Hey,

We all have so much to be thankful for this Holiday season. We have been lucky Mofo’s forever. Hell, young builders don’t even know how lucky they are to be able to score parts at a swap meet and go to work building a bike, unhampered by a myriad of government agencies. Ask some brothers in Europe, where every product must be approved by maybe not one, but a group of government agencies.



I want to give thanks for being able to build Bikernet and write books without government interference, yet. I want to thank every contributor past and present who made Bikernet a cool place to hang out in. I still enjoy finding and posting content almost every day. I want to thank Joe Jorgenson’s crew, who keep the Bikernet infrastructure alive and cooking. I want to thank the Wayfarer for staying on top of the Bikernet Blog and for his editorial recommendations. 



Then there is Barry Green and Sam Burns who keep me inspired with wild images for the news and other posts. Bob T. keep me going with historic motorcycle shots and stories about the wild ‘70s, before we got married and had kids. J.J. Solari has added a whole new dimension and insight to Bikernet. Jim Waggaman keeps me floating on cloud nine with jokes. And George fleming is a master artist, while I’m also working with Atomic Bob on sketches for a new series about stolen motorcycles. And I continue to use Jon Towle art for my new Chance Hogan book chapters.

We will always honor David Mann’s masterful art. I want to thank the Redhead, Laura and Palma for keeping our books straight. Keeping the books straight means I know when I can afford another bike project, like the one I’m about to start with an Irish Rich single-loop VL frame and an XA springer from Matt Olsen. I’m looking for a Knucklehead engine and 4-speed kicker trans. Although Rich has an electric start option I want to investigate.



I want to give thanks to all of our advertisers who keep Bikernet afloat in changing times.

There are so many folks and aspects of American life to be thankful for. We are living in the best of times, yet some folks want to tear it down, but I can’t imagine bikers will let them. And of course I want to thank you and every reader we have for your attention and support. Let’s hit the news, then let’s look at what’s coming up. Have a great day!



The Bikernet Weekly News is sponsored in part by companies who also dig Freedom including: Cycle Source Magazine, the MRF, Las Vegas Bikefest, Iron Trader News, ChopperTown, BorntoRide.com and the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum.








HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM DAMON MOTORCYCLES--We're thankful for you.

There's the family you're born into - and the one you choose.

No matter who you're breaking bread with today, we can collectively reflect on a year where things have started to get back to normal. The last couple of years have made us all more appreciative of what and who we have in our lives.

And, for everyone at Damon, that means you - our chosen family.

All of our success is thanks to your support and the trust you put in us. Today, we raise a glass to you virtually - next year, we'll celebrate together in person at demo days and test ride events.

Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and healthy holiday season!





HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM THE DAV-- Before we sit down with our families at the dinner table today, I wanted to send a heartfelt note of thanks to YOU. For selflessly serving our country … for making tremendous sacrifices … for all you have given — we’re grateful for you this Thanksgiving and all year long.
--J Marc Burgess
DAV National Adjutant





BIKERNET UNIVERSITY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT HOLIDAY VOCABULARY LESSON--repast
[ ri-past, -pahst, ree-past, -pahst ]
noun

a meal.

Repast “meal” derives via Middle English from the Old French verb repaistre “to eat a meal” (compare Modern French repaître “to feed, to eat”), which ultimately comes from the Latin prefix re- “again, regularly” and the verb pascere “to feed.” Pascere, the past participle stem of which is past-, is the source of numerous food- and livestock-related terms in English, such as antipasto and pasture. Despite the similar spelling, the words past and pasta are not derivatives of pascere. Past was originally a variant of passed, the past participle of pass, a verb that comes from the Latin noun passus “step,” while pasta is an Italian borrowing from Ancient Greek pastá “barley porridge.” Repast was first recorded in English in the early 1300s.

HOW IS REPAST USED?

One of the greatest aspects of the traditional Thanksgiving feast is the near-boundless array of food at the table. That also makes it perhaps the [year’s] toughest repast for wine pairing. Or not, if we extend the bounty of the food to the wine options .… [I]t makes sense to make them part of the meal and give guests a chance to try different wines with different dishes, or to hoard a bit of one wine for their favorite part of the meal.

BILL WARD, “DIFFERENT WINES FOR DIFFERENT DISHES AT THE HOLIDAY TABLE,” AP NEWS, NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Consider for a moment, the Thanksgiving meal itself. It has become a sort of refuge for endangered species of starch: sweet potatoes, cauliflower, pumpkin, mince (whatever “mince” is), those blessed yams …. And then the sacred turkey. One might as well try to construct a holiday repast around a fish—say, a nice piece of boiled haddock. After all, turkey tastes very similar to haddock: same consistency, same quite remarkable absence of flavor.

