MNO Blog – Motorcycles, News, Opinions

BRASELTON, Ga., Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ — Yoshimura Suzuki’s Ben Spies clinched
the 2007 AMA Superstock Championship after winning the penultimate race of the
season at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Ga., on Sunday afternoon. With one round of
AMA Superstock remaining, Spies went for the win even though he only had to
finish in sixth place or better to take the title.

Yoshimura Suzuki’s Spies is
also the defending 2006 AMA Superbike Champion and currently leads the points in
the premier class this year as well.

“It was a good race for us today,” said Spies. “I wanted to win the
championship but I wanted to win the race pretty bad too. So I just tried to put
in consistent lap times on the Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000. It’s great to win the
Superstock championship for Suzuki. The Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 is an amazing
bike and has worked great at every track we’ve raced at this year. I want to
thank Suzuki and my crew for working so hard for me all season long.”

En route to capturing the 2007 AMA Superstock championship, the 23-year- old
Texan has won an impressive seven out of eight races so far this season.

Spies
also captured six pole positions in AMA Superstock, including the coveted
starting spot at Road Atlanta this weekend. Prior to that, Spies also won the
2003 AMA Formula Xtreme championship in his rookie season for the
factory-supported Yoshimura Suzuki team.

“Winning the 2007 AMA Superstock championship is a great accomplishment for
Suzuki and the Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 as well as for Ben,” said Mel Harris,
American Suzuki Vice President Motorcycle/ATV Division. “Over the last few
years, we’ve asked a lot from Ben and he hasn’t disappointed us. Ben is a
talented young rider and he truly brings out the best in the Yoshimura Suzuki
GSX-R1000.”

For more information on Spies and Yoshimura Suzuki, please log on to
www.teamsuzuki.com.

Source: Yoshimura Suzuki

Technorati Tags: ama, motorcycle news, motorcycle racing, superbike, suzuki

Leather and Lace at the Playboy® Mansion

October 6, 2007
Los Angeles, California

This exclusive party will invite motorcycle industry entrepreneurs, such as dealership owners, motorcycle rally organizers, and enthusiasts from all over the country who share the common goal of supporting worthwhile 501(c)3 charities.

For more information you can visit the Motorcycles Charity Associates website or write

Participating charities will raise and distribute significant funds for research, education, community programs, and advocacy efforts.

Technorati Tags: hollywood, motorcycles, playboy mansion, charity, leather and lace, news release

Got to hurry! The Burke Real Ride is coming up this weekend, Sunday May 20th. You can purchase your Real Ride tickets here. Portions of the proceeds will benefit to Boggy Creek Camp that serves enrich the lives of children who have chronic or life threatening illnesses. So like most every motorcycle ride or run, you get to have a great time among friends and help those out in need.

You can read my post  Coverage of the Burke Real Ride about last year’s ride to see more about how the event went and meet some of the WTKS Real Radio 104.1 personalities like Daniel, Black Bean, Drunky the Bear and Dirty Jim. Yea, I know the Drunky the Bear link goes to his my space profile. Drunky is one of my my space friends, so I had to give him a plug.

This year The Monsters will be performing at Destination Daytona were the ride will end, but lunch will be served and the party begins. If you missed The Monsters in concert during Leesburg Bikefest, here is your chance to see them again. Don’t miss out this time.

Real Riders will get entry into the ride, lunch and a Real Ride T Shirt.

Shannon, Cindi and I should get shirts for all the promotion that I do …. hint hint. We will be there at the 12:00 start off form Ker’s Wing House in Altamonte and taking pictures along the ride and during the party at Bruce Rossmeyer’s. See you there!

Check out WTKS 104.1 Real Radio for The Monsters and The Shannon Burke Show and not to forget SBK

Technorati Tags: motorcycle events, real ride, destination daytona, florida, motorcycles, daytona beach, ormond beach

A pair of bikers riding into town with the words “Leesburg Rules” on the horns decorating their helmets. The 2007 edition of Leesburg Bikefest was huge with more shows and stages added this year, the entertainment was non-stop.

One of the biggest concert draws was the performance of the Real Radio 104.1 Monsters of the Morning. This concert packed a crowd of Monster fans that filled the front stage area early before the concert began.  But what did the Monsters think of the crowd and appearing on the Budweiser stage at Leesburg Bikefest?

