It seems the folks at BMW have taken Dain Gingerelli’s idea of a “Bare Bones Bike” from the December issue of IronWorks magazine to heart. They have unveiled their Lo-Rider concept bike with the idea of selling the customer just a motorcycle. That way the customer can add whatever parts he wants to individualize his machine. The bike is designed to share common components with other BMW motorcycle models. The cruiser type looking Lo-Rider concept bike was introduced at the Milan, Italy show. There has been no word yet on whether or not the Lo-Rider project will go into production for sale to the public.

The Haley Owners Group has announced that it’s 2009 National Rally will be held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma June 26 -27 2009. The H.O.G. membership will meet at the Oklahoma State Fair Park in Oklahoma City for rally activities. There will be 2 stages for musical performances, plus attendees will be able to take demo rides on the 2009 models plus watch motorcycle stunt and drill teams perform.

The 2009 American Muscle Tour will be held July 14 - 19th. The ride will wind from the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There is a 1000 participant capacity for this ride.

Famous long distance rider Dave Zien continues to pound out the miles on his 1991 FXRT. Zien routinely racks up 1000 mile a day rides on his motorcycle like we do trips to the grocery store. So far Zien has put over 992,000 miles on the bike. When he was leaving the west coast heading back to Wisconsin he planned to put the bike in storage for the winter. Plans are to bring the bike back out in the spring and turn the 1,000,000 mile mark on the odometer at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee.

Okay people I’m looking for a lot of help on a project I’m starting. I’m planning a nationwide charity poker run. We’ll decide on a good day to have it, April 1st sounds good to me, and then we’ll have simultaneous rides across the country. Maybe at the end of each ride we’ll have a bake sale too because we need to raise all the cash we can. So what charity is this going to benefit you ask? Well that would be despondent financial CEOs of course. I mean one company CEO has agreed to live on a paltry $600,000 salary this year. He only made $68 million last year but now the government has to bail out his company. Some other execs in that company also made 8 figure salaries.

It looks like we might have to make this a yearly event because the big three American automakers are on Capitol Hill pleading poverty and looking for a hand out too. Can you imagine how much the top brass of those companies haul down a year?

Chris Rivas of the G2 Motorsports/Drag Specialties/S&S Cycle Team won his 4th race of the season at the season ending race at the Pomona, California track. Rivas and fellow independent rider Matt Smith placed their S&S powered bikes second and third in the season’s final standings.

Rivas won the race but Harley factory team rider Eddie Krawiec won the overall season championship on his Screamin’ Eagle/Vance and Hines machine. Krawiec became the second rider in the history of the class to win the championship without winning a finals race the entire season.

The International Motorcycle Shows (IMS) is giving women discounts on admissions to their shows on Friday nights. Women get 50% off the regular price of admission by presenting a downloadable coupon at the box office when purchasing their event ticket. The coupon is not good for admission, you still have to buy the ticket. Don’t worry guys, this “Ladies Night Out” doesn’t mean ladies only. This discount should help entice more lady riders and women interested in motorcycling to attend the shows.

It seems that the new generation of riders has discovered something that we old timers have known for a long time (the November 3rd IWBlogger post “Tuning The Bike“), that motorcycles and music go together like peanut butter and jelly. On December 5th a new web site will be launched combining today’s music and motorcycles. Rockmoto wants to introduce more young people into the joys of motorcycling the right way. The site will feature riding rock stars, information for new riders and the introduction of Rockmoto Radio through Pandora.