The folks over at Gizmodo reported on some ‘scientists’ in the UK that have come up with an equation for the perfect bacon sandwich. Further research revealed that my lab rat brethren at Leeds University have defined what is the perfect “Bacon Butty”. I’ve been eating bacon sandwiches with pleasure for the last thirty plus years, but these little pleasures are more akin to what Americans would call a fried ham sandwich (Here is where I give a shout out to my pals in Seattle, Joe and Euan, for introducing me to the bacon butty at a bar down the street from Soundspeed Scooters in the Fremont neighborhood). Being that 2strokebuzz is primarily a scooter ‘blog’, I’ll apologize for going off topic but I know that the subject is close the heart of many of it’s loyal readers. Read on and decide for yourself and let the derision of ‘merican bacon commence (p.s. I like both kinds, but not too crispy).
Category: 2sb News
Congrats, Bill and Sue!
Kymco Backs Experienced Duo With “No Factory Support”
Kymco USA has bumped up their motorsports profile by sponsoring the “No Factory Support” AMA Superbike team. The team will be running CBR1000RR sport bikes with very experienced pilots in the seats. Motorcycle legend Doug Chandler and experienced former MotoGP rider Kurtis Roberts are going to have a shot at taking on the full factory supported AMA superbike teams.  Kymco Super9 scooters will be used by the team in the pits as well as by the crew of a reality show on the SPEED Channel network. (In other related news, Kymco is sponsoring a NASCAR team as well). Hopefully this mainstream injection of scooters into the public arena will reduce the likelihood of Roman Holiday references in craptastic newspaper pieces by at least a small amount. Thanks to the good folks at Road Racing World Magazine for passing along this Kymco PR information.
Be part of a fluff piece
It’s spring, so MSNBC wants photos of you “prepping [your] bikes for another riding season.�
Motorcycle Rider Program classes announced
The University of Illinois Motorcycle Rider Program is now accepting applications for their 2007 classes. As usual, applications are taken only by mail or in person, and the classes fill up amazingly fast. If you’re in Chicago, you may want to Fed-Ex your applications or drive them to Champaign in person. (Thanks for the reminder, Larry)
You can’t take the class on a scooter, but motorcycles are provided and the skills you’ll learn are crucial to scooter riding. Mike Maddox and 2sb are trying to organize a special scooter-only session in the Chicago area, we can’t promise anything but we’ll keep you posted and we recommend signing up for the regular course, whether or not you take the scooter course later.
It’s official: VCOA in Vespa World Club
Vespa World Club was announced about a year ago, but not much happened since then. Today Vespa Club of America president J.D. Merryweather received confirmation that on Feburary 28, at the VWC Directive Council meeting, VCOA’s membership was officially approved. This announcement signifies a commitment from Piaggio in Italy that thankfully ends a year of confusion about the future of the VCOA. The affiliation should enhance the VCOA’s already-great credibility, stability, and member benefits.
Defrost!
I’m not one to post every time I ride, mainly because I hardly ever ride, but also because Steve is better at that. But today the weather, time, and daycare stars aligned, and I got to ride to work. I got hit with a bit of hail on the way in, a temp-tagger on his cell phone almost smeared me on the way home, and the potholes on Lake Street have never been worse, but it was flat-out awesome to get out and ride again. Chicago will surely be buried under snow again any day now, but it’s little mid-fities heat-waves like today that give scooterists hope.
I’m still way behind on news, but I’ll catch up, and I have a couple other big announcements coming soon. Thanks for being patient, traffic’s been great lately despite my slow posting. Our RSS feed and member list are both growing and things are good. Thanks so much for keeping 2sb alive through another Chicago winter.
New membership policy explained
In the last couple weeks, we’ve had dozens of suspicious registrations from gh66ohl@hotmail.com and tony53699456744@yahoo.com and the like. None of these randomly-generated names posted any spam, so we’re not sure if they were planning an attack, or their mail host nuked them before they even got that far, but we deleted them and for the sake of keeping our membership list neat and tidy, we’ve blocked new memberships from certain free email hosts like yahoo, hotmail, runbox, etc.
Unfortunately, many upstanding citizens also use free email services, and we’d love to have them as members too. If you already belong, no problem, you’re all set. If you’re trying to join 2sb as a new member from such a service, you will be redirected to this post. To join, just email us with your first and last name (won’t be seen by other members) and your preferred screen name. Also tell us something specific about yourself other than “I’m serious biker lady look to meeting new friends.” We’ll email you a login and password ASAP.
Sorry to make it so complicated, please blame the idiots who ruin the internet with spam, not me. Thanks!
Indy-bound
Sorry about the sparse updates, it’s been a crazy couple weeks. Things’ll hopefully be back to normal soon (and I will post all the fantastic news/info/links people have sent lately).
I’m abandoning my family for my first 2strokebuzz-related business trip. Tomorrow morning, I’m off to the Dealer Expo in Indianapolis. Hopefully, the show (and our coverage) will be an improvement on last week’s Chicago International Motorcycle Show. I’m looking forward to meeting lots of dealers, journalists, bloggers, and manufacturers — and building lots of contacts for future stories. I’m also hoping to get some feedback on a new site I’m working on, and I’ll hopefully make a public announcement on Monday.
