MOTORCYCLE SECURITY ALERT from England
By Bandit | | General Posts
Motorcycle owners have several options to deter both types of thieves, and common sense goes a long way in fending them off. But bikers have certain habits that leave their beloved bikes vulnerable to criminals. Leaving bikes unlocked and exposed for quick stops, parking them in a driveway with no locks whatsoever, and not having proper safeguards against theft are only a few of the reasons why bike theft is rife around the world.
As motorcycle owners, we have to be cautious and smart about our daily habits to prevent becoming the next target for opportunistic thieves. However, all the care in the world couldn’t stop a determined and well-prepared thief, this is where the more advanced security systems come in. Since you can’t sleep or work next to your motorcycle, you will have to leave it alone for long periods from time to time. To ensure your bike is fully protected during these times, you will need a secret weapon that can prevent attempted theft or delay the thieves until help arrives.
BEST KNIFE SHARPENER ON THE PLANET
By Bandit | | General Posts
Dear Patriot,
As my granddaddy used to say, “There’s NO excuse for a dull knife.”
He was giving me a hard time, of course. He believed a knife that wasn’t sharp enough to shave with was, in his words, “dull.”
And even though I agreed with him in principle, getting out my sharpening kit and raising an edge could always wait til later…
That is, until I discovered what has become my favorite knife sharpener in the world. Nearly every adult in American already owns one of these.
I’ve shared how to use this amazing tool on the blog.
“Every hunter or fisherman eventually forgets to pack that very important item, no matter how thoughtful their preparations.
In our experience, it’s remembering the knife but forgetting the sharpening stone.
Well, here’s an ingenious backup solution that will prevent you from ever having to deal with a dull blade again…
When it comes to sharpening your knives, the best sharpener is the one that’s there when you need it. If that sharpening stone just happens to be free, all the better!”
n Liberty,
Oli Fischer
WEATHER REPORT from the Florida Front
By Bandit | | General Posts
BIKERNET(TM) REPORTER EMBEDDED AT THE FRONT
It is a beautiful sunny Monday morning, in Palm Bay Florida. I will enjoy it as long as I can because all that is going to change soon.
The hurricane DORIAN is on the way and expected to hit Brevard County on Tuesday and Wednesday it is not going to be good.
It is reported to run the Interstate 95 corridor north
At this time the eye is off the east coast and there are mandatory evacuations for the barrier islands. DORIAN is big enough that even with the eye being out in the Atlantic Ocean serious hurricane conditions will happen well inland.
I am about 7 miles west of I-95 and going to get hit. Just do not know how bad yet.
I have taken as many precautions as humanly possible including flotation vests for both my German Shepherds and myself. Hope that is over kill.
Praying For All In The Path Of DORIAN
Will keep in touch as best I can.
–Rogue
Senior Editor Bikernet
Bikernet.com
PO Box 184
Melbourne, FL 32902
Hang in there, brother. Our thoughts are with you!–Bandit
Enfield reports 24% drop in sales of Motorcycles in August 2019
By Wayfarer | | General Posts
Eicher Motors Ltd has announced the sales figures of motorcycles for the month of August 2019. The company has sold 52,904 motorcycles during August 2019, as compared to 69,377 units in August 2018, a drop of 24% YoY.
The company has sold 44694 units of models with engine capacity upto 350cc in August 2019 as against 65712 units in August 2018, registering a drop of 32% YoY.
The company has sold 8210 units of models with engine capacity exceeding 350cc during August 2019 as compared to 3665 units in August 2018, a growth of 124% YoY.
Exports stood at 4152 units in August 2019 as against 1363 units in August 2018, a growth of 205% YoY.
Shares of EICHER MOTORS LTD. was last trading in BSE at Rs.16260.35 as compared to the previous close of Rs. 16544.4. The total number of shares traded during the day was 3816 in over 1555 trades.
The stock hit an intraday high of Rs. 16652.25 and intraday low of 15985.95. The net turnover during the day was Rs. 62267233.
Source: Equity Bulls
Newly published in the Cantina
By Wayfarer | | General Posts
New Safety Organization, BIKER LIVES MATTER, Formed in Florida
John “Rogue” Herlihy is the President who has spent many years working at EASYRIDERS and was a founding member of ABATE while working with other motorcycle advocacy groups to fight for the rights of riders. He was inducted into the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame as a Freedom Fighter in 2005!
