I'm TOTALLY patting myself on the back for this...

My Blog. I can.

Those of us who populate the sportbike club are of a like mind when it comes to gear. On Sundays, we all wear as much gear as we can. Most of us carry that habit into the remainder of our time on our bikes as well. So when we see a guy on a ginormous-engined sportbike, in a t-shirt and shorts, sunglasses, baseball cap (on backwards, of course...for aerodynamics) and flip flops, we pooh-pooh them as a "squid." Mostly because they do the rest of us "actual" riders no good in the eyes of the non-motorcycling public, but, personally they amuse me because they almost never leave town, likely have not yet crashed in that get-up and had to have ground-in gravel removed from their skin (after my first crash I wanted more gear than I already had on and I didn't even suffer more damage than a jammed shoulder), and they sport HUGE chicken strips on their tires. Yeah, but they look cool and have that giant cc motorsickle. Pffft.

Motorcycling terminology lesson: "Chicken strips" are the unscuffed strips on the outside of the tire tread, indicating that the rider does little-to-no leaning in a turn. Any fool can go fast on a straight. But it takes a special kind of stupid to lean into a turn. And Mister, I am that kind of stupid. See here: First, a photo taken of a squid's 1000cc sportbike outside Gold's Gym...

That lighter colored 1-inch-or-so strip? Chicken. Also, the rider has spent WAY more seat time upright and in straights than any turning. That's what that sharp angle is closer to the center of the tire. This tire would be more commonly found on a cruiser in this condition because cruisers aren't designed to do much in the way of leaning, so instead of a round even wear, the tire develops a flat spot down the center.

Now...after this past weekend and my "graduation (which I will speak of in another post)", here's my tire (shiny bit along the edge is my chicken strip):


I'm pretty damn impressed with myself. But...hey, HUGE TANGENT. That's not what I'm all self-back-patting about. Though I did. A lot. This past Sunday was AWESOME (later post). Back to the squid thing.

Mostly Naked and I were sitting around La Casa de Gasa, when he asked me, "Do you have some kind of software where you can mess with a picture to make it look like something else?" I just happen to be brushing up on InDesign and Photoshop at work to add to my skill set. So I was excited about this project. After posing my subject outside squid-like...mostly naked (status quo)...and a little Googling for the right background...and about seven hours of noobie-style poking around in Macromedia Fireworks...and some nagging to finish the thing...I present Mostly Naked and his squidly impression. In flip flops.

No Mostly Nakeds were harmed in the making of this photo.

Here's the two pictures I used:



Goood job Meeee...