“Berryoke” at Frank and Mary’s (2905 N. Elston, Chicago) tonight… see you all there?
RSS problems?
We had to re-jiggy our RSS feeds to block some content-scraping robots. Our official RSS feed still works fine, if you were using an RSS link from the olde days, switch to the official one. If you’re posting our (attributed and linked) feed (along with your own content) on your site, that’s no problem, it’s the sploggers and spingers we’re after.
French Scooter Thieves Beware!
It has become apparent that DNA testing is now among “classic methods” for tracking down Booster boosters in France. BBC News reports of the controversy over the investigation of the theft of a scooter belonging to the son of French Interior Minister and Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Critics claim Mr. Sarkozy may have invoked special treatment of the case of the theft after DNA tests were used to narrow the suspect pool. This scooterist wonders if these techniques will become standard methods in the US as well.
2strokeBzzzzzzz
It occurred to us today that this is Chicago summer cicada invasion year. Kathy pointed out this useful fact:
If a cicada lands on you, it is only because it finds you to be a convenient place to land — unless you happen to be using a lawnmower or weed-whacker, in which case it might be attracted by the sound!”
Great, I’m really looking forward to a whole month of 2″ long crunchy insects trying to mate with my scooter.
Seaside dumpster diving in Devon
Shipwreck = seaside dumpster heaven for residents of Branscombe, England. Intrepid scavengers walked away with nearly 50 BMW motorbikes as well as exhaust pipes, steering wheels and beauty cream.
Kristal leads Bajaj scooter revival
With scooter sales exceeding expectations in India, Bajaj–known for decades as a a world-leading scooter company–doesn’t list a single scooter on their website. For a year, Bajaj has been selling of remaining stock of their unpopular Wave and bragging of their dominance of the second- and third-world motorcycle market. Stuck without a product in a growing (or at least very stable) market, Bajaj seems reluctant to admit their judgement error, even as they scramble to release new scooters. The first new effort, the Kristal DTS-i, debuts in February. At 95cc, it’s targeted towards teenagers and specifically women, which seems sort of old-fashioned even by Indian and Bajaj standards. Dave McCabe of VCOA and American Scooterist just returned from India, and some Bajaj plant tours, and reports:
The Krystal is kind of a disappointment. It’s smaller than the [Indian Honda] Activa. It has all sorts of funky angularity built into the design (crystal-like?) The scooter has lots of gadgets added to it, an underseat storage light, light-sensitive sensor for turning on the headlight at night. Turn the ignition key one way and it pops open a gas fill. The underseat compartment can hold a full-face.
In India, at 16 you can ride an “ungeared” scooter under 100cc. You need to be 18 to ride a geared scooter. The wimpy engine capacity is targetted for this market.
The engineers who gave me the tour assured me that the Krystal’s engine was an entirely new design from the Wave. It keeps the Wave’s dual spark system and the “exhaust tech” (I know, B.S. names.) I understand the point of the dual spark but I had to have an engineer explain the point of the exhaust system. It’s basically a little box off the main line of the exhaust pipe. At low rpms, the little box (ahead of the cat converter) help reduces back pressure on the engine. It’s more” low tech” than “exhaust tech” but apparently it works.
Bajaj was pretty coy about why they stopped production of the Wave. It had something to do with the starter motors, but I also think that it had other design flaws. It was evident that they were being super-careful with the rollout of the Krystal. Dealers were getting limited numbers to test for bugs and there were many stages of quality control in the engine production. All of the engine cases were pressure tested. If the cases didn’t hold pressure they were pulled from the line. The leak was found using the old “soapy water” method, then repaired. All engines were also bench tested before being put in bodies. The bench test was interesting, they had a system set up so they could check that the engine would run on both spark plugs or either plug. At the end of the assembly line, all of the scooters were dyno tested as well. It’s pretty clear they want rock solid scooters going out before they ramp up into full production.
More Kristal news from the Hindu Business Line, the Business Standard, and Techwhack.
Thanky New Year
My week off is over, and I’ve got a typical backlog of news stories to post tonight, but in the meantime I just wanted to thank everyone for reading 2strokebuzz, it consistently blows me away how many people choose to waste their time here. 3Q06 traffic has been incredible and when I see more hits, I post more, so everyone wins.
I’ve got a few changes in mind for the site, but I’d also appreciate any other comments or ideas, if something about the site annoys you or doesn’t work, or if you’d like to see more features, now would be a good time to let me know (via email or in the comments) and I’ll see what I can do.
For the last couple months, I’ve been toying with the idea of accepting advertising. After coming up with a good plan that would probably be fairly lucrative, I reverted to my juvenile and retarded notion that accepting advertising would be a compromise of whatever little ‘integrity’ I have, so for now, anyway, I’m ditching the idea. Instead, I’ve decided to put more effort into merchandise, hopefully that will bring in a few bucks and you get something to show for your support. Our store is empty at the moment, but look for some new t-shirts soon, and more merchandise down the road. Again, I’d love suggestions!
As always, we love submissions from readers, and if you happen to work for a scooter manufacturer or dealer, we’d love to hear from you, whether it’s official news or product releases, or you have some insider news you’d like to share anonymously.
Anyway, there’s a lot to look forward to this year, thanks so much for everything, it’s a great feeling to have so many friends around the world, Have a safe and happy 2007 and please keep in touch!
Bryan