycles in your estate even if you’re not around to enjoy them. If you have the good fortune to own a particularly famous motorcycle, you may want to stipulate that it stay in the family. (It would be a purely emotional decision but aren’t we allowed one or two of those?)



All in all, the subject isn’t something we really want to think about but sooner or later, we have to. Such is life.

138: SUSTAINABLE (BUREAUCRAT/JOURNALISM DEFINITION) What all things except humans must become. (ACTUAL DEFINITION)……There actually isn’t one. Nothing is actually “sustainable” unless you don’t use it.

Since sustainability is a completely made-up insistence with no relation in any way to reality, there is only the puzzle of what, as Ayn Rand would say, this folly actually accomplishes. Well that would be it accomplishes agrarian reform and industrial extinction, in accordance with Marxist ideology, which is what all government crap devolves to: Marxist ideology.

Or pre Cambrian existence, in other words. Sustainable is an arbitrary redefinition of reality, the implied but not vocalized alternative to NOT sustaining things being….the end of the earth and all life on it if things (to be decreed, and as needed) are not “sustained.”

The idea that things must not be “used up” is a Marxist notion, as are most political notions circa 2022, the purpose being to groom people into not doing things, like the lockdown did, since Marxism is materially and spiritually impotent. It is a de-industrializing training regimen designed to restrict progress since progress is a threat to government and nations. See empowered, journey, diversity, inclusivity.

175: SUSTAINABILITY (cont)…… A word used by everyone for the sake of using it since no one actually knows how you sustain something you are using.

You can REPLACE things. But if you are sustaining it….then you’re not using it. It’s just in existence. Probably put there by Nature.

While sustainability has no meaning it does have a function, naturally political: to imply that the user of the word is bathed in priestlike holiness. Most product-sellers now use this word to suggest that they are holy so you should buy their iffy-level-of-merit product out of appreciation of the seller rather than out of satisfaction with the product.

Bureaucrats also use this word to suggest that they care about the “earth.” Which compared to the degree that they care about you, is likely greater, so they’re actually telling the truth for once. For only the earth matters now. Not you. Atomic energy, while not sustainable is in fact, close to inexhaustible. In America this makes it forbidden since a close-to-actually sustainable power source goes against the “agenda of sustainability” now embraced by bureaucrats and their frightened-of-losing-their-permission-to-exist corporate sycophants. Which would be all businesses not actually family or individually owned. Corporations are government-created entities and have nothing to do with the definition of capitalism.

176: SUSTAINABLE, SUSTAINABILITY (cont) (bureaucrat/journalist definition)……Unknown. (ACTUAL DEFINITION)……Unknown. Sustainable is a word with no actual meaning or definition in a political context, which is the only context it is ever used in. Perhaps it can be used in another context. Beats me. Maybe you can think of one. In the political realm while it has no actual meaning or definition, there is a prescribed response: obedience. If you are using something unsustainable, you should not be using it.

Why? Because you will use it all up. Then it will be gone. And no one will have any. Which is immoral. You are keeping other people from having any. And we all must have everything or nothing. All things must be sustainable otherwise you cannot use it.

Since nothing is actually sustainable, as far as anyone knows, even though no one actually knows, since no one knows what sustainable actually means or is or does or says or bleats or shits or gets off the pot…

Or maybe everything is sustainable if orders and procedures are followed as pronounced by people who can’t actually sustain an intelligence, we just don’t know, and if someone does actually know that person has not yet come forward to tell us what sustainable is or means or does so therefore to be safe lest we run out – your use of whatever we are talking about at the moment is to be curtailed under penalty of license-loss, since your license and your liberty are apparently not sustainable. They can actually disappear.

That much we know.

184: GREENHOUSE GAS (JOURNALIST/BUREAUCRAT DEFINITION) The destructive vapors of oil, coal and methane used in machines and in your lungs.(ACTUAL DEFINITION…….Two words assembled together in such a way as to put it into your head via relentless repetition by infinite human parrots including suddenly-genius first-graders, that earth is a man-made greenhouse, not a 4 billion year old mammoth amalgam of the entire periodic table.

The earth is not a green house. Nor is it a Popsicle. The expression “greenhouse gas” has one function: to put the idea of rising earth temperature into your head and associate it with you using an air conditioner or hair spray because your personal conveniences are killing others less fortunate. That’s right, it’s just more fucking Marxism.

The expression “greenhouse gasses” has been selected solely for the bizarre imagery that the phrase conjures: that the earth is not a successfully-self-operating monster of life-out-of dirt, winding and wending its way through a galaxy of a billion stars and a trillion planets, no, it’s fucking a greenhouse: a big glass building with its already hot, wet, humid essence being further compromised by your car which is turning the earth into more of a place for lizards and spiders and plants that eat animals than it already is, and you are at fault because of your selfish need for “modern conveniences” while others die.

The “greenhouse gas” is proclaimed to be CO2. Even though CO2 is not a “greenhouse gas.” There is actually no such thing as a greehouse gas. There is just CO2. CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. It’s just CO2. It’s never been…a greenhouse gas. It’s a CO2 gas.

The expression “greenhouse gas” has also been selected via some random bureaucratic catastrophe-generator to be compiled into the New Weather Terminology of Death along with the sudden newly-appearing mysterious version of meteorology called “climate science.” Meaning “the science you created and made necessary for us to investigate so that you don’t kill everybody.”

Climate science. Greenhouse effect. Greenhouse gasses. Global warming. Attribution science. Gray swan climate event, Hotter. And hotter. Wetter. Droughtier. It’s a fucking mess. Do you care??? No.

You have electricity. So YOU don’t care. (You’ll notice there is a worldwide sudden electricity problem in all the white countries.) You won’t stop stop using your air conditioner? We’ll shut off the power. You won’t stop driving your gas and diesel vehicles? We’ll outlaw oil.

You’ll use our mandatory electricity vehicles. Which don’t work. We don’t care. We need you dead before you realize you don’t actually need us. Eventually there will be something called “terrain science” that will explain why walking on the ground rather than just lying six feet beneath it is causing warts on the moon. Just like all the other things declared out of nowhere, claimed as fact and always suspiciously designed to handcuff human life, human happiness, human progress and discourage more cool stuff and to keep people glued to one spot.

Ya know, like Covid-19 successfully did.

–jj solari, bureaucrat/journalist dictionary

 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.