Well, Bubba Wilson, the musical director for the Monsters gives the 2007 Leesburg motorcycle event a thumbs up.

Tiffany dressed in very little pink was fired up and ready to rock on her birthday.

The Leesburg crowd loved the Monsters in concert. If you have never listened to these guys, they have a radio show on a local station you can listen live at Real Radio 104.1.

As predicted the weather for the Bikefest weekend was perfect, but it was hot. Not as hot as this rider’s pipes, but it was hot with a few cloud sun breaks. There were a few tents that had been accommodated with mist showers for event visitors to cool down.

A new event, at least I think it is, was the Bob Evan’s pie eating contest. As much as I like food I don’t think I could ever do a food eating contest. One exception would be a Krystal hamburger eating contest. I can put those things away, but then again I have never timed myself.

What is it about beads that makes a crowd go crazy?

The demonstration area at the Rat’s Hole always had something going on including bike games (this was fun to watch), Drill Teams and street bike stunt shows.

And the motorcycle traffic on main street is non-stop during Leesburg Bikefest.

And of course, the Rat’s Hole Ratmate contest winners. If you have never made the trip to this Florida motorcycle event, you need to put Leesburg Bikefest on your list of must rides for 2008!

Technorati Tags: motorcycle events, florida, leesburg, bikefest, motorcycle news

Leesburg Bikefest  April 27-29 in Leesburg, Florida will feature a three day Rat’s Hole custom motorcycle show and rock band Quiet Riot Saturday night on the main stage. Announced on the Rat’s Hole web site the Leesburg bike show will be open all three days of the Florida motorcycle event.

Friday April 27th the Rat’s Hole will open with the Leesburg biker showcase. Saturday the 28th will be the Leesburg Bikefest 07 custom motorcycle show and will include a Ratmate contest. Sunday is metric madness day.

The show will focus on metric bikes and get ready to witness the awesome street bike stunts performed by Teem Xtreem.

Leesburg, Florida really does welcome bikers and Main Street is for motorcycles only! Bring comfortable walking shoes though, because once you are parked you will be on foot the rest of the day and into the night as the party continues.

Quiet Riot will be on the main stage Saturday night. Other bands listed to perform during the three days of Bikefest include Confederate Railroad and the Monsters of the Morning just to list a few of the promised 40 concerts on 7 stages. All Free!

Leesburg Bikefest one Florida motorcycle event that you do not want to miss! More information can be found on the official Bikefest web site.

The amount of entertainment crammed into the 3 day motorcycle event includes concerts, 300+ vendors, Hawaiian Tropic/Ms Bikefest bikini contest, Ratmate contest. Biker games, Teem Xtreem stunt show, safety demonstrations and more.

Leesburg Bikefest Hotel Accommodations

Technorati Tags: biker events, florida, leesburg, motorcycle news, motorcycle shows, rats hole

I have to admit, I do not watch much television, I listen, but seldom watch. Tonight was one of the times for me to watch with the first airing of Motorcycle Mania 4 on TLC. Commercials, wow! Cindi commented on how there was so many of them. My answer to her, “would you rather pay to see this, or let them pay”? So with that said, in the review of tonight’s show, I will include our top picks of use of air time to pay the bills.

With just the opening few seconds of the show, I was ready to go back to Daytona Beach and do bike week again. Working during these events takes from a lot of the fun, but hey, its still a great job. One of the best things about watching Motorcycle Mania tonight was that it was filmed during bike week and watching the show was exciting for that reason.

For those of you that watched the show tonight, I am sure you could see how busy custom motorcycle builder Russell Mitchell was during the live build. However, Russell, like many other celebrity builders will almost always take the time out to talk to fans. It was a pleasure to speak with and meet Russell in Daytona. Speaking of fans, one of the highlights of  the show tonight was watching Russell autograph a fans head. This was not a normal autograph though, this was done in the form of a tattoo. Though Russell claimed that he had not been on the controlling end of the tattoo gun before, he did an excellent job of signing the guys head for life.

Unfortunately, I was not present during any of the time that John Mellencamp was around, I would of like to have met him as well. He seems to have settled down in the years past. I remember seeing him live in Orlando back in the seventies where he racked up thousands of dollars in fines for using prohibited language on stage. I expected to hear more of John’s music, but was satisfied to see him do a unplugged version of “Pink Houses” during the presentation of his original Exile Cycles Mellencamp Rigid.

