lame week be back next week. I think it is getting better

Long Beach Swap Meet 2/28/09

Here we go again. Another swap meet was held last Sunday. I didn't shoot too many photos since my mission was to score parts. Below are some random pics and comments.

This cool '39 Knuck caught my eye on the way in. I had a chat with a friend of it's owner about it. He said he thought the paint was original. Something is up with the tanks. The silver and the patina/wear doesn't match the fenders plus they are missing the stripe.


Not a good photo but I wanted to show this view of the tanks. They didn't look right to me, as in too wide. The shape seemed more like the bad 3.5 gal. repops that are closer to 4 gal. They did have the petcock on the front right side. Maybe the good doctor has some input?


1971 FLH project for sale. $3500 seemed decent to me. I later noticed the Wing Nuts M/C decal in the back window of the truck.


Check the license tags. This thing hasn't seen the road since '75. Probably low miles. That's original paint on the fender. I believe H-D called it "Sparkling America" like on that year's Super Glide.


Likely built from swap meet pieces. Too bad it had S&S cases and ugly later model fork legs.


Nice pre-unit... just needs a Wassel tank.


Big Scott and the Cycle Zombie's space.


Some guy (not seller), tried to tell me this was for a '71 Super Glide. He didn't know who he was talking to. I have one and it was an option for both '70 and '71 Sportsters. I don't know when H-D stopped offering them as an accessory but, they were included in the '72 parts and accessories catalog.


A Garage Co. Knuckle. This one just isn't working for me like some others they've built.





Here's a composite panorama photo to attempt to capture the scale of the event. The chart below shows the layout of the vendors spaces. The red dot is were I stood for photo.

Those are all the 16' x 20' vendor spaces. Several times a year they completely sell out. They sometimes set up more spaces in the middle of the wide bottom aisle as they did on this day. Even on the smallest days they probably sell 60% of the spaces.


When the Swap Meet first started (before Topping Events), 20 years ago, there were only 3 to 4 events a year and they only used the red area directly below the stadium and it wouldn't even fill up. As the event grew, they opened up the large green area to the left. Later, the blue area to the right and then the purple area upper right. I'm not sure but, seem to remember the small purple area as the first motorcycle parking lot.


The motorcycle parking area. This is late in the day. I should have taken this picture earlier in the day when bikes were parked all the way up to the fence.


Here's a shot from Topping's website.

North Wales Biker Babe Search?

Xuberance Events are searching to find the Biker Babe of North Wales.

The winner of the competition will be crowned at the Motorbike Show held in Llangollen on the 1st/2nd August.

The search for the North Wales Biker Babe is being spearheaded by aspiring model Lauren Knowles (19) from Prestatyn.

Entrants will need to email a picture of themselves and a brief 50-word biography to Xuberance.
Entrants photos will be posted on the Motorbike Show website to be voted on by biker babe fans to choose the five finalists who will attend the first day of the Motorbike Show.

The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges and receive a £400 prize whicle the runners up will get £50 each.
Additionally the winner will be paid to do more promotions work on the second day of the show.

Entries for the North Wales Biker Babe competition, including the photograph and the 50 word biography, should be emailed to us@xuberance.co.uk This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and more details about the show are available at the website www.themotorcycleshow.co.uk

Ride safe.


Jon Booth
Email: webmaster@inter-bike.co.uk
Blog: http://inter-bike.blogspot.com/
Swicki: http://motorcycling-swicki.eurekster.com/

The Wall of Death

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The Wall of Death (AKA Motordrome) is a carnival sideshow featuring a drum- or barrel-shaped wooden cylinder, ranging from 20 to 36-feet in diameter, in which stunt motorcyclists ride and carry out tricks. Derived directly from US motorcycle boardtrack (motordrome) racing in the early 1900s, the very first carnival motordrome appeared at Coney Island amusement park (New York) in 1911.



The following year portable tracks began to appear on traveling carnivals and in 1915, the first "silodromes" with perpendicular walls were seen. These motordromes with perfectly straight walls were soon dubbed the "Wall of Death." This carnival attraction became a staple in the US outdoor entertainment industry with the phenomenon reaching its zenith in the 1930s with more than 100 motordromes on traveling shows and in amusement parks.



