Another iconic part of motorcycle history for me and a true legend as far as I was concerned was the infamous Number 7, BARRY SHEENE.

As a teenager I was so enthralled to watch him race on the tv and follow him in Motorcycle news every week, he had an immense impact in my life.

I used to get to watch him race at Snetterton Race track in Suffolk/Norfolk where i grabbed an old centurion open faced helmet with no guts on the inside, I used to roll the local Bury free press up and tape that to the inside and then i would stand on the main road to Thetford and hitch hike a lift on the back of the bike to the races, and run down the side of the track where the fields were and hop over the hedge, as I had no pocket money and I loved the sound, the smell and the whole enchilada that emulsified Motorcycle racing.

I was hitch hiking after the race one year and this Rolls Royce was heading my way, I stuck my thumb out and the driver shook his head to say no, me being a bit of a lad, Gave him the 2 finger salute.

Oh my god, as he went passed me, I saw it was my hero, I felt so gutted. I had flipped of my bloody iconic legend !!!

he was a true hero for me, as to see a Brit race against the world and always do well, made me kinda proud, I so wanted to be him, he had the looks, the bikes and of course the birds.
I followed his career and I too moved to Australia where I saw him with Peter Brock.

Sheene was born in London, the second child of parents Frank (resident engineer at the Royal College of Surgeons) and Iris. He grew up in Queen’s Square, Holborn, London.

Racing career

He became the British 125cc champion aged just 20, and finished second in the World Championships for that class a year later. Sheene won the newly formed Formula 750 European championship for Suzuki in 1973.

A spectacular crash at the Daytona 200 in the 1975 season threatened to end his career, breaking his left thigh, right arm, collarbone and two ribs, yet he recovered and was racing again seven weeks afterwards.

In 1973, he won the Formula 750 World Championship. In the 1976 season, he won five 500cc Grands Prix, bringing him the World Championship. He repeated as champion in the 1977 season with six victories.

Sheene’s battle with Kenny Roberts at the 1979 British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been cited as one of the greatest motorcycle Grand Prix races of the 1970s. After the 1979 season, he left the Heron-Suzuki factory team, believing that he was receiving inferior equipment to his team-mates.

He shifted to a privateer on a Yamaha machine, but soon started receiving works equipment. In 1981, Kenny Roberts was the reigning World 500cc Champion for the third time, and Barry Sheene, now on a competitive Yamaha, was determined to regain the championship. Ironically, Sheene and Roberts battled all season and let Suzuki riders Marco Lucchinelli of Italy and American Randy Mamola beat them for the top two spots. Roberts finished third and Sheene fourth for the 1981 championship.

A crash during the 1982 season largely ended Sheene as a title threat, and he retired in 1984. He remains the only rider to win Grand Prix races in the 50cc and 500cc categories.

Sheene was known for being outspoken in his criticism for what he considered to be dangerous race tracks, most notably, the Isle of Man TT course, which he considered too dangerous for world championship competition.

He was a colourful, exuberant character who used his good looks, grin and Cockney accent to good effect in self-promotion, and combined with an interest in business was one of the first riders to make a lot of money from endorsements. He is credited with boosting the appeal of motorcycle racing into the realm of the mass marketing media.

He also tried his hand as a TV show host, including the ITV series Just Amazing!, where he interviewed people who had, through accident or design, achieved feats of daring and survival (including the former RAF air gunner, Nicholas Alkemade, who survived a fall of 18,000 feet without a parachute from a blazing Avro Lancaster bomber over Germany in March 1944). Sheene and his wife Stephanie also starred in the low-budget film Space Riders.

Personal life

In 1975 while on crutches, Sheene met fashion turned glamour model Stephanie McLean, who was Penthouse Pet of the Month for April 1970 and Pet of the Year in 1971, while they were working together on a photoshoot for Chrysler. After she had divorced her first husband, the couple married in 1984, and had two children, a son and a daughter.
Emigration to Australia

The Sheene family moved to Australia in the late 1980s, in the hope that the warmer climate would help relieve some of the pain of Sheene’s injury-induced arthritis, moving to a property near the Gold Coast. He combined a property development business with a role as a commentator on motor sport, first at Nine Network with Darrell Eastlake, then moving with the TV coverage of the motorcycle Grand Prix series to Network Ten.

