As it appears that some of us are "motorcycle enthusiasts," it seems like a good idea to start a thread about it.
Who out there rides? What do you ride? What are your favorite routes? Tell us everything!
I have been riding for 34 years, and I currently have 3 bikes. I put in more miles on 2 wheels than on 4. Nothing beats riding! Riding to see/hear/play good music is the best! Although one must curtail the ceremonial use of hemp products and other substances that affect excellent riding....
Oh no - Bikers! There goes the neighborhood!
Is there anything in Moonalice Legend pertaining to internal combustion-powered 2-wheeled transportation? Even a footnote? Should there be?
I am a laid-back hemp-friendly Harley-riding bass-playing bead-stringing hippie Moonalice tribe member... have 2 motorcycles and been riding 23 years. Looking forward to a little 1000 mile ride next month to my second Moonalice show in Crystal Bay, NV.
Sounds like a lovely trip, Sunflower! Do you have names for your bikes?
I keep a Steinberger (head-less, body-less) bass guitar expressly for the purpose of being able to transport it on a bike. I once rode from Colorado to the Fur Peace Ranch (and back) with it strapped to my saddlebag.
Sounds like Crystal Bay would only be about 1000 mile ride for you, too. Bring the bass!
I'm willing to talk bikes- I live in northern California so I get to ride year-round. My everyday bike is a small black and silver '02 Suzuki SV650 v-twin named little Suzi. My weekend ride is a '51 Vincent Black Shadow named Dracula because I've spent my life savings on it two separate times, 10 years apart.
My favorite ride is the 30 mile HWY 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains to the ocean. It's basically the only ride the Vincent likes, it doesn't like to idle, shift or brake, and it's 6 volts, I don't expect the lights to illuminate or the horn to sound.
I love that bike, but I bought a pick-up truck and a cell phone solely because I now owned a vehicle where I would have to call for a tow from the side of the road regularly.
Welcome to the motorcycle thread, Undecided Moonalice! A Vincent Black Shadow... very cool... even as an "occasional" ride. Older bikes are definitely more challenging, and FUN! to ride... and they remind us what it's really all about, lest we get too comfortable with all the modern conveniences and smoothness, fuel injection, belt drive, etc, of new bikes. My bikes are both H-D Superglides... "Stella Blue" is a blue 1976 nearly stock shovelhead... and "Sam" (short for Psycle Sam) is the limited edition 2006 35th Anniversary model. Sam gets ridden the most... especially for the serious mileage.
Hello all
I live in Sparks,NV and have been riding for ofer 30 yrs. Have long been considered a DeadHead and a pagan tribal member.So it does'nt suprise me that I have found Moonalice and have been drawn in so.
My ride for the past three yrs has been an '06 Kawasaki Meanstreak.She is black with red tribal grafix and her name is Jezebelle.
I will be at Crystal Bay on the 9th. My first show was there on Jan.10th.That's when the hook was set and 'to the moon alice'
I don't ride myself, but I dig the colour and spirit that makes bikies and motorcyclists alike go on......true free spirit for me 
:)
RIDE ON!:)
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I'm putting on my leathers right now, headed to Santa Cruz for coffee. I'm listening to one of my favorite motorcycling songs, This Changes Everything. Good song to program your ride to. On the other hand, I have an unfavorite Moonalice motorcycling song, Blink Of An Eye:
Raining down to the ground
stars fall from the sky
life is changed, rearranged
in the blink of an eye
not the best song to hum to yourself as you scream around the corners. I'm going back to This Changes Everything, the album version, although I have a longer version from Aug '07 that gets a lot of play.
It's supposed to be 70 degrees here today, but it's not warm yet. I've got 4 layers on, I'm toasty, but getting through all those zippers to use the restroom is a production
Motorcycling songs - another great addition to the thread! One of my favorites is Easy Now, by Hot Tuna. "Got the riding pneumonia today, the weather's too fine to stay..." Leave it to Jorma to write a great biking song.
To Undecided: a Vincent Black Shadow! Hardcore! I'm way impressed. I've had a couple old Britbikes, and ya' just gotta be into them or else who needs the grief. But they really deliver the full riding experience every time.
My current rides are:
2003 100th Anniversary H-D FLHTI (Bertha, the GeezerGlide)
1998 Buell S3T Thunderbolt (Buellah, of course)
2006 "Kit Custom" rigid-frame chopper, based off of an evo Sportster (named BJ, because it blows away big twins... thanks Sunflower)
Check out this link for a chuckle:
That's a great clip on how Triumphs are made! My first motorcycle was a 72 Triumph Bonneville. Undecided Moonalice's story about Dracula brought back memories of that first bike... especially the part about "can't count on the lights to work or the horn to sound." My Triumph was known to devour ignition switches... after replacing probably the 5th or 6th one after all the wires melted and I inhaled toxic fumes from the molten plastic, I finally just left the 3 wires hanging and twisted them together before I kickstarted the bike, and pulled them apart when I stopped.
