The DawgHouse Motorcycle Radio…The #1 Motorcycle Show in the US
Click here to get to this week’s Podcast
Great interview with 15 year old Jayson Uribe an American racing professionally in Europe.
Discussion of latest SOA episode “Faith and Despondency “
Review of On Any Sunday, The Next Chapter
Discussion of Royal Enfields, Lighting Motorcycle, The Polaris Slingshot in Texas and Alpinestars Airbag Jacket.
Williamsport Visitor Center and Cushwa Basin
Location – Williamsport Visitor Center/Cushwa Basin
Mile Marker –99.6
Historical Comments – Built in the 1830s the Cushwa Basin was developed as a major point on the canal for the loading/unloading and turning of barges. The area around the visitors and the canal itself is steeped in history. Some of the historic highlights of the area include:
Williamsport considered for the nation’s capital
Multiple civil war battles fought to capture, sabotage or destroy the aqueduct.
Gen. Lee used pontoon bridges to cross a flooded Potomac after Gettysburg.
In 1920 a boat bumped the aqueduct wall which caused it to collapse taking the wall and the boat into the creek below.
Ride to Site – The visitor center and basin is off main street Williamsport. Good signage easily directs you to the site.
Amenities – Visitors Center, public restrooms, parking, boat launch, bike rental, all normal amenities in the town of Williamsport.
Road Conditions (from main road) – paved
Railway Situation – none
Parking Lot Conditions –Pea gravel but the edge between the pavement and the parking lot is on a slight hill and appears to suffer damage from water runoff, pay close attention to your line of travel.
Main Attraction – This should be one of your main stops even if you do not want to stop at many (or any) other points along the canal route! Williamsport is only stop where you can visit many of the major canal structures in one place. Here you can see, all within a half mile:
The Conocheague Aqueduct
The Cushwa turning basin
A railroad lift bridge
A Bollman Iron Truss Bridge
A lock house (Lock 44)
Visitor center exhibits
Recreation of canal boat rides (during summer)
My Thoughts – As noted above this is a great spot to learn about the canal. It is easy to get to as it only a few miles from from Interstate 81.
Map 
If you are in the Northern Virginia area today (12 November 2014) at 4:45PM consider joining the DawgHouse crew at the Regal Cinema in Sterling Va to watch the this movie.
The DawgHouse Motorcycle Radio…The #1 Motorcycle Show in the US
Lane-splitting: perhaps not as dangerous as we first thought?
Mercedes Benz (Daimler) pulls the trigger on MV Agusta.
Stolen 1954 Harley Hydra-Glide Returned After 42 years
He and Dong buy bodies!
Interview with Chris Ulrich.
World Superbike Championship decided in Qatar.
MotoGP & Moto2 picks for Valencia.
What you need to know is that he did his own stunts. Also, nice stunts for the 20s!
A lot has occurred on the subject of lane splitting (or filtering depending on where you are) this year to include the following:
> A complaint from one person forced the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to remove lane splitting guidelines from their website.
> In Australia, New South Wales is now allowing lane splitting and Queensland is will be legal in 2015.
> Change.org has a petition to make lane splitting legal in the state of Virginia.
> UC Berkeley issued a study, commissioned by the CHP, finds the practice does not increase safety risks.
The most important item of the year on this subject is the UC Berkleley/CHP study. The study shows that lane splitting is, mostly, as safe as riding in a standard lane. I can see this report supporting the movement to allow lane splitting in other states in the very near future. The report, titled “Safety implications of lane-splitting among California motorcyclists involved in collisions” studied the “prevalence of lane-splitting among approximately 8,000 motorcyclists who were involved traffic collisions in June 2012 through August 2013”. Some of the highlights of the UC/CHP study: (LSM=Lane Splitting Motorcyclist)
> The practice of riding in between marked lanes to filter through slow-moving or stopped traffic, is just as safe for riders as traveling in normal lanes
> Riders who split lanes are less prone to getting rear-ended; however, the likelihood of a rider rear-ending a car is greater.
> Danger level does increase for riders who are splitting at speeds of 10mph or faster than the surrounding traffic.
> They found that lane splitters were splitting at lower speeds and in slower moving traffic than they had been previously.
> Time of day also varied greatly by lane-splitting status 59.5% of LSM were involved in collisions between 6-9 am or 3-4pm, compared with 37.3% of motorcyclists who were not lane-splitting.
> Patterns of injury were significantly different comparing LSM and other motorcyclists. LSM were notably less likely to suffer head injury (9.1% vs 16.5%), torso injury (18.6% vs 27.3%), or fatal injury (1.4% vs 3.1%) than other motorcyclists. The occurrence of neck injury and arm/leg injury did not differ meaningfully by lane-splitting status.
The authors of the report have promised further analysis on the data they collected. They plan to look at things such as age, gender, rider characteristics, and roadway conditions to further dig into what exactly is and isn’t dangerous on the roads.
You can read the summary of the UC Berkeley/CHP study yourself at this link.
I wrote this article a few days ago.. and it is now out of date!!!! The Harley Davidson “Captain America” bike from Easy Rider is now the most expensive motorcycle sold at auction. Going for $1.35 million US this is reportable the bike that was destroyed at the end of the movie and rebuilt a few years later. The “other” Captain America bike was stolen before the movie was finished and has never been seen again except for the fact that the man who authenticated this motorcycle as also authenticated another one as well….. hummmm. Here is a link to help explain this crazy story.
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I ran across a couple interesting articles on motorcycles at Gizmag.com on this subject. I was quite surprised at what I found as I read about the results of motorcycle auctions. I will not go in a lot of details, you can use the links below to read that and you should. The link also discusses the content of the top 100 bikes sold at auction.
What surprised me the most was the fact that the number one most expensive bike was one of which I have never heard. The top ten are:
1 – US$580,000 – 1910 Winchester
2 – US$551,200 – 1915 Cyclone Board Track Racer
3 – US$480,000 – 1939 BMW RS255 Kompressor
4 – US$463,847 – 1922 Brough Superior SS80
5 – US$452,234 – 1926 Brough Superior SS100
6 – US$450,000 – 1958 Ariel 650 Cyclone
7 – US$448,156 – 1929 Brough Superior SS100
8 – US425,943 – 1939 Brough Superior SS100
9 – US$394,101 – 1934 Brough Superior SS100
10 – US$383,317 – 1949 Vincent Black Lightning
Turns out that the person who bought the bike was a gun collector. I am very aware of the collector’s value of the name Winchester as several folks that I know collect Winchester. According to what I read only about 200 were made and only a few survived.
Winchester attempted to “diversify” and move into motorcycling along the lines of BSA and Royal Enfield which were also gun makers. Winchester had the bikes built and badged by another company and only stayed in the bike business for a few years. You can learn more about at the links below.
Now if you look at all of the top 100 most expensive bikes sold you would find that:
Brough Superiors in top 100 – 23
Vincent-HRDs in top 100 – 14
Harley-Davidsons in top 100 – 9
BMWs in top 100 – 8
Crockers in top 100 – 7
Indians in top 100 – 5
Ducatis in top 100 – 4
Flying Merkels in Top 100 – 4
Hendersons in Top 100 – 2
Iver Johnsons in Top 100 – 2
Hildebrand & Wolfmüllers in Top 100 – 2
To read more on the Winchester click here.
To read more on the Top 100 click here.
I JUST WANT 2 RIDE!! 