Motorcycle Views Newsletter for 12/20/2015 By Walter F. Kern Motorcycle Views Newsletter Vol. 9, No. 27, December 20, 2015 Articles of Interest on Motorcycle Views: Season's Greetings:
Merry Christmas to all of you and your families. I wish you all a Happy New Year. I have also included a link to my Motorcycle Puzzles below. These are jigsaw puzzles you can let the kids play with if you like. They also work on smartphones. Recent Additions to the Motorcycle Views Website:
My New Book, Motorcycle Kick-Starts: Getting Started, Stories, Tips, and How-Tos: My fourth book, Motorcycle Kick-Starts, has been released and is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.
My purpose in writing the book is to whet your appetite for more while sticking to basic motorcycle information and not overpowering you with details. We start out giving you basic information about motorcycles and showing you how you might proceed to become an active, safe rider. Then we present ten short motorcycle stories (tales) written by actual motorcyclists. These tales allow you to observe some unusual things that happen to people who ride motorcycles. Without a bike, you would most likely never have these experiences. You will find out that your own rides will be different, but they too will result in unforgettable memories. The first story relates my own journey as a newbie rider when I joined a small group and rode cross-country on a 6,000-mile adventure. Between stories, some practical advice about motorcycles is given in the form of ten motorcycle How-Tos and ten motorcycle Tips that you will need to know to become a proficient rider. It's available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. Click the cover picture for more information about how to purchase the book or click here to go to Amazon directly. Work is also proceeding to make it available in an Audible audiobook edition in late January, 2016. The book was inspired by my Audible producer who was looking for a 2-hour audio on motorcycles. Victory Motorcycles and a Quiz Too: Learn about Victory Motorcycle History and Take a Victory Quiz Too
Some may think they already know a lot about Victory, its history and its machines. Perhaps you would like to take a quiz on Victory history. I hope you will stay with me for a while and take the quiz later. The following is a short potpourri of the history of Victory motorcycles. Use it to satisfy yourself that you know Victory history now or as a stepping stone to learning more Victory motorcycle history later on. There will be a quiz at the end. New riders of motorcycles are familiar with the current models but may not be aware of the history of a given motorcycle manufacturer. Polaris Industries, Inc. was founded in 1954. Initially they were a simple rural farm equipment shop located in Roseau, MN but an informal project carried out by mechanics while the boss was out of town, produced the first Polaris snowmobile in 1955. The boss thought they were wasting time but soon the utility of the snowmobile in northern Minnesota caught on and that led to an expanding snowmobile business and then to a series of products including ATVs in 1985 and personal watercraft in 1992. The first Polaris designed motorcycle was sold in 1998. It was called the Victory and the first model was the V92C. The motorcycle division of Polaris, the Victory Motorcycle Company, was launched in 1997 when Al Unser, Jr. rode the first V92C into the Planet Hollywood restaurant at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. Victory next brought out the V92SC and then the Touring Cruiser. Later models included the Vegas and the Kingpin. For 2005, Victory introduced four new models: Vegas 8-Ball, Hammer, Ness Signature Vegas, and Ness Signature Kingpin. Polaris used the advertising tagline, "The Way Out" to entice its customers to step out into the world of off-road, water, and on-road machines, including the Victory motorcycle. Victory started out selling a little more than 1000 motorcycles in 1998. That represented about one percent of all Polaris sales for that year. By 2003, Victory had four percent of all Polaris sales and continued to grow. The picture above is a 2002 Victory Deluxe V92 Touring Cruiser model submitted by Ralph Nicola. Today's Motorcycle Views Poll: I'm running one new Motorcycle Views Poll in each issue of the newsletter. Please participate in each poll so we can all find out what's happening in motorcycling. Here's Poll No. 28 (It may take a few seconds to load, so please be patient.): What motorcycle-related Christmas gift would you like to receive this year? The latest Motorcycle Views Poll also appears on the front page of the Motorcycle Views website. Today's How-To: I will be featuring one of my How-Tos in each issue of the newsletter. How To Tighten a Spark Plug on Your Motorcycle 50 Wild Motorcycle Tales - Book 2 - I Need Your Help: It appears that there may be a demand for a 50 Wild Motorcycle Tales - Book 2 in my future. It would be my fifth book. I will be writing some new stories of my own but I want to solicit from you any motorcycle stories you have written or might write to be part of the new book. These stories must involve real events that happened to you while you were motorcycling. You must be the author of the story. Send me stories if you wish to see your work in my new book. Motorcycle Picture of the Month for December, 2015: Motorcycle Picture of the Month - December, 2015 - 2003 Honda Shadow Spirit 750: My Book, 50 Wild Motorcycle Tales, is also available as an Audiobook (Audible) Edition on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible: My new audiobook makes a great gift for those who want to listen instead of read.
If you click the book cover (or click here), you can listen to a 5-minute sample of the audiobook and hear all three narrators, including one female voice and me. Should you decide to buy and download the audiobook, I'd welcome any Amazon online reviews you might want to write after you have listened to the audiobook. Remember, this new audiobook edition is also available for download on iTunes. That means you can access it on all your Apple devices including your iPhone and iPad. Here are some very popular articles on the Motorcycle Views Site. Take a look:
Latest Motorcycle Pictures:
See the latest received pictures by category.
