Born To Ride News

The following article appeared in the Space Coast Florida Today Newspaper.

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20106100309

Rogue

Sturgis Freedom Fighters

Motorcycle Hall Of Fame Member 2005

www.bikerrogue.com

Brothers to build motorcycles at Billy Lane’s former Melbourne shop

BY WAYNE T. PRICE • FLORIDA TODAY • June 10, 2010

Marc Parker certainly doesn’t look or talk the part of the bad boy.

There’s no swagger as he walks around his soon-to-open Melbourne showroom and workshop. Every other word out of his mouth isn’t an expletive. He’s not covered with tattoos.

 ”It’s because I’m from South Carolina and tattoo parlors are illegal in South Carolina,” the 40-year-old Parker said. “You actually have to travel out of state to get tattoos and I never did it. Now that I’m living here in Florida, I guess I should get some.”

 Body art, however, isn’t Parker’s main mission these days. The art of building custom motorcycles is.

Craig Rubadoux, FLORIDA TODAY

 In less than two weeks, he and his brother Shanon, plan on opening Parker Brothers Choppers at 1243 N. Harbor City Boulevard. If the address is familiar, it’s where Billy Lane operated Choppers Inc. for several years.

Parker Brothers has its logo — a shadowy image of the comic and tragedy masks — but it hasn’t been placed in front of the 3,500-square-foot burnt orange colored building where Parker and his brother will operate the business.

They plan to design, build and sell motorcycles ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. Unlike other so-called custom motorcycle shops, the Parker brothers will build entire bikes, including fabricating parts and hand-manufacturing frames and metal work.

“All my life I’ve been building motorcycles and cars,” Parker said. “Where I grew up you start learning to swing a wrench at a pretty early age. You start tinkering with stuff when you’re young and then you start customizing things when you’re a little bit older because you want to make it cool.”

One of those “cool things” is the replica of the “bat pod” motorcycle from “The Dark Knight” Batman movie. The two brothers spent 1,500 hours designing and putting together a working replica and then advertised it on eBay.

It drew tens of thousands of hits and, unfortunately, earned a rebuke from the “Dark Knight” film studio for using an image from the movie in their advertisements without permission.

The brothers quickly removed the movie image and then they decided to raffle off their creation, selling 5,000 tickets at $20 each. The drawing will be held at noon July 31.

If nothing else, the “bat pod” has been good promotional buzz for Parker Brothers Choppers at a time when chopper makers aren’t getting the best publicity.

Lane, whom Parker knew socially, was sentenced in August to six years in prison after pleading no contest to one count of vehicular homicide for crashing his pickup truck head-on into 56-year-old Sebastian Inlet Park ranger Gerald Morelock’s motorcycle in 2006.

Parker, who once owned Parker Brothers bar in downtown Melbourne, stresses that for him, designing motorcycles and choppers is less about image and more about art. And art, more so than the fate of guys like Lane and James, is driven by the tepid recovery of the economy.

By all means, 2009 was a wreck of a year for the industry, according to the Irvine, Calif.-based Motorcycle Industry Council. Sales of street bikes, off-road motorcycles and scooters fell 43.2 percent from 2008. In the first quarter of this year, sales of motorcycles and scooters were down 4.6 percent compared with the same period in 2009.

Choppers, in the last 20 years, have become more popular as motorcycling in general has increased, said Pete terHorst, a spokesman for the Pickerington, Ohio-based American Motorcyclist Association. That niche has been hit by the recession just as the industry as a whole has been affected, he said.

“It’s not inexpensive to buy custom-built motorcycles like that,” terHorst said. “You have to have some expendable dollars to buy them.”

Parker said he is well aware the rocky road ahead, at least for the near future, but he’s confident Parker Brothers Choppers won’t take a spill.

“Everybody is hurting right now,” Parker said of the economy. “But if you do things that are unique enough and you stand out from the rest of the crowd, you can still make a decent living doing the custom-bike thing.”

Utah Highway Patrol speaks out regarding motorcycle checkpoint

On May 30, starting around 3 p.m., the Utah Highway Patrol conducted a motorcycle-only checkpoint on Interstate 80 near the Miller Motorsports Park. The date and time were such that the checkpoint stopped fan traffic leaving the facility following a U.S. round of the Hannspree FIM Superbike World Championship.

The timing of the checkpoint and discriminatory nature of the action — only motorcyclists were stopped — were troubling. Indeed, an already difficult traffic situation was made far worse by the checkpoint.

Although cooler heads prevailed, and the checkpoint was called off after approximately two hours, a number of motorcyclists contacted the AMA with questions, and the AMA contacted the Utah Highway Patrol to get answers.

