Cafe Cowboy

Here's a fantastic video about a guy named Dustin Kott, a California based bike builder who makes custom British style cafe racers out of older Japanese bikes. It's beautifully shot, and just listening to Dustin talk about his passion for the bikes and building them is quite poetic. Enjoy folks, enjoy.

Cafe cowboy from benedict campbell on Vimeo.

A Non-Awesome Snow Morning: Counter-Post

This post is purely to help me recover from this morning's unwanted adventures. Right now I'm listening to some good 'ol fashioned rock and roll, and daydreaming about cruising around in my car during the summer months. Sunglasses, shorts, ice cream, coca-cola classic, a summer breeze and open windows are running wildly through my head.

And for good measure....

Carb Rebuild

So unfortunately I've been having some problems with my bike lately. Big time bummer since I just got the thing and was planning on using it for commuting. Anyways, I began troubleshooting the issues recently and am happy to report that it is back together and running almost back to normal. Still have one or two other things to check out, but progress was definitely made.

One thing I did was to replace the spark plug, and also to take apart the carburetor on the bike, clean it, and put it all back together. For those unaware, on a non-fuel injected vehicle, the carburetor is a device that mixes the air and fuel before sending it into the engine to be burned up. I had never attempted anything like this before, but with the service manual by my side it wasn't overly difficult. Plus I learned a lot. Here's some pics of the strip down, and carb rebuild.

New spark plug next to old one [with tons of carbon build up on it.]

My bike, minus the plastics, seat, and gas tank

That little gap is where the carburetor goes

Here's what it looks like

And here it is completely taken apart. The little gold things are the jets for the fuel, and the stuff on the left is the float, float bowl, needles, and hoses -- All cleaned up

Easter Keg Hunt 2010

Last year's Easter Keg Hunt did not go super well. And one might argue that this year's went even worse. Here is my story.

My team [Team DC Sportbikes] unfortunately did not plan very well this year. The usual orchestrator of our attack has been busy recovering from various surgeries and prepping for the upcoming race season. Thus, this year's event slipped a lot of our minds, and we never really got around to forming a plan.

The weather has been great recently, so I've also been riding my new bike into work. So I get in early this morning and pull up DC101 on the computer and start listening. Lots of people calling in saying how they've found kegs, which really made me wish we had planned this year. For those unaware, each year there is one 'golden Easter keg' that is hidden somewhere with one of the people from the radio show. He calls in periodically and gives clues to where it might be. Clues 1-3 only revealed that they were in fact in DC somewhere. Then I heard clue #4 and knew instantly where they were. Clue 4 was "Under the lights" -- they were at RFK stadium. How did I know this? Well the prizes for all the other redeemed kegs were tickets to DC United's home opener this weekend. I put 2 and 2 together real quick and knew RFK was the location.

I asked my supervisor if I could try and go for it, and he said "yea man, just call me if you get it and I'll come pick up the keg in my car." So I threw the jacket and helmet back on, and blasted over to RFK as quickly as possible on the DRZ.

Cause I'm also a nerd I had the 'I Heart Radio' app going on my iPhone while riding over there. I made it to RFK in about 10 minutes and snuck around a fence or two on the bike (WHICH I AM LOVING BY THE WAY) and starting blasting around the parking lots with my head on a swivel looking for a DC101 van of some kind. Unfortuntely the app cut out briefly and I missed the last clue which probably would've helped.

I checked all the parking lots with nothing to be found, so I headed back under the tunnel and decided to park near the offices. I hopped off the bike and start walking up to the security guard. As I'm walking up, another guy is just behind me walking up as well. We asked each other if we were going for the keg, which confirmed we both had the clues right. I was trying to talk to the security guard to let me peak onto the field to see if it was there.

She didn't know what I was talking about, so she called someone on the radio and I asked them if they knew anything about DC101 and the Easter Keg Hunt. "Yea, they're supposed to be here" the voice responded. I begged the guard to let me go check the field real quick. No sooner am I trying to convince her I'm not a lunatic, then I hear on the radio [DC101] that two guys just nabbed it, and they were indeed on the field at RFK.

NOOO! SOOOOO CLOSE!

After a minute of chatting with the guy with me at the entrance I started walking back to the bike and I see the two guys carrying the golden keg back to their car. I walked over and let them and said hi and let them know how close I was. They were nice guys, we chatted for a few about the keg hunt. They were actually driving by the stadium when they heard the clue about "under the lights." Had I not circled all the parking lots and just gone and tried to go straight onto the field I bet I would've gotten it. Un-freakin-believable! Oh well.

On my way back to my building I decided to do a lap or two around the tidal basin since it's such a nice day out. It was packed full of people looking at the cherry blossoms, one kid even tried to give me a high five as I rode by. [And yes mom, I literally am that close from work.]

In conclusion, team DC Sportbikes [me] came very very close to snagging the mother Golden Keg. This fuels my inspiration for next year, which hopefully will go better.

