On paper, the annual Bike Week at Laconia appears very similar to the more famous blowout held every spring down in Daytona Beach. Each year some 400,000 bikers from all around the US ride (or more often, trailer) their bikes to the Laconia area, where they then settle into an obscenely over-priced hotel room for the week and commence talking bikes, ogling other bikers' women, talking bikes some more, occasionally tipping back a drink or three, and sometimes actually riding their bikes for a few miles. Very similar to Daytona, only they've been doing this in Laconia for roughly twice as long-the first annual motorcycle gathering was held there in 1923, granting Laconia Bike Week the title of "the oldest bike event in the US."
What keeps so many thousands of street riders coming back to New Hampshire year after year? For starters, how about an almost unparalleled selection of motorcycle events, with an even stronger emphasis on high-performance than that other event down south? This makes Laconia especially appealing to the Super Streetbike crowd. Of course there's racing, specifically CCS/Formula USA amateur roadracing at New Hampshire International Speedway (NHIS) in Loudon. They run Formula Sportbike, Superbike and Thunderbike (Buells, Ducatis, over-built SV650's, etc.) classes, so sportbike enthusiasts can find their favorite brand to cheer for. The track at NHIS is also home turf of the Penguin Race School run by local racers Eric and Jeff Wood.
As much as we dig roadracing, if we could only attend one competition event at Laconia each year it would have to be the legendary Gunstock Hillclimb. Never seen a hillclimb? Imagine riding up a 70-meter, 45 degree mud slope flat-out on a motocross bike with a 1000cc, alcohol-burning sportbike motor wedged between your knees! The quickest manage this crazy feat in just six seconds: This year's winner, "Jungle Jim," ran a bored-out GSX-R1100/1550cc drag bike engine for power. Add a crowd of 12,000 cheering people and Gunstock makes for one wild day out.
Later in the week there's the flat track racing at the Rochester Fairgrounds half-mile circuit. If you've never watched one of these races, your program in Bike Ed is woefully incomplete. Take a highly tuned single cylinder dirt-bike, ditch the front brake, get yourself up to a hundred on the straight, then just throw the thing sideways (remember, no brake) at the turn and slide around, keeping as much speed as you can to stay ahead of the pack.
Or, if you're not much for watching, you could always just head out on a ride. Unlike Daytona where every road is pool-table flat and arrow straight, all of those rolling New England hills have created just about the best sportbike roads in North America. It's so good that if you rode your stretched 'Busa up here you'd definitely regret fitting that extended swingarm-a total contrast to Florida.
When you're ready to get your cruise on, "Laconia Central" is the area surrounding Weirs Beach. This is the place to grab a Biker Breakfast at the American Legion Post, listen to live music at the Market Place, or join the patio cookout at the Loud Pipes Saloon-where you can also watch the "Miss Loud Pipes" contest in action. Weirs Beach is where you're going to see all the conventional Bike Week sights-leather vests, out-of-control facial hair and lots of bare flesh, though most of this is kind the of flesh that you'd usually rather not see. So maybe it is just a little bit like Daytona Bike Week...
Party 'Til The Cows Come Home
Thousands Of Sportbike Enthusiasts Wild It Up In The Rural Hinterlands Surrounding Mid-Ohio During The AMA/Superbike Nationals
Judging from what we witnessed this summer, the Honda Supercycle Weekend held each summer at the historic (if rapidly deteriorating) Mid-Ohio Sportscar Course has to be the biggest thing to hit the quiet, bucolic town of Mansfield, Ohio, since self-serve feed stores. The roadracing action is one thing-and there's plenty of that with a double-header weekend of AMA/Superbike competition preceded by a week of amateur racers trying to break lap records (and not their fool necks) on Mid-O's snaky, patchworked 2.4-mile road course. And while the action at the track is plenty loud and fast, it's nothing compared to the after-hours madness that keeps the crowd going long after the racetrack gates swing closed each night. The main events in the public campground after dark seem to involve creating the biggest gravel spray with your back tire during a burnout, seeing who can come up with the most original way to launch bottle rockets off of their body, and enough impromptu stunt shows to keep the fork seal replacement industry in the black for years. Sure, it looks like Exhibit A in "Humans Behaving Badly," but damn is it fun!
