Motorcycle Pastimes in the August Sun

It's been a slow week. Maybe people have finally decided to take a motorcycle vacation since gas prices are starting to inch downward again. Some have gone to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally but I hear that vendors and attendance there are taking a hit this year.

A lot of people are taking staycations this year. I guess I'm one of them. I have to save up to be able to participate in the Polar Bear Grand Tour that starts the last weekend of October. Gasoline for two trikes could end up costing $1000 for that six month tour throughout the winter. I take all the pictures at the various runs and maintain their website.

For those not out on their motorcycles, here's a few things you can do on my website:

• Take my Motorcycle Quizzes to test your knowledge of bikes.
  
• Play around with my online Motorcycle Jigsaw Puzzles. These puzzles use pictures I took on Polar Bear runs.
  
• Check out my Motorcycle Tattoos gallery. Got your own tattoo? Send it in.
  
• Look at my Women on Motorcycles gallery. Be inspired by women who ride their own motorcycles.
  
• Look at my Antique Motorcycle Ads gallery. See how motorcycles were advertised when they sold for only a few hundred dollars.
  

Now if only they had motorcycle racing or motorcycle trials in the 2008 Summer Beijing Olympics, there would be more to do.

Motorcycle History - Things Your Dad Never Told You

History can be a very boring subject. I think history is best learned when one is an adult. Only then does it make much sense. Memorizing dates and events was the way I remember history classes for me. When I began writing about motorcycles, I was immediately drawn to the history of motorcycles. Wow, history was becoming interesting.

I have a new Motorcycle History subject on my site. This was started on the old site when I attempted to make motorcycle history more interesting by creating a quiz for each history article I wrote. These were fun quizzes with only 10 questions and multiple choice answers. The first such quiz was Harley-Davidson and a Quiz Too. I added four more such quizzes over the years.

I also wrote some motorcycle history articles that were related to motorcycle books that I had read or motorcycle books that I had reviewed for the site. An example of one such history article was Indian Motorcycles. An example of a book review was The Harley-Davidson and Indian Wars - A Book Review.

Well, maybe history will never be on the top of my "must read" list but I had a lot of fun creating these motorcycle history articles, book reviews, and quizzes. Take a look at the Motorcycle History subject and judge for yourself.

By the way, my Dad was never a motorcycle guy. He was into cars. However, the things he never told me could fill a book.

BMW 101 for Cagers

Just saw this posting on the BMWBMW forum. Apparently, some people still don't know that BMW makes motorcycles, even though BMW started making motorcycles in 1923, long before they started making cars. Be sure to check out my BMW and a Quiz Too for some history about BMW and a short quiz.

Here's an excerpt from the posting:

"While stopped at a traffic light on the Reston Parkway a woman, driving a BMW 7 series car, puts her window down and shouts at me: Something like this;

Woman: You should remove those stickers

Me: What stickers?

Woman: Those BMW stickers. Everyone knows BMW does not make motorcycles. How dare you put those on..."

Read the rest of the posting.