In later years, Sheene became involved in historic motorcycle racing.

Death

He died in 2003 aged 52 of cancer of the oesophagus and stomach, and is survived by his wife Stephanie and two children.

Following reconstruction of the Brands Hatch Circuit in England for safety concerns after requests by the F.I.M., the Dingle Dell section was changed for safety, and shortly after Sheene’s death the new section was renamed Sheene’s Corner in his honour. The FIM named him a Grand Prix “Legend” in 2001. At the 2004 season, V8 Supercars Australia made a memorial medal, calling it the Barry Sheene Medal. A memorial ride from Bairnsdale, Victoria to Phillip Island is held by Australian motorcyclists annually, before the MotoGP held at the island.[1
In popular culture

On a side note, the obscure Eric Idle song “Mr. Sheene” which describes “Mr. Sheene’s riding machine” appears to be about Barry Sheene.[citation needed] It was released as a B-side of the 1978 single “Ging Gang Goolie” and is credited as released by Rutles-offshoot duo “Dirk and Stig.” He is also featured on one of Artist Grayson Perry’s Vases My Heroes (1994).

A TRUE LEGEND.

I am sure you all have many heroes and I thought a good blog would be to add one at a time , this way you can see what floated my boat and many of you may even have the same Iconic legends as your all time number 1 heroes as I?

EVEL KNIEVEL was one of my all time best heroes in my teenage years, the man was fearless and many today would not attempt half he would have a go at.

Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and ’70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer.

Mr. Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers on Dec. 31, 1967, by vaulting his motorcycle 151 feet over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a spectacularly bone-breaking crash.

He then continued to win fame and fortune by getting huge audiences to watch him — typically dressed in star-spangled red, white and blue — roar his motorcycle up a ramp, fly over 10, 15 or 20 cars parked side by side, and come down on another ramp. Perhaps his most spectacular stunt, another disaster, was an attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle in 1974.

Mr. Knievel’s showmanship, skill and disdain for death were so admired that he became a folk hero. John Herring’s song “Evel Knievel” was a hit, and both Sam Elliott and George Hamilton have played him in movies. In 1977, Hollywood tried to make him into a movie star in “Viva Knievel!,” a film with Gene Kelly and Red Buttons. In the 1970s and ’80s, Evel Knievel toys had sales in the hundreds of millions for Ideal and other companies.

For a 1994 exhibition titled “America’s Legendary Daredevil,” the Smithsonian Institution acquired Mr. Knievel’s customized Harley-Davidson XR-750 — the museum called it one of the few motorcycles to survive his career — and Mr. Knievel donated a star-spangled leather jumpsuit, cape and boots that he wore during jumps.

Performing stunts hundreds of times, Mr. Knievel repeatedly shattered bones as well as his bikes. When he was forced to retire in 1980, he told reporters that he was “nothing but scar tissue and surgical steel.”

By his own account, he underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips. “I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me,” he said.

He had a titanium hip and aluminum plates in his arms and a great many pins holding other bones and joints together. He was in so many accidents that he occasionally broke some of his metal parts, too.

His health had also been compromised by years of heavy drinking; he told reporters that at one point he was consuming a half a fifth of whiskey a day, washed down with beer chasers.

Robert Craig Knievel was born in the copper-mining town of Butte, Mont., the son of parents who broke up when he was young. He was reared by grandparents.

As he told the story, he acquired the name Evel as a boy. Arrested for stealing hubcaps, he was taken to jail, where the police were holding a man named Knofel, whom they called “Awful Knofel.”

They decided to call Robert “Evil Knievel.” The name stuck, and some years later, Mr. Knievel legally took the name Evel, changing the “i” to “e” because, he said, he thought it looked better.

