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CRAZY HORSE RIDES TO MYRTLE BEACH–I’ll be submitting a full report on Myrtle beach next week, but here’s a few teaser shots for now. As always, the best part of the trip was the ride there and back. The weather was perfect and the road was full of bikes making the trip. The Sportster ran great. The days were hot but the nights were totally freaky. I was staying with the Wall of Death crew at the Broken Spoke so I didn’t have to venture out at night. Good thing too, cos the riding stupid were out in force. What is it about the Myrtle Beach Rally that makes riders lose all their common sense? Downtown Myrtle was too much. The Doghouse Bar should have been called the nuthouse.
The bikes around were interesting to say the least. Myrtle Beach is not a big chopper event like Daytona or Sturgis. But the biggest chopper event is barely a month away. The chopper faithul are making plans to ride to The Horse BackStreet Choppers’ yearly event, the Smoke Out. Folks are riding in from as far away as California and Texas. Indian Larry, Hank Young, and Billy Lane will be among the celebrity bike builders strolling around. But the real stars of this event are the bikes. No place else will you see more interesting creations and some of the tales behind these creations are as cool as the bikes.
This week’s paint job is an oldie but still pretty cool. The deadline for my book is a mere five weeks away. So I’ve been writing and painting like a fanatic. The three days I took off for Myrtle Beach was a welcome and much needed break. Part of me is still out there, watching the countryside glide by, seeing the sun move across the sky, watching the clouds- checking to see if it may rain or storm, hoping for a break from the relentless sun, wondering where I’ll stop for some lunch. Ah, this work thing sucks. All I know is I need to spend more time out on the road, just me and Sporty.
—CrazyHorse
BIKERNET RELATIONSHIP ADVICE– One night, as a couple lays down for bed, the husband starts rubbing his wife’s arm. The wife turns over and says “I’m sorry honey, I’ve got a gynecologist appointment tomorrow and I want to stay fresh.” The husband, rejected, turns over. A few minutes later, he rolls back over and taps his wife again. “Do you have a dentist appointment tomorrow too?”
–from S&C
JANKLOW FINISHES 100-DAY JAIL TERM–A trim and smiling Bill Janklow walked out of jail Monday almost a free man.The former governor and congressman was released after serving 100 days for the traffic death of Minnesota farmer Randy Scott and rode off in a gray Isuzu with a friend, thus finishing a chapter on the most publicized lockup in South Dakota history.
Janklow, 64, made no comment as he walked past news reporters shortly after 9 a.m. to his ride waiting outside Minnehaha County’s Public Safety Building in downtown Sioux Falls.
“We love you, Bill!,” one supporter, Matt Rost, 31, shouted from the parking lot.
Janklow hugged Jeremiah Murphy, a Sioux Falls lawyer and longtime friend, then got into the sport utility vehicle, where Gerald Teunissen waited in the driver’s seat. They also hugged and shook hands, then drove off onto Minnesota Avenue.
About 75 people were outside the jail on a cool, gray morning, with half of them from the news media. Several spectators stood 100 to 200 feet away in the parking lot.
“He was not demanding,” jail warden Michelle Boyd said of Janklow’s time under her watch. “He was not high-maintenance. He was actually very quiet.”
Apart from the media attention, “I wouldn’t have known he was there,” Boyd said.
Certain things will not be in his plans for now. Janklow can’t drive, can’t carry a gun, can’t practice law and can’t leave the state without a permit.
But he is free to vote and will be free of his conviction for second-degree manslaughter if he fulfills the terms of the three-year probation Circuit Judge Rodney Steele assigned him in January. In 2007, the felony will be wiped from his record.
–by Jon Walker of the Argus leader.
–from Rogue
SOMETHING THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE NEWS– Maybe you’d like to hear about something other than idiot Reservists and naked Iraqis.
Maybe you’d like to hear about a real American, somebody who honored the uniform he wears. Meet Brian Chontosh. Churchville-Chili Central School class of 1991. Proud graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Husband and about-to-be father. First lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. And a genuine hero. The secretary of the Navy said so yesterday.
