The American Motor Drome Co. : The Wall of Death

Chauncey and I had the pleasure to help some really cool dudes set up The Wall of Death.  The original thrill show.  Dromes have been around since the 20's.  These guys are keeping a tradition alive and its amazing to see how this stuff all comes together.   

The walls are made of 16 ft. lengths of Douglass Fir.  The wood doesn't have any knots on it.  This makes for a wicked smooth ride.  

The walls are lifted off the truck and into place.  Wally, Mikey, Jeremiah, Charlie, Chauncey, and Myself set this bad boy up in a matter of hours.  The other dudes did most of the work, but Chauncey and I were still sore as shit for days after.      

Jeremiah is part monkey.

Break time.

We set up the circus tent.  They've been doing all this the same way since the 20's.  Nothing too complicated, but it takes some manpower. 

Charlie paints all the signs.  They are wicked and it apparently keeps him out of trouble.

These are the whips.  Old Harley's and an Indian.  Its pretty amazing to watch these guys ride.  

Finished product. 

They don't make parts anymore for bikes this old.  People have to fabricate parts if something breaks or buy 2 or 3 and then mix and match the parts until you get it to run.  Sometimes people find old schematic drawings and fabricate the parts themselves from scratch.  

KC:CO:UT:AZ

As we came into the foothills of the Rockies things began to grow.  Everything was 10 times the size of anything I'd ever seen before.  The rocks the trees the river.  It was all giant.

This was the team.  We were missing Brandon because he stayed back with Taichi to get him on his way home.  Taichi actually ended up going on much more of an adventure than we did.  He was gone for almost a month and pretty much accidentally ended up in New York for a few weeks.  

The Rockies and The Bros

I had never seen anything like this.  The mountains were majestic.  It was breathtaking to ride through.    

The temperature swings were crazy.  It would go from 95 degrees to 55 in about a quarter mile.  The thin air also made our bikes run like soggy bread.  Passing cars became a matter of life and death sometimes, but I guess it always is.  Brandon tried to lay down the hammer and whip around a car, but due to the amazingly low oxygen content his bake denied the request.  So Brandon gave the car next to him the look of: "If you move I die".  He split the oncoming car in the middle and slowly putted past to safety.   

We stopped in a few places to ponder existence.  Duane is particularly good at pondering.  I think he is wondering how hot it will be in the desert.   

So my bike only being a 500cc made it incredibly easy to put slung around the road by the winds.  It was my first cross country trip and really my first long trip on a motorcycle.  The winds and sand were pretty miserable.  Not to mention the heat.   

Here's the choppers.  We tried to do it all professional like with the line up.  

The Grand Canyon was a sight.  However the wonderful state park service charged us $12 to look at it.  I know they need funding to keep it up, but a mandatory charge seems a little scary.  

Here's these observation deck and a little part of the canyon.  

Duane pondering again.

My feet.

The drop.

Note the wicked hairstyle.  You only get that look from bathing in the river and using the bug guts in your hair to give it that extra volume. 

Forever Young.

Tally-Deega

We went to Talladega National Forest a while back.  A bunch of us wend down for the opening of a new skatepark in Greensboro, AL.  It was a lot of fun.  

ARK:KC Pt. 2

The morning we left from Arkansas Taichi had a little spill.  He gashed up his knee and split his eyebrow, but because his Japanese blood doesn't allow him to feel pain he just kept on truckin'.  His gas tank was cracked but it was so big that it really didn't matter.  He literally proceeded to ride 500 miles with a laceration that most people would need stitches, but not Taichi.  We got some super glue and he pulled some samurai shit and was ready to go.  Some locals stopped to lend us a hand in repairing his bike.  It seems when you are on a motorcycle everyone automatically lives vicariously through you and goes out of their way to help.  This was not the first time a total stranger lent us a helping hand.

We made it Kansas and weathered quite a gnarly squall.  We stayed on Elk Lake in Kansas and awoke to swirling clouds and bikes blown over from the wind.  It poured pretty good for a few hours and some of us got a little closer to each other than we'd have normally been, but sometimes if you close your eyes it doesn't feel that weird....Taichi's bike was pretty hard to start, but after the storm we just couldn't figure out how to turn her over.  Brandon and Warren consulted the chopper gods and ultimately blamed the used of a capacitor for his kentucky fried electrics.  Brandon stayed behind with Taichi and we hit the road when the sun was already going down.

This is pretty much the whole fucking state of Kansas.  

Jeremiah tried to start a fight with one of the locals who was probably 9.  Then his older brother decided to step in.  He quickly developed a man crush on Jeremiah. They touched tips, and then he told us about all the pussy he was slaying at the time.  He also informed us that he and the infamous Jesse James were about to form their own chopper club and we weren't invited.

  Kansas was pretty boring. It was flat and straight, however the amount of bugs that we were eating was tremendous.  Warren was out slave driver and we were blasting 80 mph well into the wee hours of the morning to make up for a late start.  J-Body and Warren had a close encounter with the 4 Legged monstrosity know as a deer.  Body locked it up and came inches from death.  At that point it was about 2AM and we were all pretty over riding for the night.  We stopped for some vitals at the local gas station.

Terrence was working the graveyard shift and was the proud owner of a bitchin 19-kevinty-kevin Hunter Green Mustang.  He and Jeremiah exchanged bodily fluids (I don't thing Jeremiah was informed) after their delightful conversation.  Terence held us prisoner for about a half hour while he made 4 sandwiches. They weren't even that good.  We ended up posting up at a campground called Gunsmoke. We were stoked on the name, but not so much by the hundo price tag we discovered in the morning.  We were gonna try to bounce without paying, but little did we know we were stuck in a maxmium security road side tourist trap.  Warren fronted the cash and we headed for Colorado.