Sun, 05 Mar 2006

I was in Daytona for the first weekend of Bike Week.
I was staying in the Mayan again, with Howard and AC. There weren't too many Brokeback Mountain references.

On Saturday we headed over to the Speedway, where dozens of vendors and manufacturers had set up. The first things we saw were these cute little three-wheelers. There's a motorcycle under there somewhere. They didn't look quite as cute once we found out they sell for about $50K.

I had no idea there were that many trikes out there. Lots and lots of big-displacement bikes that have had the rear wheel replaced by an axle with two wheels. I could never see for sure if they had a differential or just a solid rear axle.

One thing I really wanted to see was some Ducatis. There were plenty of them in the parking areas, but only two at the Ducati tent. Maybe they are going to bring more in later in the week.

I was really taken with the air filter cover the first time I saw it. But it lost part of its appeal after I saw it on bikes all over the show. Here's a different take on the trike theme: chopper trikes.

Howard and AC continuously debated the merits of various bikes. They liked the chrome and the paint. I kind of like this one, that looks like it hasn't been cleaned since it rolled off the assembly line.

This thing was just freaky. It's powered by a small gas turbine engine. It's about 20 feet long. It's not the greatest construction, as it looks like it was put together out of angle iron with a mig welder. Along the same lines, I saw a supercharger on a bike for the first time.

For some reason the paint scheme on these intakes looks really good to me. The rest of the bike is painted the same way. It's patterned after a Rolling Stones album cover. On the way out we saw a bare-bones trike. It looks like it might have used a Servi-Car as a donor. There was some interesting engineering involved.

posted at: 22:37 | permalink |