MICHAEL J. ARLEN, "COMMENT," THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 27, 1978





NEWS FROM THE BIKERNET BLOG EDITOR--This news item is a curious bit from the Third World. Maybe shows impact of vehicles in different parts of the world. Actual absolute "Outlaws".

Like that old "Mad Max" movie (1979) - an Australian post-apocalyptic action film, follows the adventures of Max Rockatansky, a police officer in a future Australia which is experiencing societal collapse due to war and critical resource shortages. When his wife and child are murdered by a vicious biker gang, Max kills them in revenge and becomes a drifting loner in the Wasteland.

Maybe for the Stolen Motorcycle File under "Bizarre" section?

--Wayfarer


Insecurity: Niger bans sales of motorcycles

from New Telegraph by Daniel Atori, Minna

November 20, 2021

Following the incessant security challenges in some parts of Niger State and coupled with the demands of motorcycles as ransom by bandits and kidnappers, the State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello has directed the immediate ban on the sales of motorcycles across the State.

A statement issued by Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Ahmed Ibrahim Matane revealed that the category of motorcycles affected by the ban includes any motorcycles (Bajaj, Boxer, Qiujeng, Honda ACE, Jingchen, etc) with engine capacity from 185 Cubic Centimetres (cc) and above remained banned from selling to the public.

The SSG further explained that the State Government rolled out this additional measure which is aimed at eradicating the activities of criminals and the unleashing of mayhem by bandits and kidnappers on innocent citizens in the State.

He stated Government has condemned in strong terms the degree of carnage and pandemonium bandits and kidnappers are causing to some parts of the State and reiterated its continued determination to rid the State of any security threat.

According to the SSG “Government is aware of the inconveniences the measure would cause the people, but the decision was taken in the overall interest of the State and appealed to the dealers of motorcycles across the State to cooperate with the directive”.

Ahmed Matane appealed to the people of the State to cooperate with the security agencies on the security measures being put in place to put an end to the activities of some criminal elements, as it is for the benefit of all and sundry.

The SSG disclosed that Government has also ordered security agencies in the State to ensure effective and strict compliance/enforcement of this directive.

In the same vein, the SSG has reaffirmed that the activities of commercial motorcycle riders popularly known as Okada or Kabu-kabu and operation of illegal garages remained banned in Minna metropolis and environs.

It would be recalled that the State Government had earlier restricted the movements of all motorcycles from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am and the restriction order is still enforced.

SOURCE: https://www.newtelegraphng.com/insecurity-niger-bans-sales-of-motorcycles/






NEWS ALERT FROM THE NMA--A Data-Driven Approach to Transportation Safety

Editor's Note: The NMA has received permission to post this report on recent findings on traffic safety in the US. Check out Part 1 here.


Transit Safety

In her recent report, NBC News journalist Erin Sagen betrays an anti-auto bias when using such terms as "carnage" and "auto dependency."

Americans are not dependent on autos: they are liberated by them, enjoying far greater mobility than anyone else, anywhere else, in the entire history of humanity.

That mobility has made us wealthy and given us access to, among other things, better health care. While every traffic fatality is a tragedy, and we should try to use evidence-based systems to reduce such tragedies, one reason why Americans seem to Sagen to be "nonchalant" about traffic safety is that we get so much from automobiles and highways.

One way to see this is to compare transit safety with automobile safety. According to the most recent report from the Federal Transit Administration, between 2011 and 2019, an average of more than 275 people per year were killed in transit-related accidents.

While that seems small compared with the average of 17,500 people killed per year in urban traffic accidents, transit also produced proportionately smaller benefits in those years. During those years, Americans traveled an average of 55 billion passenger-miles a year by urban transit, while they traveled 3.6 trillion passenger-miles a year by motor vehicles on urban roads and streets.

This means that transit accidents killed an average of 5.0 people per billion passenger-miles while urban traffic accidents killed 4.9 people per billion. Yet, few people decry the "carnage" caused by transit dependency.

While highway safety has mostly improved over the years, transit safety has, at best, remained stagnant. Changes in fatalities appear to be due more to the changing reporting requirements than to improved or worsened safety. Reports show that fatalities significantly declined in 2002, then slowly grew again.

The Federal Transit Administration says that the drop in 2002 resulted from a change in reporting requirements, which "may have resulted in unreliable data in that year." While the agency claims that "the reliability of reporting is believed to be much better in 2003 and is expected to improve in the future," it took until 2019 before reported fatalities reached what they had been before 2002.

If transit was no safer in 2019 than it was in 2001, then it seems likely that fatalities were underreported in the intervening years. Just as the pandemic has led to a higher traffic fatalities and rates, it has also worsened transit fatalities and rates.

The Federal Railroad Administration monitors and regulates commuter train safety, which hasn't yet reported the 2020 or 2021 fatalities. But of the remaining forms of transit, 2020 fatalities were 8.6 percent greater than in 2019, and 2021 fatalities are on track to being 5.8 percent greater than in 2020.

