Cult of Dualsport

Jayne Mansfield, Motorcycle Cop

It's a veritable cornucopia of sex tonight. This image comes from the Library of Congress site, "Hog Heaven: Celebrating 100 Years of the Harley Davidson." The photo below is captioned, "Jayne Mansfield, posed as motorcycle cop 'Miss Traffic Stopper,' ticketing male driver." Something tells me the guy wasn't too upset.

The Coal Powered Motorcycle

While reading some of the comments about Zero's EPA cert over at AutoBlogGreen, I had the bright idea of searching for "coal powered motorcycle" -- and guess what?

Family in a coal gas powered motorcycle, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 1916.

Do a search for "motorcycle" over there. You won't be disappointed. And as a bonus you'll even find this "nude woman on the seat of a chopper motorbike, 1970s." (There, that satisfies my new policy of including the word "sex" in each of my posts.)

You did what? An f***ing GS?

Hitler got the wrong bike. There are many different versions of this video floating around, but this one is very funny. "If I wanted to go ploughing I would get myself a proper tractor."

Roost: Troy Rauh.

First Motorcycle Fatality in History

Ultimately, this guy may be to blame for all the recent motorcycle deaths being reported in the news. Sylvester Roper, gunsmith, inventor, builder of the first "self-propelled two-wheeled machine" in America, dead on the track at age 73. Not quite a blaze of glory; more like a puff of steam.

Roper made a few exhibition laps around the track and several bicycle racers attempted to keep up with him but were unable to do so. Initially, Roper covered a mile in two minutes and 12 seconds. He was so elated, that he decided to try for an even better time. He scorched around the 1/3-mile wooden track, but he went into a big wobble on the back straight and was thrown off the track and into the sand surrounding it. When the spectators rushed up, it was apparent that Roper was dead. It was later determined that he had died of heart failure, not as a result of the accident itself.

Check out this video of a Roper steamcycle replica. Entertaining and full of cool facts. Also see Antique Motorcycle Club of America.