motorcycles

13 posts

The Most and Least Expensive Everyday Things

Some of the items we use everyday come in a staggering array of choices from the downright affordable to the laughably expensive.  Let’s look at the most expensive and least expensive item in some common categories of items you might buy.

Production Automobile

The lease expensive new car in the US is the Hyundai Accent GL.  You can pick one up for $10,735 or less if you’re a master haggler.  It comes with a 100,000 mile powertrain warranty and those old fashioned cranks that let you roll the windows up and down even when the car is off.  It’s a 2 door hatchback that will zip you along with all 110 of its horses.

The Bugatti Veyron on the other hand will set you back $1.7M.  That’s roughly 158 times the cost, but you do get ten times the horsepower.  The Veyron does have power windows and a dual automated manual transmission that shifts faster than any person could ever hope to get the clutch down and the lever thrown.

Median Single Family Detached Home Price

When you’re looking for a place to park your Hyundai Accent there is no more fitting place than the lowest priced metropolitan statistical area to buy your dream home, Youngstown, OH.  The median price of a plot of land with a roof over your head in 2010 was $67,200.  Before all you fancy NYC people tell me about how you can’t buy a doormat for that much, this is for single family detached homes so condos, coops, townhouses and other attached structures don’t count.  Real Americans have a yard to mow and live in the heartland.

If you want to get your Veyron to the most expensive place to buy a home you’ll need to have it shipped by boat, unless you own an airplane that can accommodate a super-car.  Honolulu, HI has a median home price of $607,000 which is down considerably from the peak of the housing bubble.  You’ll get to live on Oahu, go surfing, complain about the people from the mainland and maybe become a private detective in your fancy sports car.

High Definition Television

Everyone has a HDTV already right?  If you’re one of the holdouts and you’re going shopping then be prepared for a confusing number of options.  If you’re starting at the low end though and want to make sure every room in your mansion is stocked with a HDTV then you’ll want to head on down to budget street and pick up a Coby 15″ LCD TV for a very modest $84.  Sure the colors are washed out, the screen is tiny and the remote only has 4 buttons, but it’s not like you’re going to be watching Blu-ray movies on this thing.

But nothing goes with your lifestyle quite like the PrestigeHD Supreme.  This 55″ television is literally encrusted with diamonds and accented with alligator skin.  It will set you back $2.2M.  I’m sure The Donald is the target market for this gaudy beast.  Now, if you want to find a TV that your local electronics retailer can sell you then the most expensive is the Pioneer 60″ Kuro class for $5,995.

Production Motorcycle

In your leisure time you probably like to get out and feel the wind in your hair and the bugs in your teeth.  For that you’re going to need a motorcycle.  If you’re looking for something that gets great mileage and has a name you’ve never heard of then you can’t go wrong with the cheapest bike, the American Lifan LF 200 Sphinx.  This Chinese made machine sells for $2,095.  It has a top speed of 75 MPH and can only carry 330 pounds so check the scale and speed limit before you head out to look for a dealer.

You’re probably not the kind of person who likes to limit their potential so you may want to look at the Ecosse Titanium Series RR Limited Edition instead.  As the name implies this motorcycle makes use of titanium everywhere it can.  Titanium is a very strong yet light metal often used in aircraft.  Other areas use carbon fiber to reduce weight.  All of this gives the rider a great power to weight ratio for the bike’s 200 horsepower engine.  If you have $275,000 laying around and a need to impress bike-geeks then meet your new ride.  It should be noted that the Dodge Viper inspired V10 does cost more, but was never a production bike.

Elements, of the Periodic Kind

All this talk about titanium makes one wonder what element can you pick up on a budget and which one should you dream about hoarding.  Sure you can go grab a hand full of dirt or breathe in some air, but what if you want your stuff pure?  At $0.20 per gram, calcium is the most affordable and has the added benefit of not killing you on contact like some less friendly elements.

But the most expensive element is something you might find in a nuclear reactor.  Californium-252 was forced into existence at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950.  It’s thought to perhaps exist in nature but nobody is sure.  If you want to buy some (you probably can’t buy it) it will cost you $1,000,000,000 per gram.

$1,000,000,000

Know your motorcycle slang

4 comments

Have an eccentric uncle who fixes up old two-stroke Yamahas? Does your husband/boyfriend frequently escape the house on Saturday afternoons to go tearing off on his BMW?

