Many thought it would happen years ago, but no matter when it finally came about it’s still a sad day. It has been confirmed that motorcycle stunting legend Evel Knievel died in his Clearwater condo at the age of 69. The word of his death comes just days after settling the lawsuit against Kanye West for using Knievel’s trademarked images in one of West’s popular videos.

Evel Knievel began his career in 1965 when he formed Evel Knievel’s Motorcycle Daredevils, a group that toured and performed dangerous stunts involving rides through fire-lit walls, jumping over dangerous animals, and being towed behind dragsters down a track.

On September 8, 1974 Knievel tried to ride a motorcycle powered by rockets across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho but failed. His parachute deployed prematurely sending him and his motorcycle into the canyon walls, but Knievel walked away with only a few minor injuries. He lived his life performing many dangerous stunts like that one that left him injured many times including his Caesar’s Palace crash that broke over 80 bones in his body.

His son Robbie has followed in his footsteps completing dangerous stunts including a jump in 2000 over a locomotive, and a jump over a 200 foot wide section of the Grand Canyon.

(Image provided via Creative Commons License & Wikipedia)

What happens when you auction off a piece of MotoGP memorabilia that is an R1 airbrushed with a photo tribute to Valentino Rossi? You earn $30,000 with profits that are going to the Make-A-Wish foundation! I’m searching high and low for a photo of the auctioned off bike, but it’s now got a new home in Australia with Johny Arkisian. This is a one of a kind R1 that took over 225 hours of airbrush creativity by the very talented Mark Brown. Rossi loved the bike, and even added his signature to it.

If you like to travel on your motorcycle, you know it’s not always easy to find a motorcycle repair shop or motorcycle specific store if you’re in an area you don’t know.  Yellowpages.com has finally decided to do something about that.  The YellowPages Corporation operates many popular sites and directories including yellowpages.travel and searchboth.com, but today they announced the release of TheMotorcycleYellowPages.com.

TheMotorcycleYellowPages.com will list stores, manufacturers, and related businesses pertaining to the motorcycle related industry to help provide a more local category specific search for local listings across the nation.  If you operate a motorcycle specific business you can easily add your listing to the website by visiting TheMotorcycleYellowPages.com or by calling 1-866-YELLOW-1.

I can’t believe how nice the weather has been this week! It might be almost Thanksgiving, but it’s been a very nice weekend for riding. We went up the mountain for a couple hours on Saturday with A. I rode 2 up with DH, and we did some car timing riding from the lookout to the iron gates back and forth a few times. That’s the best section on the SC side of 28, and it’s a great little area to practice switchbacks. I’ll have to scan the maps we’ve drawn up that show more details, but for now here’s a couple crappy versions I have on here. One is of our entire 28 ride where as the other is a more zoomed in hybrid map of the switchbacks.

I really can’t wait to get my little 250. It’s going to be a great little mountain toy, and I’ll probably be taking it up to Deal’s Gap next summer. We rode this section again yesterday, and it was a nice ride. The temps were in the low 70s, so we weren’t bundled up in a bunch of extra gear to deal with. A, T, and M all went with us, and it was nice riding with them. DH hasn’t been able to ride with T all summer, and M hasn’t ridden with DH since the wreck, so the 3 of them took off for a longer cruise around the upstate after we finished up on the mountain.

I would love to hit 107 (the NC side) today, but we’re in serious need of a new front tire. It looks like I’ll be ordering one tomorrow when I get paid if I want to ride any next weekend. Of course we’ll ride all winter, but it’s just so nice not having to pile on all of our bulky winter gear right now. This time last year I was decked out in my thermal suit.