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Aermecchia no longer makes motorcycles today (they make jet engines) but there are still a lot of devoted Aermacchia fans, and web sites devoted to these bikes. Not surprising, as these are without exception gorgeous bikes, and very well constructed. Spare parts are available, and there's even a firm in the Netherlands that can supply parts, new frames, and even complete replicas of Aermacchis.
http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/y...57693_main.jpg
I am enamored with the 350 Sprint….
http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/y...vidson/350.jpg
G'Day,
Oldie but a real goldie.....
Some might remember H-D Hollis: http://metropolistv.nl/en/themes/ame...ns-in-shanghai
He is currently in Chengdu for the new HD dealership but the video is a few years old (1st. HD shop in Shanghai = Gudai Road HD Dealership).
Quality is most likely the vital thing that noise your thoughts when you're considering the buy of any method of transport. What make the Harley Davidson motorbikes well-known are its exclusive roar, design and heavy organisation that created the way for the chopper-style look. Harley Davidson is known for their top excellent motorbikes with over 750 cc website displacement that is appropriate for lengthy way route. It creates a top excellent that has outlasted many other competitive motorbikes that just couldn't take the warm like one of the best motorbikes.
HOGS ACROSS CHINA: The Ride of a Lifetime
By Michael Gougis - Contributing Writer
June 19, 2012 - Craig Franz and Gary Mraz gave up after five days on the road.
They were supposed to escort a group of Chinese riders to dinner and help the visitors plan out the rest of their route. Members of the Shanghai HOG (Harley Owners Group) had flown to Southern California, rented some Harley-Davidsons, and wanted to meet some of the local dealers; Harley executives had called Franz, owner and principal of the brand’s dealership in Westminster and the H-D clothing store in Huntington Beach, and asked him to ride briefly with the group.
The one-day ride had turned into several; Franz and Mraz, a Long Beach moto-journalist, were riding without supplies or clean clothes, just kind of getting dragged along by the enthusiasm of their charges. Finally, they bailed out just before the group crossed into Nevada and headed for Vegas.
This was nuts.
But it was only the start of the real craziness.
That Southern California ride led to an invitation for the ride of a lifetime for Franz and Mraz; a seven-day, 1,700-mile ride with the Shanghai HOG from Shanghai to Qingdao and back.
This story is not a travelogue. You, gentle reader, can get your fill of stories about Chinese food and hotel accommodations from any number of different sources.
This story is about a pair of Southern Californians who stormed their way across China on big, powerful Harley-Davidson motorcycles with no drivers’ licenses, no real idea of where they were going, and very little idea of what they were getting into once the kickstand came up. They didn’t know the names of the cities they traveled through. They didn’t know sometimes who was feeding them. They weren't wearing helmets. They were simply following the bike in front of them and hanging on for dear life.
“I couldn’t tell you whether we were going north, south, east or west. We were just following the guy in front of us,” Franz says.
Still, the tale of the ride itself offers an insight into the China of 2011.
The event itself was the third annual Shanghai HOG ride, and it took place in October of 2011. Having been such excellent hosts for the Shanghai group when they came to Southern California, Franz and Mraz were invited by the president of Harley-Davidson China to come along for the ride. At the time they went, there were about 1,000 Harleys in all of China, and seven dealerships; there are ten now, Franz says.
The pair flew into Shanghai and they were scheduled to spend a day orienting themselves to the traffic rules of China. Understand these are a pair of very experienced motorcyclists; Franz is a former police motorcycle officer, familiar with the process of pursuit, and Mraz test-rides bikes for several motorcycle magazines.
What they found shocked even them.
“They have what they call first right. This means that whoever is one inch in front of the other person has the right of way. So everyone is pushing forward aggressively to be first. It’s sheer madness,” Mraz says. “That’s the way they ride anything with two wheels. They’ll ride this close” – Mraz holds his finger and thumb about an inch apart – “to a semi coming the other direction at 75 miles an hour. They are the best motorcyclists I’ve ever met. They have to be or they’re dead.”
“They told us that we were going to ride around on the first day in Shanghai to get used to riding in China,” Franz says. “So on this training day, our guide took us up an off-ramp onto the highway, where we weren’t supposed to be anyway,” he said. “They told us, look, everything you’re going to do is illegal. Get used to it.”
The explosion of China’s middle class is well documented. Suffice it to say for the purposes of this story is that, just like people everywhere else in the world, Chinese people with money to spare spend some of it on cool toys. Harleys fit the bill nicely, as do expensive cars.
The difficulty is that the law and the infrastructure are still trying to catch up. Full-size motorcycles like Harley-Davidsons remain relatively rare, so the traffic laws simply don’t recognize the existence of such vehicles. If it’s got two wheels, whether it’s a bicycle or a full-dress touring motorcycle, the same rules govern it.
So motorcycles are not allowed on the main highways, and the pair of American riders found themselves slicing through traffic, trying to shuffle their Harleys through lanes and turnstiles designed for human-powered two-wheelers and dodging vehicles and pedestrians of all sorts on roads where people are not expecting a caravan of a dozen or more Harleys.
