Remember those heady pre-Coronovirus days of, well, early 2020? You know, when you'd turn up at a race and French kiss all the track officials, before starting on with a systematic round of licking the faces of the photographers and finally sucking the fingers of your favourite competitors? God, I miss those days now that I'm self-isolating and all I have to look forward to is the four-hourly, horse-strength antibiotics washed down with mouthfuls of hot hand cleanser.
So, the poignancy of these photos, snapped at the One Show in Portland last month, is even stronger.
I wrote a blog for Bike Shed MC on my visit to the One Show. Read it at Bike Shed MC. They've used dozens of photos, but they're not captioned, so I thought I'd pick these out and explain who is them.
(top) Cameron Brewer, top man at Roland Sands Designs and the SuperHooligans National Championship. Cam prepared the Indian FTR750s for Travis Pastrana to emulate Evel's Vegas jumps. Check out his handlebar moustache; Jason Griffin, one-armed flat track racer, who we featured way back in SB4, back in 2009 (yep, 2009). Check out his handlebars; Sammy Halbert! Who we first featured in SB6.
One of a few shots I had with Thor, Mr See See and Mr One Moto Show. We featured Thor in various issues of Sideburn - starting in Sideburn 5 with his Smoking Seagulls XR650, then in SB11 DT400, then SB14 with his Honda CL90 multitool bike, XG750 hooligan (which one the first ever SuperHooligan race in 2015) in SB24, followed by Harley XL1200 hooligan, and most recently, their FTR 1200 hooligan in SB36. On the other side is Michael Lock - boss of American Flat Track, who was in town to see Latus Motors. The famous Oregon dealer are running Harley XG750Rs in the 2020 Production Class with James Rispoli on board.
If you're a schmoozer (and I am) The One Show is a good spot to be. This is me and the AB - Mr DTRA, Anthony 'Co-Built' Brown and Adrian Sellers, one of the men with his hand of the Royal Enfield's 'bars, steering them in new directions (including towards AFT).
The schmoozing continued late into the night, with super custom builder (and hooligan racer) Scott Jones of Noise Cycles. One of his early XG's was featured in SB29.
I don't only get photos with hairy dudes. This is Emily from See See.
Thor is very tall.
Go read the report and see loads of photos of motorcycles and racing at the Bike Shed MC.