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Bikers Meet The Old West In New Adventure Fiction

by K. Randall “Bandit” Ball The city from Laguna to Irvine and El Toro closed in on Trabuco Canyon like a concrete plaque. But Cook’s still resided in the last remaining unencumbered scrub hills. Bruno tied off his helmet to his TT bars and kicked up dust in the ground-shale parking lot to the door. It was wide, thick planks and swung open with a rusting creak. Dark inside the Four Tops played Only the Lonely from the neon jute box. But something foreboding filled the air. Straight ahead was the bar and a number of club members scrambling around something or someone on the floor. Click here to read the latest biker fiction from the master of the genre only at Bikernet.com * * * * * * * * * * * * Visit Bandit’s Cantina for entire novels, click here.

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World War II Rider Beatrice Shilling, OBE

by Jason Marker from https://www.rideapart.com With a simple, thimble-shaped washer, this pioneering woman gearhead saved the lives of countless RAF pilots in WWII. During the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force discovered a glaring problem with its Rolls-Royce Merlin-powered fighters—the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire. See, that generation of Merlin was fitted with dual-choke, updraft carburetors built by the S.U. Carburettor Company Limited. These worked just like your regular updraft carb and were great in level flight. Problem was, you see, that fighter planes don’t spend a lot of time in level flight. Any negative-G maneuvers, such as pitching the nose down sharply in a dive, would cause the carbs to flood and the engine to cut out. Not exactly what you want in your badass, high-po, Nazi-killing fighter. RAF pilots figured out pretty quickly that they could perform a quick half-roll before diving in an attempt to counteract the flooding, but this only worked so well. It also introduced a delay in the RAF boys’ maneuvers that provided ample opportunity for the fuel-injected Luftwaffe fighters—especially Willie Messerschmitt’s legendary BF109—to either blow up the RAF planes or run for it as the situation allowed. The RAF needed a solution to this problem, and fast. Enter one Beatrice Shilling. Humble Beginnings and Early Career Beatrice Shilling was born on March 8, 1909, in Hampshire, and raised in Surrey. Her parents were butcher Henry Shilling and his wife Annie (née Dulake). She was, by all accounts, a peculiar young girl for her time. She was obsessed with Meccano, a model-building system similar to an Erector Set, and even won a prize in a national Meccano-building contest. She spent her pocket money on tools, knives, and pots of glue, and, the fact that most concerns us here at RideApart, bought her

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Southern Rider Goes the Distance

Amazing Bessie spent 60 years in the saddle, aboard 28 different motorcycles by Ann Ferrar Click here to read this photo feature article on Bikernet.com Ann Ferrar, author of “Hear Me Roar: Women, Motorcycles and the Rapture of the Road,” considers Bessie Stringfield one of her life’s greatest inspirations. Ferrar spent time with Ms. Stringfield during Bessie’s golden years, and thus a friendship blossomed between two women riders of different generations and very different life experiences. Ms. Stringfield was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. In the 1930s and 1940s, my friend Bessie Stringfield took eight long-distance, solo rides around the country in the style of the old gypsy tours. Bessie dismissed the scolding of relatives who said that “nice girls didn’t go around riding motorcycles” and she became estranged from them. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Celebrate motorcycling – join Bandit’s Cantina today. Click to view options & benefits.

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