As a boy he was inspired by the exploits of Joie Chitwood, an acclaimed stunt-car driver. In an interview with The New York Times in 1974, Mr. Knievel said his first motorcycle was a Harley-Davidson, which he stole when he was 13. Three years later, his grandmother bought him a Triumph.

In Butte, he was a standout athlete in track and field, ski-jumping and ice hockey. Joining the Army in the 1950s, he volunteered to be a paratrooper and made 30 jumps. Afterward he played semiprofessional and professional hockey, for a time with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League. Then he took up motorcycle racing full-time until falling and breaking bones in a race in 1962.

When he was 27, he became co-owner of a motorcycle shop in Moses Lake, Wash. To attract customers, he announced he would jump his motorcycle 40 feet over parked cars and a box of rattlesnakes and continue on past a mountain lion tethered at the other end. Before 1,000 people, he did the stunt as promised but failed to fly far enough; his bike came down on the rattlesnakes. The audience was in awe.

“Right then,” he said, “I knew I could draw a big crowd by jumping over weird stuff.”

His stories about himself were no less extreme. He said he had twice kidnapped his hometown sweetheart, Linda Bork, and married her after the second time. He said he had robbed a service station of $900 when the owner failed to pay off a $25 bet. He said he had worked as a card shark, a swindler and a safe-cracker. How much of it might have been said to call attention to himself remained unclear.

In 1965 he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel’s Motorcycle Daredevils and began barnstorming Western states. He later began performing alone and hit the big time in 1968 with his much-publicized jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace. “It was terrible,” he said afterward. “I lost control of the bike. Everything seemed to come apart. I kept smashing over and over and ended up against a brick wall, 165 feet away.”

The accident left him with a fractured skull and broken pelvis, hips and ribs. He was unconscious for a month. Shortly after his recovery, he jumped 52 wrecked cars at the Los Angeles Coliseum. (In 1989, his son Robbie, who also became a motorcycle stuntman, tried the same jump at Caesars Palace and succeeded.)

In 1974, Mr. Knievel decided he would jump 1,600 feet across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. Before thousands of spectators and thousands more on a closed-circuit television broadcast, he took a rocket-powered motorcycle up a 108-foot ramp at 350 miles an hour and soared some 2,000 feet over the canyon floor.

die.

But his parachute opened prematurely, and he and the cycle drifted to the canyon floor, leaving him without serious injury. For his efforts, he made $6 million. He also made good money the next year when he went to London and jumped his motorcycle over 13 double-decker buses at Wembley Stadium. He crashed there, too, breaking his pelvis, vertebrae and hand. He soared over an aquarium tank containing 13 sharks in Chicago but skidded on the exit ramp and fractured his right forearm and his left collarbone.

It seemed he could not think of things big enough to jump over. At one point, he announced he would jump over the Grand Canyon with his jet-powered motorcycle. He even retained the lawyer Melvin Belli to help him get permits. But the Department of the Interior said no.

In 1977, Mr. Knievel was convicted in California of beating his former press agent with a baseball bat and sentenced to six months in a jail. The agent, Sheldon Saltman, had written a book that Mr. Knievel felt had treated him unfairly. The conviction had a devastating effect on sales of Evel Knievel toys.

Mr. Knievel was forced to spend the entire six months in prison after a judge learned that Mr. Knievel, under a work-release program, was commuting from prison to his job in a chauffeur-driven Stutz convertible and providing other inmates with limousine transportation to their work-release jobs.

A week before his release in 1978, he told an interviewer: “Last year at this time, I had 16 boats, three of them yachts, with the value of about $5 million. I’ve had to sell them all with the exception of three speedboats and one 80-foot yacht. I only have two houses left. I had to sell five mink coats.” He added, “Things are tough, but I think I’ll make it.”

But his troubles continued. In 1986, he was fined $200 in Kansas City, Mo., on charges of soliciting an undercover policewoman for immoral purposes. And in 1995, when he had left his wife after 38 years of marriage and was living with Krystal Kennedy, a younger woman, Mr. Knievel was charged with battering her. Ms. Kennedy declined to press charges, however, and later married him.