My Motorcycle Books:
My first book, Getting Started Riding a Motorcycle, was first published in 2011 but only as a Kindle edition. It was revised in 2014 and also made available in a paperback edition. Click the book cover to learn more about the book and how to buy it on Amazon.com.
A surprising number of visitors to my site quickly caught on and enjoyed haiku poetry
that had been submitted to me over the years from motorcyclists. Haiku is a simple poem of three lines
with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven in the second line. Here's a sample haiku poem:
Very Nasty They are easy to write, and most riders like to read them. I coupled each haiku poem with a motorcycle picture and description that tied into the poem itself. I wrote seven of the haiku poems. Click the book cover to learn more about the book and how to buy it on Amazon.com.
I have reduced the price of my four Kindle editions to $0.0 (FREE) IF you also first purchase the corresponding paperback edition. That way you can always have the book with you if you have a tablet or smartphone with you. None of the paperbacks has color pictures in them owing to the high price of producing a book with color. However, every Kindle edition has color pictures, so the Getting Started Riding a Motorcycle and Motorcycle Haiku Poetry Kindle books are in full color. Motorcycle Online Jigsaw Puzzles: Have fun solving motorcycle jigsaw puzzles of motorcycle scenes. Here are some motorcycle pictures that I have made into motorcycle jigsaw puzzles. I have a variety of types of puzzles but none are very hard. Try the motorcycle jigsaw puzzles, as is, or change them to a harder version yourself. Have some Christmas fun with Motorcycle Online Jigsaw Puzzles Polar Bear Grand Tour Runs to Montgomeryville, PA and The CABIN:
All the pictures and videos for these runs can be found by clicking the following links: Montgomeryville and The CABIN. The Polar Bears consist of 550 riders from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Delaware, who ride each Sunday to a different prescribed destination where they sign-in and receive points. There is, usually, a restaurant at or near the destination. It gets cold, windy, and snowy on these rides. I've been a Polar Bear member for more than 20 years, and I built and continue to maintain their website. The picture to the right was taken at Montgomeryville, PA. Help Grow Motorcycle Views: The Motorcycle Views Website is here for you. We encourage you to submit a story, picture, poem, salvage yard recommendation, user review of your own bike, tattoo, YouTube video you made of your bike, motorcycle tip, etc. These will be evaluated for inclusion into one of our major features. Send us a submission today and share part of your motorcycling experience with our many readers. Read how to make a submission. Send In Your Pictures: We love pictures of your motorcycles. Even better is a picture of you with your bike. We also like descriptions of bikes so tell us all about your bike. What accessories do you have? What special paint job do you have? How long have you been riding? Tell us more. Women riders are especially requested to send their pictures in. Submit a Picture. The Motorcycle Views Website is Also on your Smartphone or Tablet: Are you relying more and more on your cellphone or tablet and less and less on your PC or MAC? Remember that all that great motorcycling information on Motorcycle Views is as near as your cellphone. It's also in a new format designed to fit your portable screen. Check us out anywhere you need motorcycle information. Be sure to check out the Home Page on Motorcycle Views. It keeps changing daily, now containing links to hundreds of my original articles and features including Makes and Models, Picture Galleries, Motorcycle FAQ, Motorcycle Tips, Motorcycle How-Tos, Rallies, Videos and Movies, and User Reviews. Social Media: See me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and YouTube.
For New Subscribers: Expect newsletters on Sunday afternoon every other week. Please understand that the Motorcycle Views Newsletter is NOT the Motorcycle Views website. The newsletter provides a few links to content on the Motorcycle Views website. Once you click a link in the newsletter, you'll be getting access to content on the Motorcycle Views site. If you'd like to view some recent newsletters, just go to the newsletter sign-up page and look below where my three motorcycle books are described for links. Thanks for signing up for the Motorcycle Views Newsletter. Using this Newsletter, I'll keep you up-to-date with what's going on in the Motorcycle Views Blog, the Motorcycle Views Website, and the Motorcycle Views Forum. The forum has a new look as of February 13, 2015. Take a look. Not sure what a blog is? It's like a daily readout of what I'm thinking about, similar to a diary at times. Most often, I'm using mine right now to tell my visitors what has been added to the Motorcycle Views site. See me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and YouTube. The Motorcycle Views Website is Also on your Smartphone or Tablet: Are you relying more and more on your cellphone or tablet and less and less on your PC or MAC? Remember that all that great motorcycling information on Motorcycle Views is as near as your cellphone. It's also in a new format designed to fit your portable screen. Check us out anywhere you need motorcycle information. END OF NEWSLETTER All Previous Newsletters:
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© 2016 Walter F. Kern. All rights reserved.
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I'd like to thank you for reading the Newsletter this year. It has been a busy year for me completing one Audible book and releasing my fourth book, Motorcycle Kick-Starts. Also, I have started work on the Audible audiobook version of Motorcycle Kick-Starts. If you're looking for a last minute motorcycle-related gift, check out my four books, below. My son tells me that he has a new Christmas tradition. When he travels to New York to visit my daughter and her family, he reads my latest book out loud to his three boys while they all drive north. (He's not driving.) That puts a little pressure on me to keep cranking out books.
