BikerThomas.com

Me next to Per Morten’s Honda CBR 600F, boy is that different to mine! :)

The weather was perfect last Sunday, not taking the bike out for a spin would be a shame! I was called up by an old friend from school and we hit the road together. He’s a proud owner of a Honda CBR 600F, quite a beauty! We switched bikes for a few kilometers and boy was it a different feeling riding that sort of a bike after riding a cruiser for 3 years… You can’t really say that riding one or the other is a better feeling as the experiences of riding these two bikes are totally different. One is built for speed and the other is built for cruising. Each for their own particular use I guess – but we rode 209 kilometres together and it was a lot of fun. Definitely something to repeat sometime soon.

We ended up stopping at a small town called Evje. If you’re ever up there be sure to grab a burger at the local fast food joint! It’s a small town, you’ll find the one I’m talking about…

 
Per Morten on my bike (left), My Kawasaki VN900 Classic next to a Honda CBR 600F (right)

View Larger Map

The Hildebrand & Wolfmüller motorcycle is the first-ever motorcycle to be put into production in 1894. The very first one ever produced was found in a barn the United States and has been there for ages but is now sold at an auction in London for £86,200 (US $131.000). It will now be returning to its’ country of origin, Germany, where it’s simply called “motorrad” (“motorcycle”… keep it simple, right?).

Check out the video below for a similar motorcycle produced only 2 years later, in 1896:

I recently came over an article where Jeremy Cleland drove at an average of more than 150mph  (241,4Km/h) over two miles (3,22Km) on an electric bike named “The Mission One”. Now that’s what I call progress!

According to the article (link at bottom of post) the 240 Volt powered bike beat 70% of all the petrol-engine bikes in the competition held at Bonneville salt flats in Utah. Quite impressive!

The bike will be available for consumers this year! …at a price of £42.000 which is roughly US $68.400 – a bit too pricey for my taste, but I’m sure the price for these dream machines will drop drastically in the coming years as competition tightens.

Mission Motors, who developed The Mission One, first showed off the bike at the 2009 TTXGP on Isle of Man (click here for an article on that + early photos).

According to online rumors (now there’s a great source for ya…) the consumer bike will be capable of doing 150 miles (241,4Km) on a single charge. Sounds like the perfect city bike eh?

Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1214834/Electric-superbike-smashes-speed-record-breaking-150mph-mark.html

I use YouTube quite alot to find information I need. A simple search on VN900 got me to a video of a 2008 VN900 Custom with Cobra Shorties pipes installed. They sound awesome! I’d like to install those on my bike, but the pipes aren’t slashed like the stock pipes so that kinda puts me off. I loooove the soudn of the cobra shorties but also love the look of the stock pipes. Are there any alternatives that combines the best of the two worlds? If you know about any alternatives, please do comment.

Here’s the video of the VN900 Custom with the Cobra Shorties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tysMWmV8rs8

 
Team Agni won the first inaugural TTXGP, a race for electric motorcycles, thanks to electricmotorsport.com for the picture.

This is kinda old news since the race was in June, but hey, it’s still interesting! Indian based Team Agni won the very first electric motorcycle race, TTXGP, that I wrote about in a previous post (click here to read that one).

Their bike was a modified 2007 GSX-R600. The average speed for the bike around Isle of Man was 140,7km/h (87,434mph), not bad for something that runs on a battery! Thomas Schönefelder took second place in his battery powered Laverda and he also had the top speed during the race, a gasping 171,5km/h (106,5mph)!

A new race next year is confirmed and it will be interesting to see what batteries they’ve come up with then!

Hit this site for lots of cool photos of the motorcycles that participated: EV Racing News.

Isle of Man electric motorcycle race

 
Inspection before the race starts, no petrol here! (left), Team Kingston University (right)

Links:

More Photos of the bikes: EV Racing News
MotorcycleNews: “TTXGP: Team Agni blitzes field in first practice”
HellForLeather: Team Agni wins inaugural TTXGP

Parked outside the Tower of Ayia, Naxos

I’m on holiday on Naxos, the largest island in The Cyclades which is part of Greece. Me and my girlfriend hired a 250cc quad bike (Kymco MXU if that tells the enthusiasts anything…) and drove around the island, it was great!

“Fun Car” at the docks rent out bikes at €20 per day, helmets included.

We drove from Naxos City (also called Chora) to Apollonas at the north of the island and then headed south to Mesi, Aperanthos and Chalki before heading back to Naxos City. There are a lot of nice beaches to see. We stopped at Agias Tower which is a defense tower from when the Venetians ruled the island. We also stopped at a local pottery where my girlfriend went nuts and bought lots of local crafts from two elderly women (one which I’m sure was half-crazy, she became angry at us for not eating more than a few of her peaches…). They were crafty though, the pots and stuff that we bought were quite nice.

The quad bike handled all right, but I have a feeling that it likes dirt roads better than the paved roads that I drove on. I’ve driven a quad once before, many years ago on a farm in Australia, and it’s a whole different experience. South of Naxos city towards Mikri Vigla there are lots of dirt roads next to the beach so if you’re ever around this neck of the woods a quad bike is definitely what you should go for, not a 125cc scooter…

Enjoy the pictures, the surroundings were spectacular!

 
Nice terrain (left), Naxos City/Chora (right)

Sphinx (left), My girlfriend looking fine a helmet :) (right)

Leftovers of Apollon Temple in Chora and a giant version of BikerThomas trying to move it…

View Larger Map

Did you find this site through Google or another search engine?
Why not check out the rest of the site! :)
Lot’s of great articles and pictures on www.bikerthomas.com

That’s right! If you have an old Kawasaki Vulcan 800 lying around and don’t know what to do with it, why not buy a bobber kit! The Blue Collar Bobbers sell assemble-yourself-boober-kits for the Kawasaki VN800, the Honda Shadow VLX 600, Yamaha V-Star 650 Classic and the Honda Rebel 250.

According to their website “the kits are made from the highest quality materials and machined to achieve a perfect fit”. The parts are made to bolt on to the existing stock bike with a set of wrenches… how cool is that!?!!

They say they will come up with kits for other models when they get more space in their garage… :)

Here’s one more picture of a green VN800 bobber, drooling yet?

Blue Collar Bobbers
http://www.bluecollarbobbers.com/

Evo Design Solutions has designed an electric motorcycle…! The EV-o RR has two (yes two!) electric engines and is going to compete in the world’s first clean emission carbon free grand prix, the TTXGP, on Isle of Man in June.

Evo Design Solutions has previously designed grand-prix motorcycles and race cars for Le Mans so this is by no means one of those el-bikes you buy for your 5 year old…  They haven’t chosen a battery yet but there are rumors of a battery able to move the bike from 0-100Km/h (0-60mph) in 3,8s.

More information
Evo Design Solutions
TTXGP.com
Wired.com’s Blog article