As you may or may not know, I work as the Web Solutions Manager for Dennis Kirk, Inc. in Rush City, Minnesota. (Warning: self promotion ahead->) If you haven’t heard of us and you are into ATVs, Dirt Bikes, Snowmobiles, Sport Bikes, Cruisers, Harleys, Touring Bikes, or PWC’s, you owe it to yourself to check us out. (end self promotion)

My 2nd floor office overlooks the warehouse, and has for about five years. Over the years I’ve gotten used to just ignoring the movement of the conveyors, and forklifts, and people, working and walking through. However, once in a while, somethng will catch my eye. This past week, I was writing some code, and I could have sworn I saw someone wheeling a beautiful black shiny bike from our store, through our warehouse towards the receiving area.

I jumped out of my chair, and chased down the bike… turns out it’s the give-away bike for the 2009 Patriot Ride… a brand-new 2009 Harley Davidson Street Glide! I checked it out, and snapped a few photos as the guys from our store were figuring out how to get it in the door… which is why it was rolled back to receiving. Apparently, the fairing and handlebars on this bike are significantly wider than any of the other bikes we’ve displayed in our store.

Anyways, checkout the (bad and blurry) photos, and then go to the Patriot Ride site, and sign up for the ride, and buy some raffle tickets!

2009 Harley Davidson Street Glide - Patriot Ride giveaway bike

2009 Harley Davidson Street Glide - Patriot Ride giveaway bike

Emmett and I in front of the Buell display

Michelle, Emmett and I (Jess wanted to spend time with Grandpa Dave) went to the 2009 Minneapolis International Motorcycle Show (IMS) put on by Cycle World magazine last weekend, for Valentine’s Day… talk about having the perfect wife!!  We had a great time, watch an unbelievable Trials demonstration that just blew my mind, and had a great time wandering the vendor booths, and checking out the offerrings from Harley Davidson, Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Ducati, Buell and about a hundred other manufacturers that I had heard of (KTM, Kymco, Polaris/Victory) and many I hadn’t heard of.

There was a great display of custom motorcycles and motorcycle art called “Architects of Inspiration” put on by Toyota, and most of the bikes I saw were built by Roland Sands Design. One of the coolest is the 450 Supersingle spec racer for WERA that he (and others) have been working on for a few years. It’s a great intro to roadracing, and although it’s out of my price range, for people who are really interested in becoming the next Nicky Hayden or Carl Fogarty it might be a great jumping point.

We checked out many of the cruisers, and sportbikes, and looked at and sat on the Suzuki V-Strom DL1000 that we had talked about buying. I still really like it, but the high exhaust looks like it could lead to some discomfort on long rides, for Michelle. We looked at the Buell Ulysses again, and really, it looks like the perfect bike for us. Parts availability is good (it’s a Harley… kinda), and the riding position and windscreen are much better suited to long distance riding than our current Buell XB9XS. We love our Buell, which means once it’s paid off, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say we’d happily upgrade it to the Ulysses!

Of course after taking one photo my camera batteries died, so I used my cell phone to snap a couple of fun ones of Michelle, Emmett and I. Oh, if you heard a screaming kid with parents frantically heading towards the exit… yeah, that was us. Emmett had had enough by about noon. Luckily we got there right away in the morning, so we got to spend about three hours checking things out.

Michelle and Emmett in front of the Harley Davidson Show Truck

Wow!

Over the past year, www.henrysrodshop.com has received visits from 116 countries, compared to 80 countries during 2007! It’s good to see that there are people with these common interests all over this big planet of ours. Maybe one day I can visit you, or you can visit me!

Oh, and I have an apology to Dennis, who called, and I have not called back… I would have loved to meet up with you, but didn’t get your message until later. If you’re in the area again, give me a call, hopefully it will work out this time.

Anyways, tell me where you’re from, and how you found the site, I’m very happy to hear from each, and every one of you… what your bike and hot rod projects are, and what you do for a living. I’ll post some of them here in the coming weeks.

With 2008 behind us, 2009 has gotten off to a busy start! This week (January 20th) is the first week since before Christmas that I’ve worked a full week. It started with a lazy New Years, and then we had about forty people over for Emmett’s first birthday. Apologies to those of you who didn’t get invites, we didn’t have the forethought to rent a larger place, so we crammed into our house!

Emmett just had his one-year checkup, and got his shots which is never fun. But he’s doing good this morning, and his legs don’t look sore at all. Michelle is getting excited to work on her new sewing machine, and I’ve been slowly watching Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman’s “Long Way Down“ which I received for Christmas.

I’ve got the itch to get back on the Buell this spring… Jeff Cook and I are already planning a meetup somewhere in Wisconsin, hopefully we’ll both be able to take a couple days away from the family to ride some miles on our new bikes.

And we’re making plans to meet my folks in Des Moines for Easter brunch, along with going to Kearney, NE for a longer visit after school is out for Jessie.

Hope you all had a great 2008, and here’s to a fun, safe and happy 2009!

-Ben

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Image via Wikipedia

I’ve gotten burnt out on doing website side projects (yet again), and at some point downloaded a program called Blender. I’ve been working with it for a few weeks now, and am pretty happy with my progress. To give a quick overview, this is the type of program that Pixar and Dreamworks use to create movies like Toy Story, and Shrek (ok, that’s GREATLY oversimplifying it, but I’m trying to be breif). This software can also be used for making “stills” or “renders” that are photo realistic. That’s what I’m trying for. You can see some of the work I’ve been doing with it in my gallery here, under “cg” (as in “Computer Graphics”).

Polikarpov I-16 Render in Blender

So, after playing with rendering a Polikarpov I-16 (I thought an airplane would be easier to start with, and I was right!), I ran across a forum that was having a contest to create your favorite movie car. Many of mine were already being done by others, so I finally decided to do the Ferrari from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off“, a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California; but like the post title, it wasn’t quite that simple. After digging into it, it turns out that the car in the movie was actually an MG with a bodykit that made it look like one of these exceedingly rare cars. In addition, I was unable to find enough reference photos of either car to do a dead-on accurate version, so I’m doing my best to get pretty close to what I think it looks like.

Here’s a few images (more in the gallery):

1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California

1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California

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Red Ford GT in Salinas California

During out visit to California this past August we were lucky enough to see quite a few cars and trucks that we normally don’t see in the frigid north of Minnesota. Besides the Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches we saw this Ford GT when I took a wron… er “proper” turn into a hotel parking lot in Salinas, CA. It was tucked way in the back, and the only reason we saw it was that we looped around the building, rather than just through the drive-up.

I’ve seen these a couple of times before, but usually they have hordes of people around them, or are propped open at a show for you to see their innards. This one was just quiet, and peaceful looking, but then again, like a sleeping grizzly, it looked like in an instant it could snap your head off, and leave your stomache far behind!

Red Ford GT, Salinas, CA

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