At 29 Palms in California Brian Chontosh was presented with the Navy Cross, the second highest award for combat bravery the United States can bestow.
That’s a big deal. But you won’t see it on the network news tonight, and all you read in Brian’s hometown newspaper was two paragraphs of nothing. Instead, it was more blather about some mental defective MPs who acted like animals.
The odd fact about the American media in this war is that it’s not covering the American military. The most plugged-in nation in the world is receiving virtually no true information about what its warriors are doing. Oh, sure, there’s a body count. We know how many Americans have fallen. And we see those same casket pictures day in and day out. And we’re almost on a first-name basis with the pukes who abused the Iraqi prisoners. And we know all about improvised explosive devices and how we lost Fallujah and what Arab public-opinion polls say about us and how the world hates us.
We get a non-stop feed of gloom and doom. But we don’t hear about the heroes. The incredibly brave GIs who honorably do their duty. The ones our grandparents would have carried on their shoulders down Fifth Avenue.
The ones we completely ignore. Like Brian Chontosh. It was a year ago on the march into Baghdad. Brian Chontosh was a platoon leader rolling up Highway 1 in a humvee. When all hell broke loose. Ambush city. The young Marines were being cut to ribbons. Mortars, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades. And the kid out of Churchville was in charge. It was do or die and it was up to him.
So he moved to the side of his column, looking for a way to lead his men to safety. As he tried to poke a hole through the Iraqi line his humvee came under direct enemy machine gun fire. It was fish in a barrel and the Marines were the fish.
And Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack. He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the .50 cal unload on them. Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across the machine gun and Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines. Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride. And he ran down the trench. With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers.
And he killed them all.
He fought with the M16 until he was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man’s AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man’s AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.
At one point he even fired a discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its grenade explosion.
When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis from his platoon’s flank. He had killed more than 20 and wounded at least as many more. But that’s probably not how he would tell it. He would probably merely say that his Marines were in trouble, and he got them out of trouble. Hoo-ah, and drive on.
– by Bob Lonsberry ) 2004
BIKERNET POLITICAL NEWS– “President Bush told Donald Rumsfeld, ‘You are doing a superb job.’
I believe the last time a President said that, he was looking underhis desk.”
-David Letterman
–from Rogue
BIKERNET CARIBBEAN REPORT–Time is flying. One of the few things that worry me is time. We all are trying to beat deadlines and I for one hate “having” to do something. But, I guess it comes with the territory. There use to be a time when I would do what the hell I wanted to while things could wait. If there was a trip, I was gone, but I guess it all has to do with growing up, and worst a dreaded word, responsibility.
Although my preference in bikes is Old School, I still wonder when I see all these kids today, maybe I wish I was ten years younger, maybe fifteen. You look at girls today, with their tight bodies and form shaping jeans. Internet and computers are available for everyone who goes to school, just imagine how much easier school life would have been if we had Internet back then.You see kids making a living, and a very well one, by skating, snow boarding, skate boarding and surfing. Stuff that some of us used to do, but it was kind of expensive or just a plain hobby. No multi million-dollar contracts back then, just a fervent desire to do what you loved. I see guys who are not even 25 and moving such immense amounts of money that it’s scary, is it the times, is it the extreme consumerism? Your guess is as good as mine.
Then again, being a kid growing in these times must be difficult. Values and all that the word complies are almost lost. Maybe I’m just jealous cause I see a lot of these kids having way more fun that I could have when I was their age. Then again we can’t follow trends and we can’t live through the TV set. Don’t get me wrong, I have done my share of damage, and I’m very pleased of the life I have lived and who I am, but man, those guys are have way too much stuff going on.
So with all this said, don’t blame the older guys for making their business grow, for getting those things that we all work really hard to achieve, you really want to freak out, watch E channel and check how much money these actors, celebrities and athletes make, and spend like it was nothing. (I guess it’s nothing to them) I remember when I had to save every red cent for a long time in order to get a new surfboard. I’ve seen guys break three boards in three waves, nothing to it. Or let’s talk about tattoos, back then (which is not that far back) you got some ink and you were the oddity. Full sleeves are as normal as baseball caps. Piercing all over, I bet younger people would not even pass through airport security, and still that has become the norm. Big tit’s (fake or not) skimpy dresses, your crack sticking out (male or female) and all that latest fashion stuff; do you remember when you saw some chicks bra thru her shirt, yeap a cheap thrill, just like that, it’s nothing now.