In 2006, Mr. Knievel sued Mr. West, the rapper and producer, and his record company over a 2006 music video for the song “Touch the Sky,” in which Mr. West portrays “Evel Kanyevel,” who tries to ride a rocket-powered motorcycle over a canyon. “We settled the lawsuit amicably,” Mr. Knievel was quoted as saying this week.

After retirement, he continued to make public appearances and promote his son Robbie’s career. Mr. Knievel and his wife Linda Bork separated in the early ’90s. In addition to their son Robbie, they had three other children, Kelly, Tracey and Alicia. Mr. Knievel’s marriage to Krystal Kennedy, in 1999, ended in divorce, but they remained together, splitting time between homes in Clearwater and Butte, The A.P. said. He had 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Evel Knievel once described himself as “the last gladiator in the new Rome.” Another time he said he was “a conservative wildman.”

“I am a guy who is first of all a businessman,” he said. “I’m not a stunt man. I’m not a daredevil. I’m” — he paused — “I’m an explorer.”

Evel Knievel, not a name but, a verb.

For years, California motorcyclists have enjoyed the benefits of a non-law. California is the only state in the nation that doesn’t legally prevent lane splitting, or traveling between lanes of stopped and slower-moving traffic, but there haven’t been hard and fast rules governing the practice.

Until now.

A motorcyclist rides between the lanes during the afternoon commute on southbound Highway 99 in Sacramento on Tuesday. In an effort to make motorcycling safer, state officials have published guidelines in the common, but sometimes dangerous, practice of lane-splitting.

RANDALL BENTON, MCT

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The California Highway Patrol has, for the first time, published lane-splitting guidelines on its website “to dispel misinformation,” said Todd Kovaletz, public information officer for the Santa Ana bureau of the California Highway Patrol. “There are no new laws, simply clarification for what is already out there.”

The state agency has never taken a position on the controversial practice that motorcyclists perceive as convenient and other vehicles see as a hazard.

The new guidelines advise motorcyclists to travel no more than 10 mph faster than other traffic, to refrain from splitting lanes when traffic is flowing at 30 mph or faster, to restrict their lane splitting to the space between the first and second lanes and to consider the total environment in which they are lane splitting, including the width of traffic lanes, the size of surrounding vehicles and the conditions of the roadway, weather and lighting.

In the works for almost two years, the guidelines were developed as a result of the state’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan, for which the California Highway Patrol and Department of Motor Vehicles collaborated to improve motorcycle safety. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motorcyclists are 39 times more likely than passenger-car occupants to die in traffic crashes per vehicle mile traveled.

Despite the new guidelines, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, in Irvine, does not promote lane splitting. The MSF subcontracts safety training through the California Highway Patrol at 131 sites throughout the state as parts of the California Motorcyclist Safety Program.

“One of the greatest allies you have when riding a motorcycle is time and space,” said MSF vice president, Robert Gladden. “If you’re lane sharing, you’re reducing the time you have to react to obstacles in the roadway or what other drivers or riders are doing.”

Even so, 87 percent of California’s motorcycle riders say they split lanes, according to the state’s Office of Traffic Safety.

We couldn’t think of anyone better than the lovely Linda Vaughn  to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day…

She was known as the Miss Hurst Golden Shifter & we can definitely see why.

 The iconic Miss Hurst Golden Shifter has been a part of the racing and automotive scene since the early ’60s; she knows everyone we regard as heroes (and many more we don’t), and she never disappoints with her insanely accurate memory. Meet her once, even for just a moment, and there’s a good chance she’ll remember your name and what you talked about a decade later. She has probably the most recognized face (and let’s be honest, the most recognized breasts, too!) in the world of motorsports, having represented Hurst and several other companies for five decades now, after George Hurst stole her from her Miss Firebird responsibilities and made her the second Miss Hurst Golden Shifter, initially to promote the company, but eventually to promote everything about motorsports, hot rodding, and our way of life.