With the huge decline in transit ridership, this pushed the fatality rate to 15.7 per billion passenger-miles in 2020 and 16.5 so far in 2021 (and the addition of commuter rail is likely to make it higher still).

Before the pandemic, the most dangerous form of urban transit was light rail, which killed more than 17 people per billion passenger-miles between 2011 and 2019, a number that increased to more than 43 in 2020 and the first half of 2021. The light-rail line in Houston was involved in so many collisions with automobiles that it became locally known as the "wham-bam tram."


This collision of a light-rail train and bus in Dublin injured 21 people, three of them seriously. Light rail makes no sense when buses can safely carry more people for less money. Photo by William Murphy.


Streetcars weren't as dangerous as light rail before the pandemic, but they killed nearly 50 people per billion passenger-miles in 2020 and 2021. Of course, streetcars moved only 60 million passenger-miles in 2020 and 2021 together, but the three people they killed in those years represent a higher fatality rate than any other form of transit.

These numbers include suicides, which transit agencies would like to exclude because they "aren't the transit systems' fault." But just as bridge designers can and should make bridges safe from suicides using fencing and nets, transit designers should also make their systems safe.

For heavy rail, this means putting up platform walls with doors that open when trains are in the stations, as is done in the Chengdu Metro. For light rail, the best solution is not to build it and to replace existing lines with buses, as buses are much safer and can move more people per hour for a much lower cost.


The Chengdu Metro has clear walls and doors that protect passengers from suicide or accidentally falling onto tracks.

In short, when measured per billion passenger-miles, transit was slightly less safe than other motor vehicles before the pandemic and considerably less safe during the pandemic. I say this not to excuse motor vehicle fatalities but only to say that anyone concerned about one should be just as concerned about the other.

Advocates of transit expansion who claim they want to make roads safer by getting people out of their cars will need to explain how building light-rail lines that kill three times as many people per billion passenger-miles, as urban roads will make transportation any safer.

The Airline Safety Success Story

Those who genuinely care about transportation safety, and aren't just using it to bludgeon one form of transportation or another, should learn a lesson from the airline industry.

During the 1990s, US airlines suffered 34 fatal crashes that killed 931 people.

As reported in an April 2021 issue of The Wall Street Journal, a group of airline and airplane manufacturer executives, government regulators, and pilot-union leaders responded by developing a data-driven incident reporting system that focused on fixing problems--not on blaming problems on individual errors or oversights.

"Government and industry experts extracted safety lessons by analyzing huge volumes of flight data and combing through tens of thousands of detailed reports filed annually by pilots and, eventually, mechanics and air-traffic controllers," reported the Journal.

"Responses led to voluntary industry improvements, rather than mandatory government regulations." Improved aircraft played a major role. "Cockpit automation provided stronger safeguards against crew errors," says the Journal.


The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800, which killed 230 people, helped persuade the airline industry to work with federal regulators and pilots to create a data-driven incident-reporting system to improve the safety of air travel. National Transportation Safety Board photo.


The results can be seen in the 2010s, during which there were only four fatal commercial airline incidents that killed just 16 people. Considering that the airlines carried more than 6.3 trillion passenger miles during that time, this is a remarkable record of just 0.0025 fatalities per billion passenger miles.

Part 3 of this report focuses on data-driven safety and how that can be better utilized to make fundamental changes so that every road user is safer.

Randal O'Toole, The Antiplanner, is an economist with forty-five years of experience critiquing public land, urban, transportation, and other government plans.

--By Randal O’Toole, The Antiplanner

Join the NMA Today!



nma@motorists.org
www.motorists.org





RIVETER CHAPTER of the AMCA and Chix on 66-- Team Up with the Motorcycle Cannonball/Cross Country Chase



Riveter Chapter of the AMCA proudly announces that the Motorcycle Cannonball/Cross Country Chase will provide sponsorship for our Chix on 66 event June 11-25, 2022. This sponsorship provides numerous benefits, including Chix on 66 participants having access to Cannonball Travel which will simplify their hotel/motel booking, and sweep support for riders who may experience mechanical difficulties or breakdowns.



Chix on 66 is a cross-country ride that follows Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. Riveter Chapter President Karan Andrea says, “We are fortunate that Jason Sims has offered his support for the Chix on 66 event. His depth of knowledge and experience is valuable to us as this is our first event, and it has been no small undertaking. Working with Jason immediately elevates what we can offer our Chix riders. I also hope that through this experience, some of our members will be inspired to compete in the Chase or the Cannonball.”



The Motorcycle Cannonball, which ran its inaugural event in 2010, is the most difficult antique endurance race in the world. Riders compete on a transcontinental route of at minimum 3,000 miles on century-old motorcycles. Jason Sims, owner/operator of the Motorcycle Cannonball and the Cross Country Chase, comments, “We’re proud to be a supporter of Chix on 66 and the new female-focused Riveter Chapter. We’re encouraged that Chix on 66 is putting events together to attract women to the hobby.”