First good commercial goes out to the TLC reality show Real Deal where Richard Davis is trying to teach some bikers how to make money in real estate by fixing up houses. He leads in to a statement about drinking and … a guy holds up a nail gun and continues driving nails. Then a guy sitting in the class with hair standing straight up ask how long it will take for a persons smell to come back after working on a socket that the electrician left live.

Russell and the guys from Exile Cycles get ready to start the build and once they seem to have everything in place and ready to go, Russell announces that they do not have a full bottle of the gun blue stain to start the frame. Now, it appears that he will only have four days to finish the bike, were it was originally planned he would have five. No sweat, right?

Next good commercial was done by BMW motorcycles. The entire commercial was free of words and was composed of motorcycle stunt video footage. Great commercial to get your point across without saying anything.

Back to the show where Iraq war hero, Capt. David Haigh is presented a custom motorcycle built by chopper builder Bill Dodge with the help of Paul Cox and Keino. The custom motorcycle was given to him on the Hard Rock Roadhouse stage were he got to see it for the first time. I was not around during the presentation, but my hat goes off to Bill Dodge and his sponsors for showing their support for Capt. Haigh and our troops in Iraq.

Thanks goes out to Amour All for the next commercial that made us laugh while the Bud Light commercial was, well not so funny. Back to the show and the final day of the build. Russell completes the wiring on Mellencamp’s bike and wants to hear it run before he calls it a day. The crew gets the bike gassed up and ready, and with a final check, Russell touches two wires together and the engine fires right up. Next up, Russell celebrates by doing a burnout that heats the exhaust pipes up cherry red and draws the attention of the Daytona Police. NAPA auto parts follows up with a commercial full of hot rod burn outs without the cops.

The ending scenes of the show are of Russell and John riding around the Daytona loop and up Highway A1A with John Mellencamp’s new song Freedom Road playing. It was a pretty good show with too many commercial interruptions that remind me of why I do not sit in front of the television to often. It was cool to see all of the bike week happenings on TV, but I would rather live it.

Technorati Tags: exile cycles, motorcycles, bike week, television, motorcycle mania

Russell Mitchel of Exile Cycles had only 5 days to complete a custom motorcycle build for singer/song writer John Mellencamp for tonight’s premiere airing of Motorcycle Mania 4 on TLC and he did it on Main Street, Daytona Beach during Bike Week 2007.

Once completed, the motorcycle built by Mitchell is presented to John Mellencamp during bike week. Russell Mitchell and John Mellencamp go for a ride together after the bike is presented on the final Friday of bike week 2007.

Motorcycle Mania is produced by Hugh “Chopper” King who also produces The Great Biker Build-Off series. While Russell was building a custom motorcycle on Main Street, Hugh King was out and about filming other bike week events in the Daytona Beach area. We spotted Hugh filming during the women’s cole slaw wrestling at the cabbage patch bar in Samsula, Florida.

Be sure to check your local television listings for the correct time and channel in your area for tonight’s episode of Motorcycle Mania 4.

Technorati Tags: hugh king, john mellencamp, motorcycle mania, motorcycle news, motorcycles, russell mitchell, television, tlc, motorcycle news

Wow, I have been busy the past months. I am happy to announce that the long awaited publishing of my 2007 edition of my bike week pictures is taking place as I type this post. There are already over 650 pictures posted at the newly designed Daytona Motorcycle Rally site. So far, I have uploaded some of the most requested bike week pictures of motorcycle ride on the loop, bike week bars and  bike week babes.

Included in the next upload of files will be pictures taken at some of the most popular bike week events such as the world famous cole slaw wrestling held at the Cabbage Patch Bar during bike week and biketoberfest.

I also have some pretty good photos taken at the A A A Welding Bike Week block party held in Deland of a motorcycle stunt show performed by Kyle Woods. Of course I have a Daytona Main Street gallery as well as pictures taken at Destination Daytona.

No bike week photo album would be complete without pictures taken at the famous Rat’s Hole Custom Motorcycle Show where they held the first V8 build-off and there were plenty of custom rides, choppers and babes.

I also wrote a article about the bike week scene for Motorcycle USA online publication and contributed some photo work as well. You can check out the article by clicking here.

Head on over to Daytona Motorcycle Rally Bike Week Edition and check out the 2007 Bike Week Pictures.

