Minimoto!

It's the only motorcycle that will fit inside my MINI... 

I bought this off Ebay a couple of weeks back as cheap fun. It is fun, except the Chinese craftsmanship leaves a little to be desired. There's nothing seriously wrong with it, but the setup was horrible. The chain was too tight, the rear wheel was misaligned, the fuel line leaked, etc. After a bit of fettling though, it ran quite well and scooted around fast enough to get some good lowsides in. Oh, and the front brake couldn't be adjusted so that it didn't drag and actually worked, so I had to do some drilling and re-engineering.

The lowsides were a great chance to test my riding gear. Padded knees, heavy duty boots, built-in body armor. For the most part, everything held up really well (especially my Alpinestars S-MX boots- they took all the abuse and saved my ankles and shins from some road rash.) Less well-designed, though, were the First Gear Speed Pants. Knee padding; check. Knee padding in right place? Not so much. Maybe it was the position I was in on the pocketbike (something that can only be likened to a monkey fucking a football while trying to assume a yoga pose named "Monkey fucks football with knees articulated"), but when knee contacted asphalt, the knee padding was conveniently located 2 inches higher than the knee/asphalt contact point. The "Ballistic Cordura" fabric lasted, for oh, about 6 inches worth of sliding. This left my knee to handle the other couple of feet. Not very pretty. I'll get some aftermarket velcro patches and knee sliders to sew on top of the holes, we'll see how that works out.

The pocketbike is a hoot, actually. It's nice being on something that you really don't care about crashing. It was the first bike that I was able to go out and use all of the tire on the first time out. I was actually rolling off the edge of the tire, that's what caused the lowsides... watching some of the videos on the net, it looks like correct cornering technique is to hang your inside buttcheek off the seat, allowing the bike to stand up a little more.

Another amusing aspect of riding the pocketbike is the balance wheelies. The bike weighs almost nothing, and you sit fairly close to the rear axle, so just by leaning back and tugging a bit, you can loft the front. Hilarious fun, and maybe the safest way to learn to do wheelies known to man. I'm going to have to work on these.