“When you have a vehicle half a block in front of you,” says Franz, the former officer, “and you want to catch it but you don’t want it to know that you’re there, you kind of dodge in and out of cars while we’re catching him. That’s what we did seven straight days, six to eight hours a day.”
Another principle that governed Chinese traffic, they quickly found, was that the big guy had the right of way.
“It was the first day out of Shanghai,” Franz says. “We were leaving Shanghai and we were in the country on a small two-lane road, weaving in and out of traffic. Up until then, we had made our way through traffic, passing on the right, passing on the left, doing whatever we had to do. Then we got behind this bus – a huge, two-story bus – and he was driving so aggressively that not only couldn’t we pass him, we were afraid to! He was literally going into oncoming traffic. He didn’t care if there were cars coming – they would have to go onto the shoulder. He was parting the seas. We stayed behind him. He was driving that tour bus like we were riding our bikes.”
Combine that with the fact that China is still building – at breakneck speed – a national highway system, and that was a recipe for some of the more interesting moments of the trip.
Mraz recalled riding down a paved road that suddenly ended in an incomplete bridge over a river. The closest crossing designed for big motorized vehicles was 40 miles away. The ride’s leader had another plan. “They had built a little walkway bridge that people on scooters and pedestrians used to get across,” Mraz says. “So our leader – on a thousand-pound Harley – said, ‘Look, I’m going to go across. If it doesn’t collapse, we’re good.’ It was swaying, there was only about this much room” – he held his hands about a foot apart – “on either side of us on the bridge, but he made it – and so we did. It was real Indiana Jones kind of stuff.”
Adding to the overall level of madness was the legal advice the pair had received.
“They told us, if in fact – they don’t have much of a police force there – if in fact a police car lights us up at any time, you two Americans keep going, we’ll stop,” Mraz says. “We were told, do not stop for anything. We didn’t have a Chinese drivers’ license – you have to have one – and we didn’t own the bikes. We were running so illegal. We were told to just keep going.”
You get the idea. It was the trip of a lifetime, in ways inspired and insane. The memories they brought back – priceless.
“They had the equivalent of a county fair,” Franz says. “One of the guys riding with us – he either knew a guy who owned the restaurant or was the owner of the restaurant, I’m not sure – anyway, they set up tables on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant and we ate dinner. I don’t even know what city we were in. We left dinner and I got into line and just followed everyone.
“As we approach an intersection, the leader makes a left turn and goes up onto the sidewalk. So all 14 of us go up onto the sidewalk and we go about a half-block and turn into a parking lot. You can see a carnival with ticket booths out front. We ride right past the ticket takers and we’re riding past rides and carnival games and bumper cars – it’s like riding through the Los Angeles County Fair. People were stopping their bumper cars and getting out to watch us as we idle through.
“We approach a canopy that had three motorcycles in it. Someone was there displaying some bikes and they had a couple of models there to attract attention. We got off the bikes and suddenly there are at least 500 people crowding around us. We were there for an hour and a half. We were as close to being rock stars as could be. The models insisted on having their pictures taken with us. It was unbelievable.”
For Mraz, his most memorable moment was quieter, yet no less moving.
“We were riding with someone named Yin. He invited us to the celebration of his 30th anniversary with his wife,” Mraz says. “He brought us completely into his home. We were instantly family. That’s one of the things I felt with everyone. There was nothing weird about us being Americans. We were instantly family.”
June 27 Event
Note: Franz and Mraz will be presenting a multi-media show of their travels through China with the Shanghai HOG at 6-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 27, at Keesal Young & Logan, 14th floor, 400 Oceangate, Long Beach, 90802. The event is sponsored by the Long Beach Qingdao China Sister City Association. The cost is $15, and reservations can be made by calling 562/244-7644.
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http://lbbusinessjournal.com/long-be...-lifetime.html
Ahem, it's as though these guys have torn pages from any one us regualr MCM mob and directly out of our riding in China by numbers - diaries. Sure seems like dejavu!
Thanks for posting this TB-Racing. Interesting read, and it is great that people are spreading the word and stimulating interest in riding China.
Yup, as Bikerdoc mentions, deja vu for most MCM'rs. Certainly brings back memories of my own initial experiences.
HD China Regional Office Party 30/06 Saturday Shanghai (registration and kick-off: 13:30 / 45 Nanchang Road, Shanghai City Central Building)
http://www.harley-davidson.cn
You intending to go?Quote:
Originally Posted by TB-Racing
I'd head up if the weather can behave, and I can deal with this humidity now that I'm back after my 3 months and 60K km plus riding in OZ and NZ... spoilt, ah was so great having so many isolated places devoid of numbskulls, and when I did meet others they were curteous 99% of the time, and the connection of mutual understanding... then back into this ... place... oh well... so back on topic...
are you going? All me riding mates have been on a week long deep south ride.
nope, out of town for business......Quote:
Originally Posted by bikerdoc