Technorati Tags: babes, bike week, coleslaw wrestling, daytona beach, deland, florida, motorcycle news, ormond beach

I guess one of the biggest draws to the famed Daytona Beach’s Main Street during bike week is for the cruising. Whether you choose to walk or ride this strip of bars, shops and restaurants that are packed along Main Street beginning at S. Peninsula Dr. that continues up to Ocean Ave., it is a people watching safari. Two and three wheeled vehicles of all shapes and sizes and covered with everything imaginable will appear on this strip at least once during the ten day Florida Motorcycle Event. Men and women from all over the world will visit Main Street to shop, eat and drink will checking out the masses that migrate to Daytona Beach annually for bike week.

Wet T shirt and bikini contest are almost an hourly event as the bars attempt to draw in thirsty spectators. Beer Tub Babes, half naked, draw the eye of people passing by while every cell phone with a camera is in hand to grab a shot to bring home as a souvenir of the visit to Daytona Beach, Florida.

The motorcycle industries top names also appear in this area. I was lucky enough to catch custom motorcycle builder Russell Mitchell of Exile Cycles working on a build at Automatic Slim’s on Main Street next to Dirty Harry’s saloon. The bike Russell is working on was to be presented to John Mellencamp and will be featured in Motorcycle Mania 4 to be aired in April.

With all the things to see on Main Street, the number 1 attraction? Babes. Biker Babes, Beer-Tub Babes, babes in chaps and bikini babes.

There is always plenty of great looking eye candy on the strip in Daytona.

More Bike Week Babes on my Bike Week Daytona web site.

Technorati Tags: bike week, motorcycle news, daytona beach, florida, motorcycle events

Staying at home in my bed after tent camping for 6 nights made it hard to get out of the sack early Saturday morning to return to Daytona Beach for the Rat’s Hole custom bike show, but I did. The annual Florida motorcycle event was not extremely busy the first few days, in fact up until Wednesday the bike week scene seemed tamed. Putting aside the nightly party that was happening on our end of the campgrounds, but that is another story all together.

As promised, the weather for the first Saturday was cold and wet and the cold did not give way to warmer temperatures until Monday. The good thing was that out of the 10 days of bike week we only seen rain one day. We postponed our Daytona Loop photo shoot until Sunday due to the in climate weather on Saturday.

It is hard to wrap up nine days of bike week into one article, so I am not going to try. I am still in the process, but closed to finished, of sorting out the pictures that we took during our visit. The final Saturday of bike week was wild and crowded. Running late coming from Melbourne and getting caught in the Daytona Speedway traffic did not help. It took nearly an hour to get from the International Speedway Blvd. Exit of I-95 to the Daytona Lagoon were the Rat’s Hole bike show was being held.

For the first time, the Rat’s Hole featured a V8 Chopper build-off! The bikes and the main stage were set up in the Tidal Wave Pool that normally holds 500,000 gallons of water. The water was gone for the event…. wonder where they put 500,000 gallons of water while the bike show was set up? Any way, the show was held under blue skies and there was plenty to keep our cameras busy. I will do more on the Rat’s Hole later.

Heading down SR A1A to Main Street later in the afternoon to check out the happenings, we found that Main Street was wall to wall. Where there were not bikes, there were people and no room left for either. For the final Saturday of bike week 2007, Main Street took on the look of the bike week of days gone by. It was almost a feeling of “let’s see how far we can take this” pushing the red line on what would get by. It was a good thing and a good feeling to see people having fun, real fun. None of this”I am shocked at all this” looks. For Pete’s sake, if you want family atmosphere head over to Orlando. It is probably too late for the city to revive the entire event back to Daytona Beach, but it looks like they may get a day of the old days.

There were just as many people the entire time of Bike Week, with the exceptions of a lot of Floridians riding in for the day, it is just that they are more spread out now. US 1 has become the new Main Street and a lot of the traffic has been pulled to the North with the opening of Destination Daytona along with other anchor industry leaders like Corbin. New biker bars, custom chopper and motorcycle dealers and tattoo shops are popping up all around the Ormond Beach area. I will get to all this later on as well.

So, I am back from Daytona and will try to get as much information about what happened at the event posted in the next day or so. Keep an eye out for them.

Technorati Tags: motorcycle news, bike week, daytona beach, florida, motorcycle events, bike shows