We forgot to say it to our American readers, but welcome back from the long Fourth of July weekend. We hope you celebrated the birth of our great nation by blowing up a small piece of it. Trapped back in your work cubes now, longing for the five or days off you just came from, we have just the thing for your Munday blues.
Yamaha gave Mark Toia a few Yamaha WR450 dirt bikes, and let the filmmaker do his thing. Shot in Queenstown, New Zealand (yes, it really is that beautiful there), Toia tells a good story about childhood friends reuniting at their favorite meeting spot, many years later. It’s a beautiful short. It’ll make you feel good. Call your mother afterwards. She misses you.
They call the Erzberg Rodeo the toughest single-day event in motorcycle racing — we’re inclined to agree. For the 2013 edition of the hard-enduro race, 1,500 riders entered to compete, 500 qualified on Saturday to the main event, and come Sunday’s race, only 14 finished.
Battling against the added challenge of the rain this year, Erzberg riders also had an even tougher time than usual with the giant hill of mud that leads out of the quarry pit, and onto the other more technical 20 other checkpoints of hell. The one great thing about the race though, it makes for great video…especially in slow-motion with all the water, mud, and tears.
Darius Glover (Facebook & Twitter) is a dirt bike racer. Like you and me, he lives to ride, and when he is on two-wheels he feels the freedom that only other motorcyclists can truly understand. The thing is though, Darius is paralyzed from the waist down.
Where others would give up their dreams and this sport, Darius at the age of 15 instead pushed onward. No pity parties, no excuses, just simply a daily example of where there is a will, there is a way, and a reminder that you can achieve anything that you put your mind to.
It’s hard not to get a bit choked up listening to Darius tell his story, but you walk away feeling uplifted after feeling his attitude come across the screen. The dude has his head on straight, that’s for sure, and we all could take a lesson from his example. “Everything is on point when you’re on a bike — you feel like Superman.” Isn’t that the truth brother. Keep riding, keep racing. Thanks for the tip Audrey!
April 1st is our most-favorite day of the year, as it is the Christmas Day for journalists far and wide — and like Christmas, it is better to give, than it is to receive. The motorcycle industry gives plenty on this day, and we thought we’d share with you the April Foolery that caught our attention this most glorious of days.
Here at Asphalt & Rubber, David’s fiction on the upcoming changes to the World Superbike Championship reigned supreme, and the bit about adventure-touring bikes replacing the World Supersport series was especially amusing.
We also got some interesting texts, emails, and comments about BRD’s new fund-raising plan, as well as the AMA Pro Racing’s supposed homologation of the Aprilia RSV4 Factory for supersport racing. We assure you that while they may mimic something close to what is possible in reality, neither stories are true…as far as we know.
How about from the rest of the industry though? In case you missed them, the highlights of April Fools Day are after the jump.
Between Ken Block’s gymkhana escapades through the streets of San Francisco, and this stuntastic video of Robbie Maddison riding through an airplane graveyard, it is clear that DC Shoes gets this whole viral marketing video thang. There is a weird wild west vibe going on here with Maddison’s Air.Craft video shoot, and we kind of dig it…kiss goodbye to 10 minutes of your life, after the jump.
We hate to see riders going down, but this might be the most creepy awesome thing you see all day. It is a bit surreal to watch a motorcycle crash go from horrible to normal, especially as the rider flies around as if in some sort of Matrix-like kung fu fight, but it all just serves as a reminder to be good, wear gear, and do wheelies. Thanks for the tip Gigi!
Asphalt & Rubber readers are an eclectic group of men and woman, and I am not going sully the romance we have going on here by lying to you guys with some sort of convoluted web of reasoning as to how a nearly team minuted Ken Block / DC Shoes / Ford Focus video is related to motorcycles — because well frankly, it’s not. Yeah sure, there is a 12 second Travis Pastrana cameo tucked-away in there somewhere, and that might be enough material to spin-doctor the snot out of this puppy, but here’s the deal:
First, the video is awesome in that 12-year-old boy discovering bottle rockets sort of way. Second, the video is set in my home town, and we all know how militant I can be about the Golden State, whose border I draw somewhere just south of Ojai. And third, the video is an example of great marketing, and it is such an easy example of what can crossover into motorcycles, it pains me that we here in the two-wheeled world haven’t answered back with something even better. Enjoy after the jump.
Is it possible that there a better TT video than the hit-flick TT3D: Closer to the Edge? That might just be the case we have here, based off this trailer of Isle of Nan TT: Closer to the Hedge. Beautifully shot and edited, this epic thriller is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat, and find a permanent spot on your motorsport DVD bookshelf. Set on the historic Manx course, this documentary of the Isle of Nan TT brings you the riders, the blood, and the glory. Check out all the hedge-clipping action, after the jump.
During the second AMA Pro Supersport qualifying session at Sears Point, #422 Genki Hagata had a moment that every motorcycle racer knows all too well: a highside. Still completing his out-lap, Hagata’s Yamaha YZF-R6 lost traction at the rear wheel, and then abruptly regained it, which for most riders would usually mean an ejection seat straight into the kitty litter, but not for Genki.
Holding onto the bars throughout the incident, Hagata avoided crashing (again, as the case would be for the weekend), and while he missed making the cut-off for Supersport grid by only a few tenths of a second, we still think he was the big winner of AMA Pro Racing’s third road-racing stop of the season. See it to believe it after the jump, and thanks for the tip ??!
If you want to end your Wednesday on a high-note, look no further than this video of Julien Welsch (Facebook & Twitter). Riding his Triumph Street Triple through woods enduro-style (yes, with knobbies and all), the famed stunt rider makes this fish-of-water look like its has lungs for gils.
Throw in some great photography, a dubstep soundtrack that doesn’t make you want to bang your head against the wall, & some epic riding, and well…for three minutes and twenty-nine seconds you won’t have anything bad to say about the French (je plaisantais mes amis!). In other news, somewhere in Leicestershire, a Triumph engineer is quietly sobbing.