mean streets

this picture best describes what it feels like to ride a motorcycle in Brooklyn. hectic. you have to have your wits about you. The longer I live here, the more props I give to the bicycle messengers of the greater NYC boroughs. If I feel this way and I have a motor to push me through traffic AND brakes, I can't imagine the fixie sensation as a cab slams on its brakes and there's nowhere to go.

On a lighter note, here is a young guy on an "old school" style bike. That seems to be the go to explanation for people when they see malcolm's bike. "you, dat shit is like olllld school...." or "yeah, I'm feelin' that old schoooool sheeeeiit".

2006 is technically kinda old school these days...

little changes are good

so I had some time in the last week or so to do some changes on the sporty.  First thing was to mount my Max Schaaf x Vans grips that came with my Mountain Editions....

so I broke out my trusty grinder, aka, Dewalt drill with cutting wheel attached to it and decided to narrow the Friscos by an inch on each side.  its funny how much you can do with what you have just sitting around.  

starting the narrowing process

so the dummy (clutch side) grip went on in a pinch, but that throttle side was not as fun/easy.  Basically, on harley's stock throttle grips, they co-mold the rubber grip to the throttle sleeve itself, so i had to shave away portions of the rubber grip in order to get down to the plastic sleeve, then it was out with the rubber mallet to pound that new throttle grip on....after 5 minutes of wondering how much damage I did, i put the key in and sure enough, after checking all vitals; headlights, throttle, brakes, everything still worked.

grip one....on.   the easy one.

next, i took some time to get my license plate bracket mounted all nicely.  Originally when I put it on, i didn't clean up all the wiring nicely, so just routed the brake light wire clean and out of the way.

license plate and tail light sidemount (huge thanks to Chris Brown)

Lastly, grinded off the extra tab that is no longer in use on my speedo, painted my little mounting plate black and cleaned it all up a bit.   

shot of the re-mounted speedo.  down low.