After more then a month of polling, I have an average age of our normal reader.  I can say that the math was easy, as few people were willing to volunteer their age.  Hey, if you're that old, you could have lied.  Anyway, we're all in the 30-something bracket -- 33 to be exact.  Thanks to those of you that participated.  Next time I think I'll ask something less sensitive, like maybe your favorite legume.  But I digress.

Some of you remember drive-in movies.  It used to be a lot of fun.  One of the movies I remember seeing more than once was a motorcycle flick called "On Any Sunday," which is currently available on VHS from Monterey Home Video.  Bike enthusiast or Steve McQueen fan, you will enjoy this little slice of innocence from the past.  It was about this time period that I got my first minibike and would follow my Dad through the pucker-bushes in pursuit of thrills.

So it should come as no surprise that I am happy to see Hot Wheels continuing it's new motorcycle offerings in the basic line.  And as a bonus, for 2001 we get two of them!  The "Outsider" even has riders.  Patterned after modern sidecar championship bikes, it is a dramatic and eye-catching design.  And after the heat of being a FE dies down, there's a chance you might even find this one on the pegs because it lacks the "Bad Boy" image that seems to make castings like the Scorchin' Scooter so popular.  Though sidecars are raced on tracks around the world, one of the most impressive locations for street bike racing has to be the Isle of Man, off the shores of Great Britain.  Started in 1904, Man has been hosting time trials events on closed-off public roads every year.  In the beginning, the French hosted motorcycle trials and was pretty handily beating everyone else.  As British motorcycle production increased, and outnumbering automobiles by 3:1, it seemed logical for them to try to bring the bragging rights home.  The Isle of Man council was approached by the British motorcycle sanctioning body, and a statute was passed allowing testing on their public roads, called the Road Closure Act.  This of course led to races being held at Man as well as France.  Eventually, safety concerns forced France to hold races on closed circuits, yet the Mann council let their statute stand.  It is one of the few places left in the industrialized world that you can stand next to the road as machine and man travel by at 10/10ths.

The "Fright Bike" is obviously a stylized take on nitro 1/4-mile drag bikes.  There is a shop in Fort Worth that competes in this class, and I sometimes stop by just to gawk at the brutal beauty of their machines.  Drag bikes have paralleled their four-wheeled brethren in evolution from grass roots racing all the way up to exotic corporate sponsored businesses.  They range from almost stock machines to full-blown nitro burning monsters.  And in two of the pictures shown, they have even made one powered by a Bell helicopter turbojet engine producing 1,300 hp!  Tim Arfons, son of legendary land speed record and jet car racer Art Arfons, is responsible for its development.  Go figure.

Recalling my youth again, I remember having these clear plastic four-wheeled pieces that snapped onto the bottom of our Chopcycles and Rumblers that allowed us to use them on standard track.  It's a shame that didn't happen this time around.  The kids, me included, set up some killer tracks out in the garage sometimes.  The bikes would have been a welcome addition.

I recall when I first heard that Matchbox was to release a police bike, I was excited about it.  Unfortunately, it appears MB took the low road with their non-car designs.  Maybe these are cool enough for a kid, but even at the age of six I could tell the difference in quality between Lego (a registered trademark) brand blocks and Build-o-Brick brand blocks.  But in MB's defense, if they had designed bikes like HW did, no kid would ever find one at a normal retailer.

Having now made two cruisers, a drag bike and a sport sidecar, what's next?  The old Quadracer casting is okay but isn't flashy enough to hang with these new ones.  A street-racing update of the Quadracer design would be very cool, having seen several real examples in four-wheeler magazines.  A dedicated rice-burning F1 style rocket would be acceptable.  Or how about a custom trike to fill things out?  One more bike would make five, just enough to make a five-pack dream for scalpers.  Of course, you could argue the upcoming "MoScoot" is a bike but I think we can do much, much better than that.

I know we're talking bikes, but since drag racing was mentioned, I have to recommend the best website on Earth for front-engined dragsters:  www.nitroparts.com.  The Official Isle of Mann TT site is at:  www.iomtt.com.

Next month I might strap a lawnmower engine to my kid's Scooter and do a write up on the MoScoot.  I think the pictures of me doing a wicked 900 off a half-pipe would be more than worth the grave personal injuries I would incur.  Wish me luck!