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friday night motorcycle adventures.
I'd seen the Harley Davidson Cafe on the Strip the last time I was in Vegas, but didn't have time to stop in. So, naturally, I made Peter go in with me while we cruised the Strip on Friday night.

There was an interesting crowd there that night; there were some sort of drag races going on in the desert the following day, and so there were about a million and a half bikers wearing various colors milling about the place. Most seemed to be from the Nevada Banditos chapter, though I saw a few with Texas Banditos jackets as well. There were also around 25 cops standing around nervously in clumps of 5 or 6, but there certainly weren't any skirmishes of note while we were there. Perhaps they were there for deterrance, in which case, they seemed to be effective.

The guys with the most custom-and-chromed choppers had them parked out front. One bike really stood out; it was your typical Harley shape, but had a gorgeous flaming flag design painted on the teardrop tank and multiple Arlen Ness-esque chromed bolt-ons. The owner was your stereotypical cruiser club member -- older, pot bellied, scraggly grey hair and mustauche, doo-rag, chaps. He was happy to talk about his bike, though; he told me what kind of bike it was under all the paint (a Harley Night Rider), and let me sit on it for a picture.

We went inside the cafe after that, where I was thrilled to see Harleys as art everywhere. They were hanging from the ceiling, set up on stages, and even attached to pulleys which moved along the wall in front of a gigantic American flag spray-painted on dangling chain links. For my money, that's the art of the motorcycle.

The cafe had a replica of the Easy Rider chopper set up in the corner, with a big sign asking patrons not to take personal photos. There was a young blonde girl working there who offered to take my picture on the bike; we ended up getting into a rather lengthy debate about whether or not the bike was one of the original bikes used in the movie, which embarrassed Peter to no end. The cafe employee claimed that there were four choppers made for the movie: one was destroyed in production, one was stolen from a warehouse pre-relase of the film, Peter Fonda had one, and this was the fourth. She had no knowledge of any replica that Glenn Bator and Jerry Sewell made in 1993 (funny, since that replica was at the Guggenheim exhibit right there in Vegas). I still stand by my belief that there were only two original bikes, and they were indeed destroyed in production (as required by the script) and stolen from a warehouse. Otherwise, wouldn't you think that one of the original bikes would be at the Guggenheim, instead of the '93 replica? If anyone knows differently, email me and teach me something new.

At any rate, I didn't end up buying the $15 photo of me sitting on what may or may not be an Easy Rider chopper. I'm still amazed that they haven't figured out a way to charge you to breathe in Las Vegas.

We hung around outside for a little while again after that, and listened to the guys tweak their drag racers' motors until our eardrums gave out. I managed to remain relatively motorcycle-free for the remainder of Friday, with the occasional exception of a head-turn to watch a V-twin rumble down the Strip.

saturday afternoon motorcycle adventures.
We got out of bed much later than expected on Saturday, but eventually found our way to the Venetian hotel to see the Guggenheim exhibit. It was divided up by rooms, roughly by decade, with between 5-10 bikes per room. It was fun to look at the early bikes from the late 1800s - early 1900s; we traced tubes around and located distributor caps and figured out how they'd run and how they'd work. The docents scolded us a few times for pointing too closely at the bikes -- apparently we needed to stay at least 5" away, lest our finger cooties jump the gap and soil their motorcycles.

Despite their hour head start, we caught up to Kim and Jason somewhere around the 1920s. We wandered through the rest of the exhibit with them, continuing to poke and prod (still from 5" away!) and trace and ooh and ahh and all that good stuff. Frankly, my favorite part of the exhibit was the short movie they had in the 1930s room, made up of various film shorts stitched together with a light narrative. There were clips from all sorts of movies, from Roman Holiday to Rumble in the Bronx to Rocky Horror Picture Show. My only complaint about the exhibit as a whole would be that it isn't more interactive or multi-media; with the exception of that one film, the entire exhibit consisted of walking around looking at bikes and reading placards. Even I, with my amazing ability to obsess on all things motorcycle, got information-overloaded and restless by around 1970 or so. And there were still 30 years to go!

Overall, though, it was fun. I bought an overpriced "Art of the Motorcycle" T-shirt, and we all blathered about motorcycles over our overpriced lunch at the Venetian.

saturday night...just plain adventures.
This is only tangentially related to motorcycles, but it involves another fun and "dangerous" hobby that bely my Midwestern roots: guns. Bored of tossing our money into the black hole of slot machines, Peter and I headed for a remote shooting range on Saturday night (the Nevada Pistol Academy, if anyone cares), where we had oodles of fun. I won't get too much into the gun business here, since it's a touchy subject for some, but I know that Paul and Carla at least will get a kick out of hearing that we shot both an MP5 and a supressed uzi. Whee!

This ties back into motorcycling -- no, really! -- because while waiting for our cab to come pick us up, Peter and I got to talking to the employees about this submachine gun training course that's offered out there every spring and fall. Apparently, it's free (aside from hotel/airfare/etc) and the Pistol Academy people really spoke highly of it. Apparently, all I need to get Peter enthusiastic about travelling is to promise fully automatic weapons at the destination, as we spent the whole cab ride back babbling happily about taking a motorcycle ride back out to Vegas next spring to attend this class.

OK, I know this is my bike journal, not my deadly weapons journal, but I just love this picture. Bear with me.

And that was my motorcycling Vegas weekend.