Ever the diplomat, Linda wouldn’t go fully on the record with some of her opinions, and we respected her right to edit herself, but you’ll still get some real gems here. She has been working intermittently on a book project, and when it finally comes out it’s going to be a fantastically entertaining read. But the basic message she wants to leave the readers with is this: “These are some of the stories that a lot of fans don’t get to read because I don’t get too personal too often. They’re stories from my heart. [The racers] are my brothers, my heart. I’m married to racing, honey! That’s why I have no children. I have everyone else’s children. The Andrettis, the Foyts, the Unsers, the Allisons…they’re all my kids, and it’s a large family!”

What she relays as her greatest story in racing is the one that made her tear up big-time during our lunch, and it gives you a peek into her closely guarded heart. “McEwen beat Prudhomme in the finals at the ’78 U.S. Nationals just after his son passed away from cancer. We lost his son and he won that race. That was one of the most touching races of my life. I still get chills off of that. McEwen was sitting in his car after the race, and I get in the golf cart with my Hurstettes and we’re flying down to the end of the dragstrip and when we get there, I reached in and grabbed him and hugged him and kissed him. He was crying, I was crying, they were all cryin’. McEwen drove the race of his life. He couldn’t get out of the car.”

Linda Vaughn is The First Lady of Racing, and she always will be. And yes, she drove to our lunch in her ’75 Hurst Olds.

And we saved the best for last!!!

She dug Motorcycles as well and adorned many pages of the magazines back in the day.

A legend that’s for sure and thought it fitting to have on our Blog for Valentines day.

Hope you enjoyed the photo’s?  Hope that you all have a super Valentines day and evening.

Right, I am back into the workshop.

Well, this time along the way I often stop and ponder to myself and think what I do is crazy, but some of these people must either be completely bonkers or on the verge of being Rocket scientists.

I am amazed at the amount of ingenious and far fetched mechanical marvels that pop up on the internet and in magazines.

Never a day goes past if I have not seen a cool or wild ride that just stops me in my tracks.

And I thought for a Blog today, I would drop a few pictures down on here for you to amuse yourselves.

So sit back and take a look at what is out and about in the globe and has been since the beginning of Motorcycles.

I am sure many more will appear as I go along, but I thought that some of you would get a kick out of some of these inventions.

Now I think by looking at these, I am indeed, quite sane.

And I think you lot will feel the same too and also make your day go along a little easier for sure.

I am sure that some of you may have already seen some of these motorcycles, but always worth a look at.

Some really unusual concepts that were bad back then and of course, still today.

So, let me know what you think of some of these as it is always cool to hear from you lot .

Here is one bike that was made last year, looks very advanced eh?

Well I think it was thought of, many many moons ago.

I love the New ‘Steam-punk” style that pops up quite a bit these days.

Well, i thought I would add a few things about the old Brain Bucket, that’s right, the Crash Helmet, by law we have to wear them, OK, some states do not but to be hnest, i feel safer with one on, albeit not a full faced as I prefer the open faced skid lids but this has always been part of my life and thought I would share a few things about the good old Noggin protector on a Blog for you lot.

I have seen many of the years and thought some things would be fun to add on here if I remember any more, but I loved all the old adverts as a kid, being that I read all I could on motorcycle items back then.

Stadium was a well known Brand back home and my Mum, Aunt , Uncle and cousins were all from Enfield, so got to see many of that brand as I rode my little 50cc Suzuki Cafe at 16 years old.

I love the old Skid Lids but for today’s super fast rocket machines, a more protective and of course, streamlined noggin protector is a must.

As a lad I had this poster on my wall, as well as many others, but what my MUM did not realize was the girls were actually naked and they airbrushed the leathers on them.

But, I am sure you will find some of these pics funny and it cheers your day up?

Some are really weird and will make you look twice that’s for sure, as I know I did when I saw one.

These are funny as hell and knew that I should share them with you.

But I am sure many more will pop up on this site as I find others that entertain me and I am sure you lot out there.

Send some in to me, as I can add to this a little later on.

We have come a long way since the old Pudding Basin style crash helmet.

And who knows what will be coming out next?

Its enough to make you go completely mad at times.

Still, other people cannot afford such luxuries as brain buckets and have to improvise, although at times, I wonder what the hell they were thinking.