And it's legal-for the most part. Perhaps in an effort to avoid an all-out riot (or maybe because the local jail just isn't big enough), instead of cracking down on the chaos, the Mansfield city government has seen fit to allow public-that means legal to you and me-stunting along their fair city's main drag during the Saturday night of the Supercycle Weekend. With thousands of locals and visiting gearheads lining the streets for the run-what-you-brung show, folks riding everything from touring bikes to pickup trucks to full-on stunt machines gave it a go. Hats off to the guy on the Gold Wing who managed to get some sick air under his front wheel while carrying a passenger and luggage! The cops say allowing legal public stunting on a semi-closed road has helped keep the adjacent highways safer and free from stunt riding and stoplight drags during the festival, which may be true. But for anyone attending this year's event, the whole town seemed like it was turned over to the inmates for a day. You'd have to see it to believe it-or check out these photos that we brought back with us this year.
Isle Of Madness
The Most Famous Open-Road Race In The World, The Isle Of Man TT, Retains Its Title As The Most Extreme Streetbike Event Of The YearI should have known I was in for a wild ride when Claudio, the manager of Ducati of Dublin, walked me outside to introduce me to the demo Ducati 999 Superbike that I had arranged to borrow for the duration of my trip to the Isle of Man. "If ye scrape the pegs, ye can raise them if ye like," he said in a thick, Irish brogue. "They're adjustable, you know." Just after I picked up the bike I would take the ferry across to the Isle of Man for the annual Tourist Trophy races. My plan was just to sightsee and ride the course-not racing around kicking up sparks with the footpegs. But the Ducati dealer, not to mention 99 percent of the 60,000 other speed freaks headed to the same destination, didn't see it that way. The moment your front wheel touches down on this storied, speed-crazed rock in the Irish Sea, it's an all-out adrenaline fest. No wonder the TT has remained, for almost 100 years now, one of the most highly anticipated motorcycle racing events in the world.
First on my to-do list after arrival was to do a lap of the legendary, 225-turn, 38-mile mountain racecourse that the famous TT is held on every year. Jet lag and seasickness from the ferry crossing quickly faded as my right wrist turned the twisty, mountainous racecourse into a blur of stone walls, cliffs and other things you really, really don't want your motorcycle to come into contact with, making me very thankful for the unflappable handling of my borrowed 999. I was hardly the only one checking out the course that afternoon-there were nutters around every bend wheelying customized streetfighters up the "mountain mile" section, and I was startled a few times in thick banks of fog that lined the summit when full-on race bikes out for an afternoon sighting lap buzzed past me. This all goes on while cars, trucks and vans full of wide-eyed tourists share the road, making this ride like a first-class trip to biking's loony bin. It did nothing to decrease my enthusiasm as I charged along parts of the TT course I'd watched heroes like Joey Dunlop, Dave Jeffries and John McGuinness ride on in the past. Trying my best to scrape my pegs like the Ducati dealer had advised, I took the infamous Creg-Ny-Baa corner too hot and nearly knocked myself for a loop in front of a crowd of hundreds. Lucky for me there was A) one of two sections of air fence handy and B) a pub nearby should anything have gone wrong. Thankfully, I didn't need either.
The mixture of pub-life silliness and deadly serious roadracing action is all part of what makes a visit to the annual TT festival such a hoot. Imagine North Carolina's Deal's Gap-only 30 times longer, with 2-mile straightaways, no speed limits; friendly, good-looking local females and some of the strongest beer this side of O.D.B.'s wake-and you've just about got it. Come race week, the action heated up even more with England's John McGuinness taking first place in the Superbike Race, a spectacle of speed and outright cajones that still had the hair standing up on the back of my neck long after I returned to the states. I also had a chance to see American racers Wade Boyd and Tom Montano account well for themselves, met some lovelies wearing less cloth than a freshly-shorn Manx sheep, sampled some fine ales, met a giant pair of walking balls (long story) and nearly scraped my footpegs (and more) in one of the world's most famous racing curves, making this one of my most memorable motorcycle experiences ever. I'm definitely headed back next year-for a full peg-scrape!