READ THE NEWS BY CLICKING HERE – Subscribe to the Cantina
STURGIS 2019 Downtown
Downtown Action through Photos
By Rogue
While I am working on my articles for 2019 Sturgis, I thought I would share some photos from downtown just to give ya an idea of what was happening. Like we use to do in The In The Wind pages back in the day created by Kim Peterson.
SEE THE PHOTOS BY CLICKING HERE – Subscribe to the Catina
Movie Review: Sgt. Will Gardner
A 2019 movie featuring an amazing motorcycle trip by a War Veteran
Ujjwal Dey
This is a very different movie that just happens to have a motorcycle trip.
READ THE MOVIE REVIEW – ONLY IN THE CANTINA – SUBSCRIBE TODAY
Movie Review: Sgt. Will Gardner
By Ujjwal Dey | | General Posts
The movie “Sgt Will Gardner” is about – you guessed it – a war veteran named Sgt. Will Gardner. He is back home in United States of America – the land of the free. But he is jobless and living on the streets. He seems to have severe PTSD which he is coping with the help of reading books and consuming cheap alcohol. Sgt. Will seems to have become an alcoholic but he has his wits about him. He is still honorable and still respects the uniform he sees on a fellow homeless veteran.
Sgt. Will did some work for which he got shortchanged. We see police breakdown his motel room door, dragging him out of the bathroom where he had locked himself in. From then on the story gets a lot better and more engaging.
There are constant flashback scenes to the war zone. He survived but it seems like his survival back in USA is unlikely.
Through chance, he is on the road on a Harley-Davidson. The trip is most likely to run away from himself. He lost brothers in the war but now he is alone in the battlefield of life – a wrecked soul seeking peaceful shores on a motorcycle.
On the road to self-discovery he passes through Arizona and Texas, living in more motel rooms and quenching the fire in his belly by drowning himself in whiskey. He is traumatized by the war but worse is the treatment he receives from fellow Americans. “Thank you for your service” with a middle finger instead of a salute (or a handshake).
It is a two hour movie and may seem slow paced to those watching big budget fast paced action movies. Hell, soon there is another Rambo movie by Sylvester Stallone to be released on September 20th this year (“Rambo Last Blood”). But if you stick with this movie, it will surprise you.
This is a must watch for anyone who has done active military service and been in a war zone.
On the road Sgt. Will meets a Texas woman who mistakes him to be a Hollywood actor. She has quit her job and hit the open road to get away from the miserable cubicle lifestyle she pursued most of her life. There is a brief romance which seems to be a case of mistaken identity.
Sgt. Will Gardner seems to be failing at the mission called “life” but his moral compass seems to be capable of repairing its direction from time to time. His nickname is “Ghost” but he is the one haunted by many tragic memories. Sgt. Will is suffering from TBI – Traumatic Brain Injury – due to being around explosions. He lost a friend who follows him in his mind and spirit.
Starring Max Martini and also featuring Robert Patrick with Gary Sinise, the writer-director-actor Martini has pledged 30% of the film’s proceeds to three charities that support veterans suffering from TBI, PTSD, and veteran homelessness. Actor Gary Sinise has already helped many war veterans over the years through his charity “Gary Sinise Foundation” which was one of the benefactors from the proceeds of this film. https://www.garysinisefoundation.org/
After a series of setbacks, Sgt. Will Gardner goes on a cross-country motorcycle journey to revisit his life and his family – his ex-wife and his son. The troubled Iraq War veteran struggling to reintegrate into society sets out on a cross-country journey with the hope of reuniting with his young son. He has sustained TBI during a bombing that he and his platoon suffered while in combat. His injuries make it difficult for him to reintegrate into society so after a series of setbacks, he goes on a spirited motorcycle journey across America to pick up pieces of his life lost since combat.
There isn’t a happy ending to this movie but it helps raise awareness about the desperate condition of America’s finest who served in the military for their nation.
