Random Thoughts

2010 Harley Davidson Models Released

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Yesterday Harley Davidson Unveiled its 2010 Models, with a few surprises.    Quite  a few actually, at least to me.   34 models all in all.

  • The trikes to me are kinda cool.   I’ve heard they are funner than hell.    Maybe something mrs Zip would enjoy riding with me on.     Dave Grohl thinks they’re cool too.
  • Street Glide CVO Finally.
  • New Street Glides come in fire engine red now.   Beautiful.
  • The rumor was that Harley was going to stop making the road Glide.   Apparantly not yet?   Its still on the menu.
  • The Rocker C is still the most retarded bike ever.   It needs to go away.   Let the other MOCO’s do that kind of crap.
  • Cross bones still have that jacked up rear fender and terrible seat pan.   That bike is still 80% there.   Fix that back fender, and that bike is the real deal.   They set out making a bitchen old bobber, and got lazy or forgot what a bobber looks like toward the end.    If I ever buy one, I’d take a torch to that back fender and buy an old school tractor seat, some longer apes and that bike would be right.
  • Electra Glide Limited.   Gotta figure out what that’s all about.   Pretty bike.
  • I still haven’t gotten used to the look of the 6 gallon tanks on the touring bikes.   That was a mistake in my eyes.
  • I could totally get used to the new frame on the touring bikes.
  • I still think the Nightster is good looking.    I could own one of those.
  • 9 of these models are brand new, and 7 are under 10 grand.   the Sportster Iron is under 8 grand.
  • Welcome back, dyna Wide Glide.   You should have never left.

Anyway, check em out.

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Top 10 Motorcycle films of all time

Top 10 Motorcycle Movies of all time

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Mrs Zip and the kids are gone this weekend, so I’ve busted out all my Bike movies to watch this weekend while I work.

Here’s my top 10 biker movies of all time.

    1. Easy Rider (1969) – Hands down the most influential movie in how I ride and what I like about riding. It needs no introduction or explanation. I must love it enough, much of this blog is dedicated to the movie. A must own.

    1. World’s Fastest Indian (2005) – I’ll never get sick of this movie. 67 year old Burt Munro was the real deal, and the movie was made by the person who documented him when he was alive 40 years earlier. My attitude about biking is reflected in the line of the movie where the doctor tells Burt “unfortunately your motorcycling days are over” and he responds “like hell they are…”

    1. Sons of Anarchy (series 2008 – present) – Not technically a movie, but a great TV series. Love the story lines, love the characters, and love the bikes. Can’t wait for season 2

    1. Then Came Bronson (movie and series – 1969 – 1970) – there’s some days, I wished I was Jim Bronson. Travelling from town to town, living off my wits and riding wherever the wind blew me. Worth watching over and over.

    1. Electra Glide in Blue (1973) – Story of a good cop in a world of bad ones.   Great movie.   Robert Blake and the photography is great, and the scenery is stuff I ride all the time.    Stands on its own as a good movie, but add in motorcycles and its even better.   The one negative I can say is that prick-cop named “zip”.    He’s no Zip.

    1. Hells angels on wheels (1967) – Actually, really a pretty decent low budget movie for its time. Sonny Barger is in some of the opening scenes, and Jack Nicholson starts to show his intensity as an actor. A pretty watered down glimpse of the Hells Angels, but I’m sure shocking for it’s time.   Movies like this fueled the image of Motorcyclists that harley moco makes so much money on now. I actually quite like this movie.

    1. Viva Knevel (1977) – When I was a kid, my principle told the school to be happy who they were. That they did not want to be anyone else. I raised my hand obnoxiously and told him that I in fact wanted to be Evel Knevel. I wasn’t lying.   Not a great movie to be honest, and Evel was a terrible actor, but he was an American Original and was another big influence on me when I was young.

    1. The motorcycle diaries (2004) – True story of Ernesto Che’ Guevara and his motorcycle trip with a friend across south America. I’m no fan of Che’ Guevara, but it’s an interesting movie of touring on an old motorcycle.

    1. Wild Angels (1966) – Peter Fonda plays the leader of the hells angels in venice CA, and Bruce Dern plays his good buddy “loser”. the cheese stands on its own, but the music accelerates it. It’s good because its a 60’s period piece, has Peter Fonda and really cool bikes. Worth watching a couple of times. Just trip out on the bikes, the clothes and the roads.

    1. Rebel Rousers (1970) – Watch it once, then you don’t need to watch it ever again. It’s good because it was Jack Nicholsons follow up movie to Easy Rider. Really corny, but the bikes in it are pretty bitchen. It’s the kind of movie you used to watch at 3AM on saturday morning before we invented late night infomercials.

