Nine and a half feet long. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leave you completely dusted at traffic lights in a single bound. It’s not a bird or a plane; it’s The Big Dance Number. I’m not making up any of this either; it’s the real deal. This bike has got show and lots more go. If you live in the Southern California area, you may have seen this bike around. San Diego, California, resident Dave Park has been blasting this outlaw machine up and down the 5 Freeway for the past 10 years and has Jedi mind-tricked his way out of several speeding tickets.
Choppers like this reassures me that the tradition of bikes being built and maintained in the owner’s garage will keep going for decades to come. I’m a big fan of garage-built choppers that were made with style and a heaping mound of power to back it up, so let’s take a little trip inside the mind of this long bike rider.
How did this whole project start?
I had just sold a bike to get together some money for a wedding ring. And even though the end result was the best decision I ever made, it has always felt shitty, then and before, to have to sell a bike, more than anything else, to raise money. It’s not a business for me. So that was the end of that, and I promised myself to avoid having to do that again, no matter what, and also to start on a new bike right away.
What made you build a long bike?
Growing up in North Korea, a lot of times all we had to eat was paper. The government used to hand out old American newspapers and magazines to show us what depraved and hedonistic capitalist pigs Americans were. I always liked reading the car and motorcycle magazines before eating them, and I would dream of those ’70s low, long bikes in Southern California before I defected.
What’s the story with the Edlund frame?
I heard about this crazy dude from Sweden living in Signal Hill, making some really nice repop frames, so I tracked him down one day. I’d never seen anything like his stuff before. Completely original-looking cast steel connectors and stamped steel plates, in either bone stock configuration or full custom geometries. Even custom neck angles were cast to look original. It was like some weird motorcycle steampunk fantasyland even though steampunk always reminds me of a retarded uncle that I never had, trying to put his hands in my front pockets. All the welds were perfect, and on top of that, he guaranteed a perfect fit and alignment. Edlund, not the uncle. And he was right. I heard he moved back to Sweden. How long were you working on it?
This was the first bike that I really wanted to hand-make a lot of stuff for, so I took a whole year to learn how to weld properly at a local vocational school, and I bugged a machinist friend of mine to teach me how to break bits. Once I actually got started on the bike, it took me a little over a year to get it on the road.
So what’s life like with a high-compression 113-inch kick-only long bike with no battery?
It’s like getting hobbled and then thrown down a flight of stairs by an angry gorilla every time you just want to go for a nice bike ride.
Any street race stories?
I was hauling ass down the freeway once and this chick blew by me on an Aprilia. I’m pretty sure it was a chick. Either that, or that dude looked great in those pants and pink jacket. So we started racing. Actually, I was racing, she was just riding. I don’t think she even noticed me. I kept up with her until my speedo started pushing about 130 and I decided to back off before I blew my motor all over the road. It is only a four-speed, after all. She didn’t even look back. Broke my heart.