Met these guys with their dad last night doing some indoor mini bike racing. Kaleb and Mason are into something really really cool. They’re your modern day motorrad family. Kaleb and his bro were “just gettin’ in some practice.” Kaleb (14) has been racing a moded R6 for some time now and to meet him and chat about racing was mind blowing. Mason (11) holds his own on the track and is really coming along in the sport as well. They’re dad, Doug is doing an amazing job. These fellas are riding fast and smart. Check out their site and show these guys some support. Good luck this year.
If you’re even remotely serious about building bikes in the Twin Cities or Midwest for that matter then you probably know Rick. He’s a wealth of knowledge and quite a unique character. When I asked if I could get some pics for the site he responded with “I dont give a shit whatcha do.” Believe it or not, he and I get along really well. All the local bike and car guys gravitate to him when it comes to heavy duty fabrication work. He’s an all around motor man with decades of experience and experimentation.
I’ve heard him referred to as Handsome Rick, Fabricator Rick and my personal favorite… “Pinky.” Rick is one fine fella. He’s professionally or semi-professionally raced just about everything with a motor at one point or another. New rules have been written because he knows how to exploit the unmentioned details. He told me a little story about 3-wheeler ice racing in the 80’s. He asked what the widest wheel base allowed was. They said something like 3 feet. He went home and built a trike axle so narrow and with such narrow tires that you could canter around a corner like an 2-wheeled enduro. They showed up a couple weekends in a row. Won 1st place in their amateur division on every race they attended. The next season they introduced a minimum wheel base and that was that.
Rick’s really a bit of a living legend when I start to really think about it. I’m pretty sure he’s never had a “regular job.” At one point in his life he was racing 48 weekends out of the year at different tracks across the US. The last time I visited, the founder of House of Kolors Paint, Jon Kosmoski happened to drop by with a front end for Rick to work up. On top of it all, he’s a really solitary guy.
He’s good shit and he’s probably one of the most interesting guys I’ve met since my move to the Midwest. Who better to start off our first ever Garage feature than the one-man garage master himself. I shared all kinds of oddball ideas with him and he always says to me, “if you can imagine it, I can make it.”
welcome to the chopper blog Garage Feature I. More to come.
Every now and again I cruise on over to Hoppermag.com to check out the work these guys are doing. They do a great job of feeding the chop culture with all sorts of high quality video production and we highly recommend everyone heading over there right now to check out exactly what I’m talking about. That said, they are particular about how their media is presented. Because I work on an “ask for forgiveness not permission” policy, I apologize in advance for what I have done. I boosted a couple videos from their site to post here and share. Sorry Hoppermag. I know this isnt what you intended but look at the bright side. I’ve linked to your site like 3 times in this post already! Sharing is caring!
Yeah – This is actually NOT a chop job! It’s originally some kind of Italian trike frame including the truckster style bed. The guy who finished it said the old bed was garbage so he had to whip up a new one. He also installed a twin hydro powered jack motors to automatically lift and dump as needed. He also ended up replacing the front end and tank with some Honda stuff cause the original condition of a lot of the thing was pretty rough. Anyway. It’s clean, runs great, clutchless 4 speed w/ reverse and it would make a great track toy. Gotta get me one!
January 23, 2012 10:27 am | 