So you settled on BJ instead of Pigpen for the chopper?
Lucas - Prince of Darkness. Oh the joys of cheaply-made current rectifiers and Zener diodes!
Q - Why do the British drink their beer warm?
A - Because Lucas makes their refirgerators.
My first Triumph was a '63 Bonneville; at idle the headlight was fundamentally off, emitting a warm "moon" glow. You had to rev up the engine to get the headlight to become visible for more than 10 feet. Forget about the horn, that took too much juice. It was more effective to yell at offending motorists.
I once saw a cool shirt at a motorcycle gathering that had the Lucas logo... and the message "Gentlemen should not be motoring about after dark."
I'm enjoying reading this thread! My dad and brothers all rode. Dad had various bikes - Indian, Harley, Triumph, Goldwing Honda. He liked bikes that were full dress - windshield, saddle seat, saddlebags - old school. He was a motorcycle highway patrol in Nebraska way back when. In the 30's and 40's my folks rode with a club. The two of them would ride from Iowa to California with 3 KIDS sandwiched between them!
That's good - 5 people on a motorcycle. Sounds like a circus act. I have a buddy from Holland; the family vehicle was a Vespa scooter, and they'd somehow get the whole family of 4 on it.
Talk about close family!
Yep. Five on a bike would certainly not fly now. It went the way of Burma Shave signs!
"Motorcyle Safety" - it's not an oxymoron.
Remember when sex was safe and motorcycles were dangerous?
As anyone who knows British bikes might suspect, I could write pages about electrical issues. The most recent - I've been having generator problems for years, oil keeps leaking into the generator and getting on the rotor. The generator won't charge the 6 volt battery, 6 volt batteries run low quickly, it's been causing me grief for years.
The latest fix is a red rag my mechanic has stuffed between the rear cylinder and the generator to absorb the oil before it gets into the generator. He says when the rag isn't red anymore, change it.
Moving from electrical to oil, because on this bike they overlap-
The Vincent was designed to go through a quart of oil every 500 miles. Every inch of that bike is coated- the hand grips and seat are pretty clean because they're covered when you ride, but everything else is well-protected against rust.
Do all Brit bikes have positive ground?
BTW, I think you should keep your name, Undecided Moonalice...
I think the old Britbikes had "positive earth." The '63 and the '69 that I owned had that. I had a newer Triumph (2005) that was thoroughly modern, 12V, negative ground, etc. But I had to let that one go; it attracted too much attention from the local constabulary.. ahem.. or was it the way that I rode it?
It could go the speed limit on the interstate in 1st gear, and then it had 5 more gears to go.
I got a kick out of "undecided's" mechanic's "fix" of a rag stuffed in there to soak up the oil... an oil-soaked rag sitting on the hot engine... not that I haven't engaged in such behavior myself or anything...
I don't do most of the mechanical stuff- the bike is pretty complex, for old tech. The Vincent has a dry sump lubrication system- there's an oil tank bolted to the top of the engine- oil drips down into the engine and is sucked back up via these tubes that caused mechanics of the time to refer to it as The Plumbers Nightmare. There's a sheen of oil everywhere.
If you start the bike you have to run it at least 10 miles to warm up the oil adequately- I've read that people stick rags up into the space between the gas tank and oil tank to restrict air flow to try to make their engine oil warmer- apparently you can't really make it hot.
There's no frame- the front forks bolt on to the front of the oil tank and the rear frame holding the rear wheel bolts on to the back of the oil tank and the bottom of the engine. 3 kickstands, if you do it right you can park it with both wheels off the ground. 4 speeds and 2 sprockets, I have it on the smaller sprocket. Factory specs said it would do 60 in 1st, 90 in 2nd, 110 in 3rd and 125 in 4th, and if I run it on the big sprocket I could get to 140.
I had it up to 100 once, and it was scary, I couldn't stay there more than a couple of seconds. In Brit-speak, 100 mph is called the 'tonne', and when this vehicle was built it was the only production vehicle that could go that fast, so I just had to hit it once.
Things happen quickly at 100 mph...
I would like to share some words by Hunter S. Thompson, from a wonderful essay called "Song of the Sausage Creature."
"'On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."'
There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright red, hunchback, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them -- but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.
Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high- speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack -- and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you.... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on other, you get what you need."
Ya' gotta love the good Doctor.
I shall be riding "B.J." to the New Riders show tonight.
And David Nelson told me that he used to have a Vincent Rapide. So he knows.
Hey Paganstreak... since you've been to the Crystal Bay Casino before, do you recall if they have motorcycle parking? This will be my second Moonalice concert, too... worth a thousand mile ride. I am seriously looking forward to it!
Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long [brown] hair
flyin' in the wind
She's been runnin' half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin' with the very
air she breathes. - Neil Young
Yep! That's me! At least I found the magic kiss... 
Sunflower - How was that ride to the show at the Crystal Bay? A thousand miles each way - that is impressive!!! You should get some kind of special recognition!
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