Below is the statement provided by the Utah Highway Patrol on June 9 regarding the incident:

Thank you for your correspondence to the Utah Highway Patrol in reference to our checkpoint in Tooele County during Memorial Weekend. We have been receiving on a daily basis correspondence from our constituents and from people from all over the United States in regards to this checkpoint. Many were upset and others just wanted to know the reason behind our educational checkpoint. We will provide you a copy of the correspondence we have been utilizing to respond to our constituents. Please feel free to forward our response to the motorcyclists who attended the event and are inquiring about it. In our response, we provide an explanation for our actions, our intentions and an apology for our honest intent. Even though we conducted this checkpoint during Memorial Weekend to educate and save lives, we still had only one fatal accident in the entire State of Utah during the holiday and it was a motorcycle rider. Let me know if you need anything else but I think our response answers most of your questions.

Thank you for your correspondence to the Utah Highway Patrol. I’ve been asked to reply to your concerns regarding the traffic checkpoint on Sunday, May 30th in Tooele County.  First let me apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused you or anyone attending the racing event on Sunday afternoon.  We had targeted Memorial Day Weekend to do our best to keep the number of fatalities in Utah down.  We identified three factors which lead to many deaths in Utah and wanted to try and make an impact on these factors.  The areas we were focusing on were DUI enforcement, occupant restraint and motorcycle education.  On Friday and Saturday night the Highway Safety Office conducted a DUI checkpoint in Utah and Davis Counties with the Utah Highway Patrol participating.  On Sunday a motorcycle checkpoint was conducted in Tooele County.

The intent of the checkpoint was to redirect as many motorcycles as there were officers participating (7-10), to the side and have a brief (a few minutes) discussion about motorcycle safety issues such as proper displacement, helmets, equipment, and safety of the motorcycle.  If 7-10 motorcycles were pulled over then all other motorcycles and passenger vehicles were allowed to travel through without interruption as well.  It appears that many motorcycles did not understand they could travel through and stopped.  According to the operations plan this was not suppose to create a burden for motorists and was not to be time consuming for motorcycle operators.  The checkpoint started at 3 PM and went well for over an hour until the major event ended and a tremendous volume of traffic hit the checkpoint around 4:30 PM.  We obviously underestimated the number of vehicles and created an unexpected large back up for motorists. When it became apparent the checkpoint was creating a large traffic backup it was opened immediately.  At 5:12 PM the all signs were pulled out of the road and the checkpoint was in the beginning stages of being taken down.  It was then determined that because of the amount of traffic, it would create a burden to the public, and the checkpoint was not re-established and canceled for the remainder of the night.

Please forgive us for our oversight.  It was certainly not our intent to bring a negative aspect to the tremendous event being held in Tooele County, or to our state.  Our intention was to educate riders on safety issues and try our best to reduce the rising rate of deaths on Utah roadways from motorcycle riders.  The rate of deaths of Utah motorcycle riders is the only fatality rate which is increasing while every other category is decreasing.  We would never do anything intentionally to put a negative spin on such an event as this.  It was an honest attempt to try and focus on motorcycle operator’s safety. Please rest assured, this has been a learning experience for our agency and it will not happen again.

Sincerely,

Sgt. David Moreno
Utah Highway Patrol

Retrieved June 10, 2010; from http://www.amadirectlink.com/news/story.asp?id=2017

Lehman Trikes Announces 2010 Good Turn Trike Recipient

Lehman Trikes is proud to announce that Charles Lyons of Castle Rock, CO is the 2010 Good Turn Trike recipient! Born with Cerebral Palsy, Charles’ determination and optimistic attitude have helped him to far exceed milestones in life that he was not supposed to accomplish. Most recently, he got his endorsement and purchased a motorcycle to accomplish three new goals: To start a motorcycle club called “Enabled” for disabled people, to inspire those that have disabilities to accomplish anything if they want it badly enough, and finally, to ride alongside his Dad. As hard as he has tried, balance and safety have become a big issue and Charles has not been able to accomplish these new goals.

“We are very proud to have Charles as this year’s recipient,” stated Ken Hines, President and CEO of Lehman Trikes. “His determination and passion to help others is inspirational and we are thrilled to be able to offer the stepping stone to help him accomplish his goals.”

The Good Turn Trike is a program sponsored by Lehman Trikes that converts the recipient’s motorcycle into a trike. The recipient is a person that, despite physical or financial means, continues to make a positive impact in the lives of others and illustrates the program’s motto of “one good turn deserves another”. Applications are accepted throughout the year and are available at Lehman dealerships and the Lehman Trikes website, http://www.lehmantrikes.com/.

This year, Lehman Trikes will be installing a Renegade conversion onto Charles’ 2002 Harley-Davidson Firefighter Edition Road King. The trike is scheduled to be presented to Charles at the “Thunder In The Rockies Bikefest” in Loveland, Colorado on Saturday, September 4, 2010.

For more information on Lehman Trikes, please contact:

Sales/Public Relations Information

Jaime L. Kreager

Creative Media & PR Coordinator

Lehman Trikes USA, Inc.

125 Industrial Drive

Spearfish, SD 57783

Phone: 605-642-2111                                                       

Fax: 605-642-1184