CANNONBALL: PREPARING 'THE MULE'

The Mule; not afraid of dirt, although it played hell with the open cambox...I've had my head so far inside my '28/'33 Velocette KSS/MkIV KTT hybrid, appropriately named 'The Mule', that I haven't had time to post all the photos from the magnificent Pebble Beach Week activities...patience! I thought I'd treat The Vintagent as a 'blog', for once, with a timely update on prepping an 80 year old, worn out motorcycle for a 4000 mile ride. The Mule in 2005, on the notorious Wards Ferry Road, just outside Yosemite Nat'l ParkThe Mule had sat since November 2009, when its gearbox literally split in half in front of 100 amused chopper riders, at the start of Max Schaaf's '69 Mile Ride'.  She fired up easily on the bump (no kickstarter - this...

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HUGHES, GODFREY, AND THE RED BARON

Oliver Godfrey, winner of the 1911 Isle of Man TT, with his Indian at BrooklandsThe Vintagent's obituary of art critic Robert Hughes brought responses from far and wide, some from unexpected quarters.  One raised my eyebrow though... a roundabout connection, via an arc of sky-borne bullets, between Hughes, Lothar von Richthofen (the Red Baron's brother), and 1911 Isle of Man TT winner Oliver Godfrey. Lothar von RichthofenIt took a memorial speech about Robert Hughes in the Australian Parliament to reveal a deeper story of the Hughes family, which included his father Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, an Australian ace fighter pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during WW1. The elder Hughes had gained fame by shooting down Lothar von Richthofen, less...

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THE CROCKER STORY

Crocker engineer Paul Bigsby with rider Sam Parriot at Muroc dry lake, 1940The story of Crocker motorcycles has been obscured by tall tales and myths since the very day they were introduced, first as Speedway racers, then big V-twins, and finally a scooter, all built before official US involvement in WW2 put a halt to civilian motorcycle production.  Wading through the murk around this famous American name, one bumps against vested interests and fast-held opinions, but enough facts emerge to which we can anchor our tale.Paul Bigsby, Sam Parriot, and Albert Crocker at Muroc dry lake in 1940; Parriot recorded  136.87 mph on June 19, 1940 with the 'parallel valve' engineAlbert Crocker, born in 1882, had an engineering degree from Northwestern...

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WET PLATES ON A DRY LAKE

Alain de Cadanet astride the 'Edgar' Vincent Black Shadow, on which Rollie Free made his infamous 'bathing suit' run at 150mph at Bonneville in 1948.  Alain was filming for the Discovery Channel, and brought a bathing cap and swimsuit!The common wisdom of shooting collodion/wet plate is you need lots of water and mild conditions, neither of which applies to the harsh dryness of the Bonneville salt flats.  I don't know if anyone has shot tintypes there, but I brought my Chamonix view camera and a van full of chemicals, and set up a rough-and-ready darkroom in the brightest, whitest, shadelest spot on earth.   The reflectivity of the salt, the utter lack of clouds or greenery, made chaos of my exposures and nearly solarized...

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'OLD BILL'

'Old Bill' as she sits todayHandH Classics in England have secured the rights to sell 'Old Bill', the second most famous Brough Superior of all (the first being, of course, the bike on which TE Lawrence was killed).Before we go on, a correction; their press release claims HandH Classics have sold the most expensive motorcycle at auction, which is simply not true by any calculus. That spot goes to MidAmerica Auctions, whose sale of a Cyclone in July 2008 hit $551,200; as the English Pound has never achieved a 2:1 ratio with the US Dollar, the £280,000 ($465,350 on the day) sale of a Brough SS100 in 2011 is hardly the greater sum. Let's get the facts straight, HandH; to keep abreast of the most expensive bikes sold at auction, follow my...

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ROBERT HUGHES: ART CRITIC, MOTORCYCLIST

Art critic Robert Hughes in 1986A champion of Motorcycling has died after a long illness; Robert Hughes, creator/host of the 'Shock of the New' television series and long-time art critic for Time magazine.  While artists and public television watchers knew Hughes for his acerbic opinions on art and artists (he once described the work of Jeff Koons as "so overexposed it loses nothing in reproduction and gains nothing in the original"), he was also a motorcycle fan.  More importantly, he was the most visible and well-known art critic to defend the inclusion of motorcycles in the Guggenheim Museum, at the 'Art of the Motorcycle' show.Robert Hughes with the Honda CB750 he mentions in his infamous Time magazine review of the 'Art...

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