Oh, and the prize for finding the golden keg? Free beer for one whole year. Yea.....

UPDATE: I just learned that one of my friends over at DC United was the woman behind the whole collaboration between DC101 and DC United. A little heads up would've been nice, but I certainly understand why I didn't hear a peep about it! ;) Congrats DC United office workers, who are also friends of mine, for a perfectly executed marketing operation! Now everyone go to the home opener this Saturday!

My New Toy!

A little over a week ago I mentioned I had some big news, and today....you get that news! Well, it may not be news anymore because some of you already know, but it's still fun.

Recently I had been saving up and putting money aside every month with the goal of buying a new, louder, more powerful exhaust system for the Challenger. I had a pretty good amount put aside, and then the weather started to get nice, and all of a sudden I started to see motorcycles on the road again. Now, most of you will remember that I did have a motorcycle previously, but decided to sell it last year before I ordered the Challenger, because at the time I knew I couldn't swing both. Well, a year later, it was time to start looking for another one.

Then about 2 weeks ago, I went and looked at one for sale from a member of DCSBN, and really liked it. He let me take it for a quick test spin around the neighborhood and I was hooked. I wanted to get a bike mainly for commuting to and from work in the summer. It's faster, cheaper [55mpg], I get to use the HOV lanes, plus it won't be nearly as tempting to put commuting miles on the Challenger when the weather is nice now, since I'll just ride the bike into work.

What I got is a Suzuki DRZ-400Sm [pictured above], and it's what's referred to as a supermoto bike, or motard, or just 'tard for short. It's basically a big dirt bike, but designed for street use with small off-road capabilities [gravel, packed dirt trails, grass, etc]. It'll be a great commuter bike for riding into and out of DC everyday. So far I really like it, am having a lot of fun, and am glad I decided to get this instead of a new exhaust system for the car...which will still happen, just not as soon as I had originally planned.

Anyway, I picked up the bike on Sunday afternoon, and on Wednesday afternoon had a chance to ride it over to my parents house to share with them my news! The following is a quick video of what went down. That's my roommate Chris with me in the video on his Harley Davidson sportster something something. Enjoy, and expect plenty more motorcycle videos to come!

[motorcycle surprise]

Motorsport in Slo-Mo

I just found these videos of some amazing racing footage in slow motion. From grassroots and vintage racing, to the super high tech machines we know today, it's all motor-sport, and it's all beautiful.....just a little more so when it's in super slow motion. Enjoy.

Mini Bikes

My buddy who I went to visit out in San Diego has a friend on his inter tube water polo team [yes, you read that correctly] that has a house about 20 minutes inland from the beach. He tore up his backyard and built a mini dirt bike track. On Sunday he invited us all out there to tear it up all afternoon long. I was in heaven. Even though I had never ridden a dirt bike before, this was right up my alley! I just pulled my mountain biking and [street] motorcycle experience together and let it rip! Probably some of the most fun I've had in recent history. This is pretty much exactly what I want to do with some land near my house in the future. I'm definitely gonna buy one of these....or three. There's really not a whole lot more I can explain except that it was an absolute blast, the pictures say it all. Enjoy. [PS, click any of the pictures for full view!]

The aftermath. I've got some sweet battle wounds!

EITM's Easter Keg Hunt

Okay, without out going into too much detail: Every year Elliot In The Morning holds their Easter Keg Hunt on Good Friday. Basically they hide 101 kegs (including 1 golden keg) throughout the entire metropolitan area [MD, DC, VA] and you go out hunting for them and turn them in for prizes at the keg redemption party that night usually held at a bar in downtown DC. I joined a team of a bunch of good folks from DCSportbikes.net to get in on the hunt this year. We've been planning for about the last month and a half. Final plans were being made early this week when we got wind of some unsettling news: the keg hunt was not happening this year. [Audio Here] WHAT? NO! The EITM fan blog site has our early efforts documented here and our reaction here.

Anyways, the hunt was canceled, but we had already gone through too much planning to let it all slip away. So a bunch of us decided it would be a good idea to get up really really early [my alarm went off at 2:45 this morning] and meet up and ride/drive out to the DC101 studios and wait for the EITM class to arrive, still showing our support for the Keg Hunt. We killed almost 2 hours before they went on air, just chilling right next to the entrance to the building and waved at the class as they arrived. Once the show started we called in, and managed to get ourselves invited up into the studio to chat with them for a little bit. They were quite appreciative of our support, because they were just as bummed as we were that it didnt happen this year.

Right now it's 11:45am which means I've been up for 9 hours already, and I haven't eaten my lunch yet! Can you say serious nap time after work today?! Moving on, here's a few pictures from this morning. Enjoy and Happy Easter!

Vintage Motorcycle Racing

This is the first of the many, many video & music posts I know I'll be sharing with everyone. I listen to a lot of music and sometimes come across some great videos that simply need to be shared. This video was made by a member of DCSBN and it's one that I could watch over and over. Great footage, and the song chosen for the video couldn't be more perfect. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!