Cast: Max Martini, Elisabeth Rohm, Lily Rabe, Dermot Mulroney, Robert Patrick, JoBeth Williams, Luis Bordeonada, Leo Martini, Gary Sinise
Director-screenwriter: Max Martini
Producers: Michael Hagerty, Max Martini
Check it out if you are looking for a change of pace in cinema and open to smaller budget movies that tell the everyday story for a good cause.
The Road User Charge by Any Other Name: NMA E-Newsletter #555
By Bandit | | General Posts
We recently completed a series of newsletters (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) about the renewed calls for levying a set of surcharges–or thinly disguised taxes–on motorists to help rescue the Federal Highway Trust Fund. National calls are picking up in momentum for the implementation of a system of travel fees layered on top of the existing fuel tax that vehicle operators currently pay at the gas pumps.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. The NMA has been writing and testifying in opposition to additional driving taxes for more than a decade. Perhaps the opinion piece that best encapsulates the NMA position on the fuel tax and other schemes to raise money to pay for improvements to the nation’s transportation infrastructure was written a little over four years ago by Gary Biller for The Ripon Forum, the magazine of The Ripon Society.
The February 2015 issue of the magazine included a point-counterpoint set of op-eds about using mileage-based user fees to bail out the Highway Trust Fund. The NMA was asked to express the opposition opinion to instituting another set of charges on the motoring public. That editorial, republished with the kind permission of The Ripon Society, follows. It is as pertinent now as it was a few years ago.
The Mileage-Based User Fee: At what cost?
By Gary Biller, NMA President
Rarely is a problem best solved by adding layers of complexity to an existing process, particularly a budgetary process. Such is the proposal to supplement or replace the fuel tax with a mileage-based user fee to pull the Federal Highway Trust Fund back from the teetering edge of insolvency.
The real problem with the Trust Fund is how the money is being spent, more so than with how it is being collected from road users. While the nation’s roads and bridges decline further into disrepair, those who constitute the Washington, D.C. political establishment continue to fiddle.
In the 2007 report, “Paying at the Pump: Gasoline Taxes in America,” Jonathan Williams (then of the Tax Foundation) wrote, “. . . current federal highway legislation authorized over 6,000 earmarks from the Highway Trust Fund. Some of these went to legitimate transportation programs, but others were earmarked for items such as the infamous ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ Today, gasoline tax revenue is spent on everything from public education and museums to graffiti removal and parking garages.”
At about the same time, the Transportation Review Board noted in its “Special Report 285” that, two years earlier, the federal government collected $107 billion in highway user fees, with the majority being generated from gas tax revenue. The TRB reported that only $85 billion of that total was devoted to highway spending.
The Trust Fund allocation process is little better today. Any discussion about the effectiveness of the fuel tax vs. a mileage-based user fee needs to start there, because any revenue collection method will be saddled with the same systemic problem. If only our legislators had the political will and self-discipline to limit the incessant earmarking of transportation funds for non-highway projects.
That being said, the fuel tax is the simplest, most equitable method of charging motorists for the maintenance of our highway infrastructure. Heavier, less fuel-efficient vehicles contribute more to road wear and tear than do smaller passenger vehicles and motorcycles, but by virtue of higher fuel consumption their owners also pay more toward the Trust Fund.
A mileage-based user fee requires tracking of actual vehicle miles traveled. Recording the mileage is an added data collection step, either through periodic odometer inspections or by a much more intrusive GPS-based tracking system that monitors the whereabouts of each vehicle at all times. The GPS method opens the door for creative traffic management schemes such as charging drivers more per mile when they are navigating through congested traffic zones. Urban planning by way of social engineering. No thank you.
The loss of motorist privacy by GPS tracking would come with another hefty cost. Paying an estimated $50 to $100 to install the necessary hardware per vehicle for the 250 million registered cars and trucks on U.S. roads translates to a vehicle owner and taxpayer-absorbed cost of nearly $12.5 billion.
Whether the mileage-based fee is determined by reading odometers or through uploaded tracking information, it does not apportion cost based on the road maintenance caused by specific vehicles that is a hallmark of the fuel tax. Instead, the tax per vehicle mile would ostensibly be the same for an 18-wheel tractor-trailer as it would for a motorcycle; all this at the cost of introducing a new revenue collection system (and requisite overhead) to monitor and collect road user fees based on the distance vs. time profile of each vehicle.
