Wednesday 2 April 2008

Orange Blossom Special


This is the first of roughly one million snaps sent in by Rich of Mule Motorcycles. The bike belongs to American author and journalist Allan Girdler. It's a Wood Honda CRF450. Allan used to ride Harley XRs, and wrote a book about racing Harleys you can still pick up (Harley-Davidson Racing 1934-86), then decided he wanted something lighter and more reliable to race. So he flogged the 750 and built this. It’s neat. Wood make a lovely frame and the personalised 70s tinged paint and signwriting is dead right.
Check out Mule's own cool stuff at www.mulemotorcycles.net

1 comment:

mule said...

That bike actually appeared in Cycle World magazine. Alan still has a bit of pull there I guess! I helped Alan with the bike and a couple of requests were to use the stock pipe and wheels/brakes.So the pipes was cut into sections twisted all around and then glued back together. Personally I think that's the coolest part of the bike.

The other cool thing is the paintjob. It's a replica of the "Orange Blossom Special". That was a train that ran between Chicago and somewhere in Florida. The locomotive had this paintjob and Alan (as a boy-120 years ago), saw the train and wished to have a CRF450 painted that way someday way off in the future!