SUper coOL

My wife is so cool....

No, I mean it.  She has this ability to see what I am interested in and somehow find a way to show that it's cool with her that I am spending way too much time checking out this new thing.  A couple three weeks ago I came across this picture of what I thought was an old cafe racer style bike.  (Cafe racers started showing up in Britain and then later Europe in the late 50's and 60's.  Guys with common interests in going fast and riding bikes would tinker and tune their off the shelf bikes or bikes they'd salvaged from a heap. After a while these stripped down two wheel hot hods began showing up in number at the highway cafes around Britain's major towns.  The hot thing to do when 2 guys got to saying who's bike was fastest, was to put a song on the jukebox, a bet on the table, then both would hop out the door and as fast as they could ride down the road to the next cafe, turn round and be back before the song was over.  The first one in the door took the bet.)  These bikes were all the rage for a generation, and soon had their own mystique and unique styling that set them apart.

They were clean, their owners/makers stripped off every extra ounce of unneeded metal or plastic that they could.  They were stream-lined with shortened and often down turned handlebars, indicator lights moved out of the wind or just plain removed.  Many had engines from a bigger bike put into the frame of a smaller lighter one for better power.  Most had little packing in the exhaust and made a dreadful racket.  And best of all, rarely was one just like any other one, they were unique.  As individual as the guys who made them and rode them.

I started by talking about what I thought was an old cafe racer, but I was wrong, it was  anew one.  These old bikes are getting making quite a comeback in popularity so it seems and for a lot of the same reasons they originally came into being back 50 years ago.  Guys want a personal, unique bike and they don't want to break the bank getting it.  (Don't get me wrong, you can BUY a pre-made one for as much as you want to spend.)  There are a bunch of little shops out there willing to build you one.  But for the most part most of the new cafe racers are being made in a backyard shop a few hours a week by some guy with a cool idea in his head.

I also started off by saying just how cool my wife was.  She came home today with a cafe racer tee-shirt for me (YEAH!).  Babe, you rock!  I hope you know that I love you a ton, and that I will make sure to take you for a ride on it once I build it......