Now I realize the historical significance of the Wild One, but I can’t stomach the movie. It’s overly corny and Inaccurate in what really happened at Hollister.   Once they hit the town and stop riding, I quit watching. I left it off the list, because quite honestly I don’t like it. The only thing I can say good about it is I love those post war-era bobbers.    I’ve never made it more than 3/4 of the way through that show.

Also, Wild hogs made me throw up in my mouth.  Couldn’t even muster a smile.

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Country Freakin’ Music

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Skeezix says I should listen to more country.  Honest to God, I’ve tried.  I just can’t stomach it.   I love its simplicty, patriotism and sometimes even beat.   But more often than not, you need to eat it with a big spoon because its so fucking corny.     It’s almost embarrassing.   Somewhere in my ego, I think I’m smarter than that.     Skeezix certainly is smart, but good Lord, how many times can you wrap a song around a canned line, your truck, a tractor, or that your woman left you?

Now somehow I’ve managed to make a few exceptions, and the exceptions I truly Love.   Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and Maybe an Alabama song here or there.   Here’s 2 more, and I’ll play the videos for you.
I love the Maveriks.   Have a listen:

How in the world could you not just love that song? Great Riding song.

Dwight Yoakam is the 2nd Exception. I have no idea, because he reeks of twangy guitars and crying voice. I don’t know if it’s because dwight cut his teeth opening up for punk bands in the late 80s, or if his music just resonates with me because of songs like this: (I tend to think its the latter)

Dwight Yoakam ” A Thousand Miles From Nowhere”

At 70 mph out in the nevada or Arizona desert, drinking water by the gallon and going over my week, how could that song not hit home? I own a whole lot of Dwight Yoakam. Can someone please tell me the difference?

Toby Keith Urban can eat a bag of hell.

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Officially Iron Butt

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Got this in my Email today:

Dear MrZip,
You are receiving this e-mail because of your application for a ride
certification. This note is to let you know that your ride has been
approved and although your ride documents may take a few more weeks to
arrive, your membership has also been approved and entered into the
Iron Butt Association’s member database.

Welcome to the Iron Butt Association!

Michael Kneebone
President, Iron Butt Association

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Route 66 Trip again

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I’ve had the flu all week.   I’ve felt like shit.    Was originally planning to go with my brother Pat through Nevada to test our our tents and do some riding, but it wasn’t meant to be.  I’m still not anywhere near 100% and it was raining in Salt Lake we blew that off and made big plans to hit route 66 up next week.

4th of july weekend.   Pat will come down thursday night to St George,  then friday morning the 4th we’ll blitz to kingman and show him some of my favorite places on route 66 toward Albuqerque.    I’m pretty stoked.   Pat is my brother, he’s blood, and he’s a damn good friend.   We get each other, and we ride like banshees.
More to come….

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Rocky Balboa

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Rocky. Greatest movie ever made.
Rocky. Greatest movie ever made.

Ever since I first saw the movie Rocky with my parents in 1975, its been my favorite movie.   Not the rocky sequels, and the jokes that its become, but the movie Rocky.   I remember driving home with my mother and father from salt lake at 8 years old and basking in the emotion that this movie made me feel.  To this day,  I still remember the feeling, sitting in back of our station wagon on the way home and how I felt.   I felt determined.   I got in the fight on the playground the very next day… haha, its funny thinking back on that now.

Sylvester Stallone in my eyes has earned his knocks.   He was a starving actor with an idea for a movie back in 1974 and wrote a script for a movie while living out of his car and wondering where he’d eat next.     He was offered hundreds of thousands of dollars for the script if he walked away and didn’t act in it.   Think of that:  You’re starving, and offered six figures in a world you’re not sure you can make it in.   He didn’t take it.  He stuck by his guns, and took less to act in his own creation.    The movie was rocky.   To me, the movie is a testament to the underdogs of the world and their dreams.  He didn’t want to win, he just wanted to go the distance, and he did.     You might laugh, but the original rocky brings a tear to my eye every time I watch it.  It’s a man making his way through the world.   A man with a whole world of fears and doubts and naysayers, yet he gets in the ring and powers it out.   Powerful.

So I’m watching Rocky Balboa tonight on Cable.   You may think the movie was a joke by a guy trying to cash in on his franchise, but you can’t say Stallone, who is not the brightest bulb in the package doesn’t understand EXACTLY what he’s saying here:

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. Nobody’s gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
– Rocky Balboa

No matter where you are in the world: Take your punch.   Take all of them.  Then, move foward.

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance…

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Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenanceYou see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

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