In 2004, six or seven of these motorcycle shows were still touring the US. The first known Wall of Death in the UK appeared in 1929 at Southend.



The audience views from the top of the drum, looking down. The riders start at the bottom of the drum, in the center, and ascend an initial ramped section until they gain enough velocity to drive horizontally to the floor, usually in a counter-clockwise direction (the physical explanation behind this act is found at Banked turn and The turning car.) This act is famous in the United Kingdom, and often is seen at fairs.



In the 2000s, there remain only a few tours of the wall of death; the most notable of which is "The Wall of Death World Tour", created and run by the Fox family. This touring group uses the original American Indian Motorcycles, which have been used since around the 1920s. For the most of the year, this group is based at Wilburton but ride every year in the Great Dorset Steam Fair. In India, cars are also used.



A similar act called the "Globe of Death" has the riders looping inside a wire mesh sphere rather than a drum. This form of motorcycle entertainment had a separate and distinct evolution from carnival motordromes and derived from bicycle acts or "cycle whirls" in the early 1900s.

A good website : http://www.wall-of-death.co.uk/

Steve Dunn THE Artist

Steve Dunn was born in the late 1950s and grew up in the bustling University City of Cambridge. He was a pupil at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, commonly known then as 'The County'. His favourite subject then was art and in his final year he won the school art prize for his work.

"Manx Norton"

The Manx Norton was one of the most successful racing motorcycles of the late forties, fifties and early sixties. An icon of British bike design.

One Moment You're Here and Kaboom!, You're Gone!

Why was this over the top pitchman so well liked?
(I got a big kick out of Billy myself). My guess, positive energy.

Billy and Michael were both only 50. These celebrity deaths are a reminder of a few things. Life (and death), happens while your busy making other plans... do what you like while you can... and most of us are only important to a few loved ones.

R.I.P. William

Arnold Palmer The King

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When i was a teenager this guy was the king of the fairways. He almost win every single tournament all over the world and open the doors to modern professional golfers as Tiger Woods today.
Palmer was an icon , a great guy and a real Pro. I found those great Life pictures about him and wanted to share his story with you

Arnold Daniel Palmer (born September 10, 1929) is an American golfer who is generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of men's professional golf. He has won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and Champions Tour, dating back to 1955. Nicknamed "The King," he is one of golf's most popular stars and its most important trailblazer because he was the first star of the sport's television age, which began in the 1950s. He was part of golf's "Big Three" along with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player who are widely credited with popularizing the sport around the world.
Palmer won the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, and in 1974 was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.









Palmer's charisma was a major factor in establishing golf as a compelling television event in the 1950s and 1960s, setting the stage for the popularity it enjoys today. His first major championship win at the 1958 Masters cemented his position as one of the leading stars in golf, and by 1960 he had signed up as pioneering sports agent Mark McCormack's first client. In later interviews, McCormack listed five attributes that made Palmer especially marketable: his good looks; his relatively modest background (his father was a greenkeeper before rising to be club professional and Latrobe was a humble club); the way he played golf, taking risks and wearing his emotions on his sleeve; his involvement in a string of exciting finishes in early televised tournaments; and his affability.



Palmer is also credited by many for securing the status of The Open Championship (British Open) among US players. After Ben Hogan won that championship in 1953, few American professionals had travelled to play in The Open, due to its travel requirements, relatively small prize purses, and the style of its links courses (radically different from most American courses). Palmer was convinced by his business partner Mark McCormack that success in the Open - to emulate the feats of Bobby Jones, Sam Snead and Hogan before him - would truly make him a global sporting star, not simply a leading American golfer. In particular, Palmer travelled to Scotland in 1960, having already won both the Masters and U.S. Open, to try to emulate Hogan's feat of 1953, of winning all three in a single year. He failed, losing out to Kel Nagle by a single shot, but his subsequent Open wins in the early 1960s convinced many American pros that a trip to Britain would be worth the effort, and certainly secured Palmer's popularity among British and European fans, not just American ones.