The Cross Country Chase, similar in structure, is a test of endurance, speed, navigation and knowledge. Riders on the Chase also compete on a slightly shorter cross-country route on antique motorcycles built between 1930 and 1960.



The Motorcycle Cannonball proved that 100-year-old bikes can and should be ridden cross country, and in the last 11 years, the governing body has fine-tuned the vintage endurance motorcycle event. The Cross Country Chase built on the groundwork of the Cannonball and brought the opportunity and challenge of cross-country navigation to a different set of vintage motorcycle owners.



The 2022 Motorcycle Chase will also be traversing the U.S. on Route 66 in September, so it made sense for them to pair with Chix on 66, which will be run in June of 2022.



www.chixon66.com @chixon66 @chixon66
www.motorcyclecannonball.com @motorcyclecannonball @mc_cannonball
www.themotorcycle.chase.com @themotorcyclechase @motorcyclechase








REPORT FROM THE CENTER for INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS--This week, we're going to start talking about the positive impacts of fossil fuels and other forms of energy.

But first, it’s important to answer the question, “What is energy and why is it so valuable?”

Energy is a life and death need. It is our ability to use machines to dramatically increase our productivity.



How we became healthy and wealthy

Let's break that down. To do so it's valuable to give some historical context. Throughout history, human beings have been incredibly poor by our standards. Now we tend to think of poor people today as very poor, but even most of the poorest people today are fairly rich by historical standards.

If you look at this graph of data taken from the history of economics, what you see is that for thousands and thousands of years—and this just shows the last 2,000—human beings had a very low life expectancy, around 30 years old.


Think about what that means. Today, an average 30-year old still has more than 30 working years before retiring. But back then, you had a strong chance of dying at an early age. Very few made it to old age. As I write this, I'm 38. I would have had a less than 50% chance of reaching this age.



Power and energy

Why is this? It comes down to one basic fact. In our natural state, human beings are very weak. We have very little power and very little energy to generate more power—which means we are naturally able to do very little work to sustain our lives.

Let me explain what I mean by the term power. Power is how much work we can do at one time. Humans are about one-tenth as powerful as a horse, which is about one two-hundredth as powerful as a car.

And energy? Energy is the capacity to do work, or the amount of potential power we have stored. In humans, we measure energy in the form of calories. Our bodies are only capable of storing so much energy, and therefore can only produce so much power. That power can only translate to a certain level of work, and it’s not nearly enough to produce everything you need for the standard of living you have today.

Throughout history, it has been a challenge for human beings to produce enough crops to feed ourselves because agriculture requires a lot of energy (and a lot of other things) just to produce the meager number of calories we need. It has also been a challenge to produce clean water, sturdy housing, decent transportation, and just about everything else.

In the next email we’ll see how we overcame these challenges and raised our standard of living to once unimaginable levels.

--Alex Epstein
Center for Industrial Progress







Under the agreement, the AMA, the national sanctioning body for motorcycle sport, and the USMCA, which has pioneered a nationally recognized motorcycle coaching certification process and national network of rider coaches, will promote ease of access and availability, safety and membership in the AMA for AMA-sanctioned Competition Schools operated by USMCA-certified coaches.

“This effort will foster the development of responsible and competitive racers across numerous AMA-sanctioned disciplines,” said AMA Director of Racing Mike Pelletier. “Through this partnership, each organization will be able to leverage the others’ resources and nationwide networks to meet the growing demand for race-oriented training. The result will be more racers, and more confident racers, enjoying the motorcycle lifestyle.”

The USMCA was launched in 2016 by then-head of KTM North America Jon-Erik Burleson, AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer — and former Victory Motorcycle CEO — Mark Blackwell and former Supercross champion and AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Jeff Emig. USMCA is a non-profit, membership-based organization that has certified coaches across several states, connecting students with coaches through www.motorcyclecoaching.org.

“As motorcycle sales have soared, especially during the pandemic, our robust coaching certification program has continued to grow to meet the needs of athletes,” said USMCA President Christy LaCurelle. “This agreement helps give USMCA coaches the chance to run AMA-sanctioned Competition Schools while broadening both of our networks.”

To become a USMCA-certified coach, applicants have to pass a motorcycle competency and skills test, complete a background check and have training in CPR/First Aid, concussion protocol, heat illness and cardiac arrest. The USMCA’s nationally-recognized coaching certification program is an industry first that brings the professionalism of coaching on par with other well-established sports. Coaching certification must be renewed every two years.

As part of this program, the AMA will host a dedicated website page to link AMA members with USMCA coaches, and promote coaching opportunities to competition members of the association.

--from the Dealer News and AMA