FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE, the motorbike bash, a story of madness

I’ve designed my first custom metric chopper and whew…. Jeff and his son just left for their return trip to Maryland. It was interesting to finally meet him. He said he understood my mad vision of a radical gooseneck XS650 chopper that was part Zero, part Slimfab, cheap as **** to build, and 100% something that’s never been done before. What other builders who saw it at our party last night said was “don’t ride it!” Seems it might kill me for numerous reasons.

The FREEDOM or DEATH Motorbike Bash was a blast! I want to thank the Dirty Dog Bar for hosting us and Ben, S**tty and especially Cracker for taking care of us. The builders, riders, photographers, girlfriends, and models were treated very well by everybody at the bar, from the doormen and bartenders to management and ownership.

We received boxes of swag from Bikernet, Biltwell, ChopCult and Lowbrow Customs. Tons of people got t-shirts, stickers, hats, books, bandannas, posters, and more. I gave Matt the huge Biltwell banner for his shop garage, and Limey got the Biltwell gold flake lid.

Jeff, Kyle and I spent a few hours yesterday hanging out with Matt. There are a lot of mods to make to the bike to make it rideable that Jeff did not properly execute. That’s what I get from a guy who built a custom chopper in ten days. Cheap and fast! F**k yeah! I think…

Matt said he wants to finish up details such as a spring on the kickstand, attaching Rock’s foot pegs, creating a passenger pad for the sprung seat/luggage rack, straightening out the fender, re-placing the controls on the bars so i can reach them (Jeff is 6’5″ and seemed to think my 5’11” hands were the same size as his basketball-player hands), adding braces to the headlamp cowl, and more.

Then Limey, who rebuilt the carburetors, will have it for a while so he can make some hot rod adjustments, add air filters, hide wires, fix the brakes and starting mechanism, and generally fine tune the machine into the crazy beast she is.

Speaking of friends, I have to thank a lot of people and companies for helping make this custom metric chopper build happen and the first is Bandit of Bikernet. Although I’m no longer with his organization, he gave me a little spot on the web and pretty much let me roam wild within in it for six months. I doubt the FREEDOM OR DEATH MACHINE would have happened had he not taken a chance on me. Thank you, Bandit.

[EDIT 06.13.12]:
i’ve already blabbed enough about jeff’s half-assedness, matt’s carelessness, and chris/limey’s ***-car*

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