Palmer won seven major championships:

The Masters: 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964
U.S. Open: 1960
The Open Championship: 1961, 1962

Palmer's most prolific years were 1960-1963, when he won 29 PGA Tour events in four seasons. In 1960, he won the Hickok Belt as the top professional athlete of the year and Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award. He built up a wide fan base, often referred to as "Arnie's Army", and in 1967 he became the first man to reach one million dollars in career earnings on the PGA Tour. By the late 1960s Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player had both acquired clear ascendancy in their rivalry, but Palmer won a PGA Tour event every year up to 1970, and in 1971 he enjoyed a revival, winning four events.



Palmer won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average four times: 1961, 1962, 1964, and 1967. He played on six Ryder Cup teams: 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1971, and 1973. He was the last playing-captain in 1963 and captained the team again in 1975.
Palmer was eligible for the Senior PGA Tour (now the Champions Tour) from its first season in 1980, and he was one of the marquee names who helped it to become successful. He won ten events on the tour, including five senior majors.
Palmer won the first World Match Play Championship in England, an event which was originally organised by McCormack to showcase his stable of players. Their partnership was one of the most significant in the history of sports marketing. Long after he ceased to win tournaments, Palmer remained one of the highest earners in golf due to his appeal to sponsors and the public.




In 2004, he competed in The Masters for the last time, marking his 50th consecutive appearance in that event. After missing the cut at the 2005 U.S. Senior Open by twenty-one shots he announced that he would not enter any more senior majors. Since 2007, Palmer has served as the honorary starter for the Masters. He retired from tournament golf on October 13, 2006, when he withdrew from the Champions Tours' Administaff Small Business Classic after four holes due to dissatisfaction with his own play. He played the remaining holes but did not keep score. Palmer's legacy was reaffirmed by an electrifying moment during the 2004 Bay Hill Invitational. Standing over 200 yards from the water-laden 18th green, Palmer, who is known for his aggressive play, lashed his second shot onto the green with a driver. The shot thrilled his loyal gallery and energized the excitable Palmer. He turned to his grandson and caddie, Sam Saunders, and gave him a prolonged shimmy and playful jeering in celebration of the moment.



Palmer has had a diverse golf related business career including owning the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, which is the venue for the PGA Tour's Arnold Palmer Invitational (renamed from the Bay Hill Invitational in 2007), helping to found The Golf Channel, and negotiating the deal to build the first golf course in the People's Republic of China. This led to the formation of Palmer Course Design in 1972, which was renamed Arnold Palmer Design Company when the company moved to Orlando Florida in 2006. Since 1971 he has owned Latrobe Country Club, where his father used to be the club professional. Palmer's ability to win with boldness and charisma was the single biggest factor in the game's explosive growth after 1960.

In 2000, Palmer was ranked the sixth greatest player of all time in Golf Digest magazine's rankings.
He now resides near his golf course, Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Country Club and Lodge, in Orlando, Florida.

Daytona 1971

Carruthers (73), Jack Findlay (70)

Dick Mann (4), Mike Hailwood (20), Gary Fischer (110)

Cal Rayborn (14), Roger Reiman (78)

Carruthers (73)

Cal Rayborn (14) and Don Droud (83)

Dick Man on B.S.A

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of quality. The 1974 book describes, in first person, a 17-day motorcycle journey across the United States by the author and his son Chris, joined for the first nine days by close friends John and Sylvia Sutherland. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science.



The book sold over 4 million copies in twenty-seven languages and was described by the press as "the most widely read philosophy book, ever." It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records.





The title is an incongruous play on the title of the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. In its introduction, Pirsig explains that, despite its title, "it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either."

In a 1974 interview with NPR, Pirsig stated that the book took him four years to write. During two of these years, Pirsig continued working at his job of writing computer manuals. This caused him to fall into an unorthodox schedule, waking up very early and writing from 2 a.m. until 6 a.m., then eating and going to his day job. He would sleep during his lunch break and then go to bed around 6 in the evening. Pirsig joked that his coworkers noticed that he was "a lot less perky" than everyone else.

