The Snake Articles
Adey goes down
Adey's been experiencing intermittent coil failures on his brand-new Ducati Hypermotard 1100, but was riding it on The Snake yesterday regardless. Then, mid-corner at big lean angle, the engine cut out, locking the rear tire. That spit him into a guard rail shin first, breaking his Tibia. Luckily, Adey was in his Dainese suit, Puma boots and AGV GP-Tech. ...
Sep 10, 2012
Riding the BRD RedShift SM on The Snake
“So much power it’ll wheelie off the throttle at any speed.” If you’re anything like me, you’re a bit sick of the hyperbole that makers of electric motorcycles have been slinging for the last few years. There’s talk of instantaneous torque, practical ranges and performance on par with (small) ICE bikes, but the reality has only been overpriced products that are slow, massively overstat...
Jul 06, 2012
Adey rides the Panigale
Everyone's favorite street racer/personal trainer/male model/art director/fashion designer, Adey, just borrowed a Ducati 1199 Panigale for a couple days from Beverly Hills Ducati. You know what he did with it too, The Snake. Here's what you've all been waiting for, a real rider on a real road on the world's fastest motorcycle. Update: two more videos added. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzq7H...
May 16, 2012
What The Snake looked like in 1983
These photos, snapped by Tom Wing between 1980 and 1983, reveal a time on Mulholland Highway before digital retouching, R1s and the Internet. You know what? The lines and styles of these riders actually look faster than the extreme lean angles (achieved at the expense of everything else) sought out by today's riders. Update: as Pat points out in comments, that's an '86 GSX-R750, so the photo was...
Feb 16, 2012
Dailies
Video: crashing a $140,000 Ducati
Need some schadenfreude on a cold, rainy Monday morning? Here, a guy with more money than sense stuffs his $140,000 custom Ducati into a guard rail on The Snake. The cause? Well, according to him, it was “something on the road.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PE9cozFuAw $140,000?! Yeah, that’s as ridiculous as it sounds, but it’s also accurate. “Desmo Dave” is so obsessed with havi...
Dec 12, 2011
Riding pillion with an Isle of Man TT winner
I felt guilty for playing hooky from work. I didn't tell anyone where I was going, all the while thinking they may very well find out where I'd wound up. I was a nervous wreck on the ride up to meet him at his home in Calabasas. Maybe this wasn't a good idea after all. Why did he even agree to it? At the time, I only asked for my own selfish thrill-seeking pleasure. I hadn't planned to write about...
Aug 26, 2011
Dailies
The CHP on The Snake
You’ve seen the pictures, watched the videos and heard the stories. There’s a road north of LA where motorcyclists go balls out and where the police just sit and watch it happen. So long as you’re doing it between two informally agreed points, you’re very unlikely to get a ticket. Why is that? We went to the California Highway Patrol and asked. What we got wasn’t so much an answer as a s...
Aug 15, 2011
Dailies
Find another road
Don’t get me wrong. I dig the smooth pavement, tight corners and virtually-legal hooning The Snake offers, but with stuff like this happening on a regular basis, why would you ride there? Surely the LA area offers plenty of alternatives where a lowsiding squid isn’t hiding around every corner. In this video, Snake regular and GSX-R pilot Johnny5 is wiped out head-on by a fellow motorcyclist. H...
Jul 25, 2011
Try not to kill the photographer
And here’s the downside to all the riding-fast-on-public-roads business. Victory Jon, the same photographer who captured Adey racing the Porsche, was minding his own business, shooting riders on Mulholland, when all of a sudden this GSX-R750 came right for him. Fortunately for us, his photographer’s instincts kicked in and he kept on shooting, even as the bike collided with his trailer. Phot...
May 18, 2011
Custom: Ray Fitzpatrick’s Honda CBX
"I don't like Cafe imitations, they are gay as fuck and uglier than hell. Only a '50s or '60s Brit bike can be a real cafe racer and they even still look like they have a dildo butt plug built into the seat." Don’t let Ray Fitzpatrick’s coarseness or Brooklyn accent fool you. He’s a genuinely nice guy that’s been riding motorcycles as everyday transportation for longer than I’ve been al...
May 17, 2011
Dailies
The dangers of target fixation
Remember when your MSF instructor told you to look where you want to go, not at what you don't want to hit? Well, this is why. The two riders in this video are regulars on the section of Mulholland Highway known as "The Snake" and they had a rough time on Thursday afternoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPb46lc-L98 After making the slow right rock-overhang corner, the rider on the green K...
Mar 21, 2011
Riding the Aprilia RSV4 on The Snake
We’re out in Los Angeles for the month on the pretense of having meetings and doing features, but really we’re here to escape winter and ride some freakin’ bikes. We normally go further afield, to less populated areas to ride fast bikes fast, but figured when in Rome...The Snake, a 2.2-mile section of Mulholland Highway uphill from The Rock Store in Malibu is the most infamously good road in...
Feb 14, 2011