Up To Speed

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com Reader feedback from over the weekend in this post: Bill Kerber emailed with a link to some neat video of a 1913 Indian motorcycle in action: Jerry Miller wanted to know how to log in to post a comment. I explained that a few days ago …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com Polaris Industries, maker of Victory motorcycles, purchased Indian this past week. What will the impact be? Will it bring new life to a brand that started in 1901, died in the 1950s and has been revived twice since? Rick Barrett of “The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel” has an overview …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com On this Easter, it’s a song that’s cheery and upbeat – “Little Honda” by The Hondells. It was written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love of The Beach Boys, who also released it as a single. However, The Hondells version had greater chart success in …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com Got two surprises when I got up before the roosters this morning. It was snowing in the Litchfield Hills at 5 a.m. and an email had arrived overnight from Bob Rosen of Fairfield, who had a website tip. He provided a link – and I am, …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com How’s that for a predictable headline? Scooter sales always go up when the price of gasoline spikes, and the spring of 2011 is no exception. The Motorcycle Industry Council reported today that scooters sales for the first three months of the year are up 49.6 …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com When it launched the Victory brand, Polaris Industries set out to take on Harley-Davidson with a high-quality line of cruisers. When the Indian brand was revived a few years ago, the goal was to revive a legendary nameplate and make it a high-end product. In a …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com Max BMW in Brookfield has undergone a makeover since Max Stratton bought what was Cliff’s Cycle Revolution. The customer lounge and conference room has been eliminated. That area is now parts storage, while the area that formerly housed the parts bins and shelves is now …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com When RIDE-CT needs info on old Indians, George Yarocki of Torrington is always the first person called, but the “Daily Hampshire Gazette” in Easthampton, Mass. reports that a guy up there named Michael Baer knows a good deal about the motorcycles that were made in Springfield …

By Bud Wilkinson  Children’s author Beverly Cleary, who turned 95 yesterday, has written 42 books and sold more than 75 million copies of them. She’s introduced generations of youngsters to the joy of reading through the characters of Henry Huggins, Ralph the Mouse, and Beezus and Ramona. As a kid, I read about Henry, Beezus …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com Wearing a varsity jacket with an Indian motorcycle logo embroidered on the back and holding a half-smoked cigar in his left hand, Mark Ruccio stood in the sun-drenched backyard of his Naugatuck home on a Sunday morning earlier this month assessing a small red motorcycle …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com A new visitors center will open in August at Harley-Davidson’s plant in York, Penn. as the company reorganizes the operation. “The York Dail Record” has the story here.

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com When a motorcycle blogger in another state recently posted that Ducati was going to loan him a Diavel for a week of testing riding, RIDE-CT was miffed to the point of emailing John Paolo Canton, public relations manager of Ducati, with a good-natured “What about me?” …

By Bud Wilkinson There probably isn’t a rider alive, and probably quite a few who are dead, who hasn’t had a near-miss with a distracted driver. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that 16 percent of all fatalities on the road in 2009 – 5,474 deaths in all – were …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com Winter sometimes ends abruptly, which is a good thing for both riders and RIDE-CT. While the proprietor of RIDE-CT yearns to ride during the cold, snowy months like all others who own bikes, what’s sometimes really frustrating is the lack of fresh column ideas. Bikes …

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com When New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation wanted to raise the rent that Americade pays for using state-owned land alongside Lake George from $52,000 to more than $90,000, the event’s founder threatened to move the annual June rally elsewhere. Coolers heads have prevailed and a …