If so, here’s a quick glossary of slang so that you can sound more like a real rider and less like a typical dumbass cager.

ape-hangers – huge handlebars that require you to hold your hands up extremely high. ONLY ever acceptable on a custom chopper, but even then they’re awful because it makes the bike virtually impossible to handle with any precision.

beemer – a BWM motorcycle. Not to be confused with “Bimmer” car. The motorcycle of choice for geeky types. The tech guy at your office probably has one.

busa – The Suzuki Hayabusa. This is basically the fastest production bike on the market for the past 8 years or so. Extremely popular with guys who like putting fluorescent blue lights and huge shiny wheels on their rides.

butt jewelry – What sportbikers call Harleys and choppers due to all the pointless chrome-and-tassle shit they bolt onto their bikes.

cafe racer – A 1960s British term for kids who would strip down their bikes and hot rod them so that they could race from cafe to cafe. Think Rockers in the whole rockers vs. mods battles. These are basically the coolest motorcycles on the planet. Everyone will love you if you show up to bike night on an old cafe racer.

cage – A car.

cager – A car driver. As in, “that goddamn brainless idiot cager should have his exhaust pipe shoved up his ass.”

chicken strips – the narrow strips of fresh rubber at the edges of the tires. The less you have the bike leaned over, the wider the chicken strips.

get-off – A euphemism for a crash. No motorcyclist has EVER just crashed. It’s always a get-off, or he had to “lay ‘er down” or something.

gixxer (pronounced “jixxer”) – The Suzuki GSXR line of sportbikes. They are inexpensive and ridiculously fast, so they’re extremely popular with 19-year-old kids who ride like maniacs (see “squids”).

Hardley-Ableson – Derisive nickname for a Harley-Davidson. The key to understanding the two-wheeled world is that H-D guys ONLY love H-Ds and people who ride other brands universally DETEST the slow, heavy, ill-handling Harleys.

lump – The motorcycle’s engine.

naked – A style of bike that has no plastic bodywork (called fairings).

performance award – A speeding ticket.

pillion – This one can mean either a passenger riding on the back of the bike or the back seat itself.

pirate – Ever notice how Harley people dress in silly black leather outfits with skulls all over them? Exactly. ARRRRGH, MATEY.

pudding bowl – The stupid little barely-legal bowl-shaped helmets that pirates wear in helmet-law states. They offer absolutely no protection, so if anyone ever offers you a ride and hands you one of these, politely decline and insist on a full-face helmet, which protects the face, jaw and back of the head.

Rossi wannabe – Valentino Rossi is the 8-time world champion of grand prix motorcycle racing, so he’s basically the sport’s Michael Jordan and one of Europe’s most famous athletes (seriously). If you see someone tucked way over trying to get his knee down on the street like he’s in a race, you can call him this.

scooter – NOT a scooter. A scooter is a motorcycle. Ok, scooters are also called scooters but you can refer to your motorcycle as a scooter. Some bikers call themselves “scooter trash,” which kind of makes you sound like you’ve watched too much “Easy Rider.”

smoker – A two-stroke motorcycle. The EPA effectively banned two-stroke bikes, but they were huge in the 70s and 80s and are known for producing huge clouds of blue smoke and a noise that can best be described as a billion angry bees.

the slab – Any super-highway. To be avoided if at all possible because highways are incredibly boring on a bike.

sled – A motorcycle. See “scooter.”

splitting – Also called lane-splitting, filtering or white-lining. This is riding in between two lanes during traffic jams. It’s legal in California and every other country in the world besides the U.S. It’s actually safer than sitting in a lane during stop-and-go traffic because it lowers the risk of a rear-end crash. Plus it uses the roads more efficiently. If you ever see motorcyclists riding up toward you in between the lanes, give him/her a few inches. You’ll get to your destination just as fast.

squid – A squid is a dangerous, young sportbike rider. Think wife beaters and flip-flops and Gixxers. There are about a billion different theories for where the term squids came from. I like to think it’s an acronym for “Stupid Quick Until I’m Dead,” but it also may have come from the nickname for all the Navy sailors riding around San Diego. If you’re riding with a buddy who’s taking risks and riding fast, you can even call him “squidly.”

the twisties – Twisty roads.