Critics of the fuel tax point to electric cars and gas/electric hybrids as not consuming enough fuel to contribute their fair share to the Trust Fund. Through late 2014, 3.8 million plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles have been sold in the U.S. since introduction. That constitutes only 1.5 percent of the nation’s motorized traffic today. These vehicles are not part of the Trust Fund’s solvency issues and likely won’t be for several more years. If need be, owners of electric vehicles can be charged an assessment based on average miles traveled to make their contribution to the Trust Fund more equitable.
Index the federal fuel tax to inflation if you must. (The last adjustment to the per-gallon tax was over 20 years ago.) But do not take the existing and inherently fair method of charging drivers for highway use by vehicle fuel consumption and complicate it with a mileage-based user fee that adds new levels of cost, bureaucracy, and privacy concerns.
All Kids Bike
By Wayfarer | | General Posts
The All Kids Bike® campaign is led by the Strider Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The Strider Education Foundation is committed to reversing this declining participation trend through its All Kids Bike campaign.
STURGIS 2019 Downtown
By Bikernet Contributor Rogue | | General Posts
New Safety Organization, BIKER LIVES MATTER, Formed in Florida
By Chris Gibbany | | General Posts
BIKER LIVES MATTER is a new safety organization formed to help lower injury and deaths of motorcyclists on the highways. I recently became the Arkansas Ambassador for this important and much-needed group. John “Rogue” Herlihy is the President who has spent many years working at EASYRIDERS and was a founding member of ABATE while working with other motorcycle advocacy groups to fight for the rights of riders. He was inducted into the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame as a Freedom Fighter in 2005!
Motorcyclists face unique challenges when compared to other drivers because they are smaller and less visible than other vehicles, plus a motorcycle offers almost no protection from outside forces. Drivers on their cell phones, either talking or texting, are the biggest concern to motorcyclists and are the most common reason for distracted driving crashes and collisions. It is estimated that 40%-66% of all motorcycle crashes with four-wheeled vehicles involve the driver using a cell phone. According to research, distracted drivers kill at least nine people each day. That equals 3285 people A YEAR dying to be seen!!!
Another common and dangerous situation is when vehicles make a left-handed turn in front of the motorcyclist. Statistics show that these irresponsible turns account for 42% of collisions but it’s hard to say, if not impossible, to also include that these same drivers might have been on their phones WHILE making a left turn. Rogue started this organization after his son was struck and almost killed on his motorcycle by a vehicle making a left turn in September of 2018. He ended up losing a foot. Rogue and some friends decided too many people they knew were getting injured or being killed while travelling on motorcycles.
Most drivers never think about motorcyclists while driving. Someone must teach upcoming and current drivers to look for motorcyclists at all times. BIKER LIVES MATTER hopes to increase efforts with education and awareness to both drivers and riders, promote campaigns that encourage drivers to pay attention, and support legislation that will help keep motorcyclists safer on the road. Research shows that current laws don’t do enough to combat distracted driving and that we need stiffer penalties for those fatalities caused by distracted driving.
After I emailed all of my friends introducing them to BIKER LIVES MATTER, I received a response from Ron Jungbauer, a member of FORR (Freedom of the Road Riders) in Missouri. He told me about his best friend Scott Lambert. Ron writes, “We took this first picture of Scott on June 29th, and it was the last time my wife Louise and I would ride with him.
Let’s not allow Scott’s death or anyone else’s to be meaningless. Let’s work towards getting legislation passed to increase the industry standards of keeping motorcyclists safe.
Until the government or car manufacturers enact the technology to block phone signals for drivers; education and legislation is the only form of action that we have. BIKERS LIVES MATTER believes that all driver courses should teach motorcycle awareness and that riders should have the skills to avoid crashes when possible while riding defensively. Another weak link and something that needs attention is getting riders AND bystanders trained on what to do at a scene of a crash or collision.
BIKER LIVES MATTER is partnering with some other well-known people, companies, and organizations. The more people we have, the louder our voice will be. We ALL have to do our part to keep each other ALIVE! It is free to join BIKER LIVES MATTER and you do not have to own a motorcycle to sign up-https://bikerlivesmatter.com/