I guess things change for the better or for worse. Who am I to judge? Like the big hoopla these past weeks about the what to wear or whom to be, again, one of the biggest gains in this newer generation is that they want to be someone, sometimes while copying others, but still being themselves. Non-conforming younger people. I really think they don’t give a flying fuck what society in general think of them or the way they dress or are. True there’s a lack of proper identity, whites want to be black, black want to be whatever, some people want to be in Jerry Springer and others don’t give a fuck about real life, but just communicate with a computer screen. Nerds are filthy rich…I guess you follow, but then again there will always be leaders and there will always be followers. That does not change with the times, and I dare to say, it never will.
I know this has nothing to do with motorcycles but I tell you what; I am around motorcycles every single day so give me a break and let me rant about other things…. As long as it makes us think.By the way, while you are staring at the computer screen, trying to figure out my latest insanity. Check out what I see when I’m writing these words.
Life in the tropics is the best life. I wish I did not have as many things to do so I could enjoy it more.
I’ll see you guys next week, maybe I’ll have something more interesting to say. Remember that all the Discovery shows are coming soon. I have not gone to an event since Miami and have nothing to critic….
Jose ? Caribbean Reporter
NEW SOFTAIL FAT-TIRE KIT FROM BIG BOAR– Yes, here it is,The New 240 Fat Tire kit from Big Boar Products allows you to convert your stock Softail to Monster size! Kit comes complete with Fat swingarm, Strutless Steel fender, offset components for twin cam or Evo, and a 240 rear tire. Very high quality and reasonably priced. All you need is the wheel of your choice and you’ll have the cure for small tire envy! Available from Big Boar Products or your local dealer.
Thanks, Aaron @ Big Boar
SOUIX FALLS–SLEW OF VIOLATIONS LEADS TO ADDITIONAL TRAFFIC CAMERAS–Flashes from cameras at the busy intersection of Minnesota Avenue and 10th Street don’t always mean a motorist will end up with a warning letter or a fine.
But the 544 incidents recorded in a five-day test period at the downtown intersection already have city officials thinking of other intersections where red-light cameras might be employed.
If the cameras work, similar systems could follow at 41st Street and Louise Avenue and at 49th Street and Louise, said Kevin Smith, Sioux Falls assistant director of public works.
“We don’t have anything budgeted right now,” Smith said. “We need to see how this works.”
–By John-John Williams IV, Argus Leader.
–from Rogue
THAT’S IT–I’ve been invited to be apart of a Monster Garage segment with Don Hotop, Billy Westbrook, Lou Falcigno, and Kenny Boyce. Filming is due to begin the 28th of June. The players may change though, and I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, we’re still struggling to bring you our combined Laughlin Report. Our SBC DSL lines are down for the second time since installation less than two months ago. Watch out for these guys. We hooked up SBC phones, DSL and Dish television. The Dish is down constantly, the DSL doesn’t work any better than a slow modem and customer service is a struggle.
We have our own personal Laughlin saga, Franks hottest bikes of Laughlin, general reports and of course, the babes. Hang on. We’re launching a new Life and Times and Chapter 23 of Chance in the Cantina. I’m working on a chapter of the Cantina series, and there’s new techs coming to Bikernet.
Don’t forget to hit the Door Prize contests on Bikernet and in the Cantina. We have a brand new set of leather clad H-D Sportster saddlebags to give away next week, Samson gift certificates all the time, Bikernet Hats and A BDL Softail Belt drive this week. The belt drive will work with any softail, and whoever wins, must be able to bring his or her bike to Bikernet for the installation. Please, only serious Softail owners for the belt drive. Enter the contest areas anytime and as often as you want, then hit the road. Let’s party.
Ride Forever,
–Bandit
