So I'm how old again?

I really can't remember the last time it happened, laying in bed with so many thoughts running around that sleep just wouldn't come until 4 am and the 2 excedrin PM finally kicked in.

Thinking about how sharp the Duece will look like when I get her back, mentally planning the Daytona Bike Week and some stuff that I really can't talk about until next week. Or maybe the week after. We'll have to see.

I can't even imagine my goofiness when the saddlebags arrive, which should be the day before I get to lay eyes on the all new Deuce.

So I'm forty-one, right?


Even thieves like the beach.
So Progressive Insurance released an interesting study today, all about the safest and worse cities for riders as far as collisions and theft are concerned. If you think you'd be more likely to have your motorcycle stolen living in Chicago versus Wichita, who could blame you? After all, it's a much bigger city. The same goes for crashes; no one could fault you for assuming that the bigger the city, the more the traffic congestion and therefore the greater the odds of having an accident.

Progressive reviewed claims data on more than two million motorcycles insured over the past three years to determine the likelihood of a motorcyclist getting into an accident or having a bike stolen, focusing on the 89 U.S. metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 and higher. There were some surprising results and others that just have to be expected.

After all, with it being an island and far fewer places to hide a stolen bike, you wouldn't think Honolulu could be anywhere near the top of the list for most stolen motorcycles. Yet a motorcyclist in Honolulu is four times more likely to have a bike stolen than a rider in Chicago or Detroit, which are the third and seventh largest metro areas in the country, respectively.

Similarly, though Baton Rouge only ranks 75th in population, it ranks third when it comes to the likelihood of a rider there having a motorcycle crash. And, a motorcyclist in Philadelphia, the country's fifth largest metro area, is 36 percent less likely to have an accident as one in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach metro area, which is the 47th largest.

However, some cities lived up to expectations such as New York ranking highest in both population and in the likelihood of motorcycle collisions. But some bikers seem to live in a motorcycle mayberry. Just ask the motorcycle owners of Ohio with Columbus being the safest place to ride with the least amount of collisions per capita and Cincinnati ranked among the least likely for both thefts and collisions. To be fair to the west coast cousins Oxnard, California ran a very close second to Columbus for the Metro area least likely for riders to have a collision.
Contrary to the popular adage, crime does like to take a vacation. Not only does Honolulu top the list for most likely to have a motorcycle stolen, but Florida has the most light-fingered bikers with both major cities, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, making the top ten of where a motorcycle is most likely to be stolen.

If bikers really want to hang onto their two-wheel treasures then Nashville, Tennessee or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania would be the place to live, both being the number one and two cities least likely have your motorcycle stolen.

Here are the complete numbers........

Metro Areas In Which A Motorcycle is Most Likely to be Crashed
1. New York, N.Y.-N.J.
2. Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Portsmouth
3. Baton Rouge, LA
4. San Diego, CA
5. San Francisco, CA
6. New Orleans LA
7. San Antonio, TX
8. McAllen, TX
9. Nassau, NY
10. Orlando, FL

Metro Areas In Which A Motorcycle is Least Likely to be Crashed
1. Columbus, OH
2. Oxnard, CA
3. Cleveland, OH
4. Providence, RI
5. Tacoma, WA
6. Cincinnati, OH
7. Toledo, OH
8. Akron, OH
9. Indianapolis, IN
10. Bakersfield, CA

Metro Areas In Which A Motorcycle is Most Likely to be Stolen
1. Honolulu
2. Miami, FL
3. San Diego, CA
4. Las Vegas, NV
5. New York, NY
6. Washington DC
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Fort Lauderdale, FL
9. New Orleans, LA
10. Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Portsmouth

Metro Areas In Which A Motorcycle is Least Likely to be Stolen
1. Nashville, TN
2. Pittsburgh. PA
3. Milwaukee, WI
4. Minneapolis-St. Paul WI
5. Cinncinati, OH
6. Lansing, MI
7. Albany, NY
8. Syracuse, NY
9. Harrisburg, PA
10. Grand Rapids, MI

Now this is an interesting list and you can read how they came up with these numbers (sort of) and the complete report here at Progressives News Release site. If I'm reading everything correctly, and heaven knows I'm not a statician, but it seems they took the number of claims against the metro population, when really to be accurate with a study like this, you should use the number of registered motorcycles as your base.

Am I way off base with my thinking?

Regardless, it was none to nice to see my town of Fort Lauderdale making number 8 in the 'most likely to have your motorcycle stolen' category. I guess those thoughts of storing it out on the street is brushed right off the table!



Wrong message at the wrong time
In the last entry of Biker Diaries I wrote about a very dumb rider who died while doing 120 mph in what must've been a 50 mph zone.

A story in the Su8n-Sentinel wasn't sad just because they had to bury Leonardo Amaral Filadelfo, the 29 year old man yesterday, but that the relatives and police chose the venue to give some misleading impressions. No rhetoric should come during a time thats really set aside for the deceased, and certainly not misinformation.

"He loved the feel, and being out on the road," said his sister Patricia Filadelfo-DeMoura, 28. "It's a dangerous hobby, and the family had told him that people could be killed."

.... relatives are shocked that their always-smiling "Leo" is gone and hope his death might send a message to other thrill-seekers. "You have to be careful, it's a dangerous sport," Filadelfo-DeMoura said. "They have to think about their families and what a tragedy would mean to them."

I understand that the relatives are in a horrible place right now, and even admit that Leonardo was riding too fast. Then there was this:

Fatal motorcycle crashes are all too common in South Florida, and too many riders wrongly think helmets and other gear may prevent death, officials say. Seventy people died of injuries from motorcycle crashes in Broward County in 2004 and 2005, a medical examiner's report shows. In 2006, there have been three fatal crashes in Fort Lauderdale alone.

Someone has to say that the riding gear stands a better chance of protecting a rider if they're not going 120 miles per hour on a residential street with traffic lights every couple of miles!!!

We won't even talk about the riders 11 traffic citations, including speeding, careless driving and street racing since 1995, according to Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles records. Three of the speeding tickets were for driving faster than 90 mph.

You can read the story in it's entirety at the Sun Sentinel.


On a lighter note....
This picture was posted at a great motorcycle forum board I frequent......

















And the question is...would you ride it?


Now if you excuse me I need to mark another day off my calender in the Duece's 1st Anniversay Makeover Countdown........