In the book, Pirsig explores the meaning and concepts of "quality". In the sequel (Lila: An Inquiry into Morals), Pirsig expands his exploration of Quality into a complete metaphysics which he calls The Metaphysics of Quality. As the title suggests, much of the Metaphysics of Quality has to do with a non-intellectualizing, non-conceptualizing, Zen-like direct viewing of the universe. Yet Pirsig departs from Eastern thinking by arguing that Western rationality is just as important in seeking understanding. Pirsig's thesis is that to truly experience quality one must embrace both and apply them as befits the requirements of the situation. According to Pirsig, this would avoid a great deal of frustration and dissatisfaction common to modern life.

In the book, the Narrator explains his friend John Sutherland's "romantic" approach to life, whereby he refuses to study and learn how to maintain his own expensive new BMW motorcycle. John simply hopes for the best with his bike, and when problems do occur he becomes extremely frustrated and is forced to rely on professional mechanics to repair it. In contrast, the Narrator has an older motorcycle which he is mostly able to diagnose and repair himself through the use of rational problem solving skills. The Narrator exemplifies the "classical" approach to life.



In another example, Pirsig shows us how we should pay attention and learn: when the Narrator and his friends came into Miles City, Montana, he had noticed that the engine "idle was loping a little", a sign that the fuel/air mixture was too rich. The next day he is thinking of this as he is going through his ritual to adjust the valves on his cycle's engine, because it "has picked up a noise". In the process, he notes that both spark plugs are black, another sign of rich mixture. He solves the puzzle as he is thinking about the feel-good-higher-altitude-mountain-air; the altitude is causing the engine to run rich. New jets are purchased, and installed, and with the valves adjusted, the engine runs well. His cycle begins coughing and almost quits when they get into the mountains of Montana. This is a more severe altitude problem, but he knows it will go away when they get back to lower altitude. He does adjust the carburetor to prevent over heating on the way down.

With this, we see the book details two types of personalities: those who are interested mostly in gestalts (romantic viewpoints, such as Zen, focused on being "in the moment", and not on rational analysis), and those who need to know details, the inner workings, mechanics (classic viewpoints with application of rational analysis, vis-a-vis motorcycle maintenance) and so on.



The Sutherlands represent an exclusively romantic attitude toward the world. The Narrator initially appears to prefer the classic approach. It later becomes apparent that he understands both viewpoints and is aiming, not for the middle ground, but for the necessary ground that includes both. He understands that technology, and the "dehumanized world" it carries with it, appears ugly and repulsive to a romantic person. He knows that such persons are determined to shoehorn all of life's experience into the romantic view. Pirsig is capable of seeing the beauty of technology and feels good about mechanical work, where the goal is "to achieve an inner peace of mind". Zen and the Art demonstrates that motorcycle maintenance may be dull and tedious drudgery or an enjoyable and pleasurable pastime; it all depends on the inner attitude, or lack thereof.

Pirsig shows that rationality's pursuit of "Pure Truths" derives from the first Greek philosophers who were establishing the concept of truth, against the opposing force of "The Good". He argues that although rational thought may find truth (or The Truth) it may not be valid for all experiences. Therefore, what is needed is an approach to viewing life that is more varied and inclusive and has a wider range of application. He makes a thorough case that originally the Greeks did not distinguish between "Quality" and "Truth" – they were one and the same – and that the divorce was, in fact, artificial (though needed at the time) and is now a source of much frustration and unhappiness in the world, particularly overall dissatisfaction with modern life.

Pirsig aims towards a perception of the world that embraces both sides, the rational and the romantic. This means encompassing "irrational" sources of wisdom and understanding as well as science, reason and technology. In particular, this must include bursts of creativity and intuition that seemingly come from nowhere and are not (in his view) rationally explicable. Pirsig seeks to demonstrate that rationality and Zen-like "being in the moment" can harmoniously coexist. He suggests such a combination of rationality and romanticism can potentially bring a higher quality of life.