One thing I don’t get is the fascination most everybody has with THE COMING APOCALPSE. From movies to television to radio (and let’s not forget the Internet), people derive huge entertainment with some sort of viral or nuclear or alien end of time as we know it. If a story about where humankind is going has a bad or potentially bad ending, good old homo sapiens are right on board and can’t get enough of it. Just bring up The Walking Dead sometime in a conversation and watch how anybody and everybody will go on and on about it even if they’re a perennial wallflower. People love bad times.
And, for all of you apocalypse fans who are reading this on Barnett’s Magazine Online, you even have a motorcycle zombie apocalypse hero of Daryl Dixon (aka Norman Reedus) in The Walking Dead who unfortunately rode around on a crappy old Triumph chopper. I mean, who would own a kick-start-only British bike with a peanut tank with zombies lurking everywhere? C’mon Daryl, can the Triumph that’s supposedly back at some prison and can the Honda Nighthawk that replaced it. Aren’t there some nice new Harley-Davidsons still sitting on abandoned dealers’ showroom floors? Let’s see, end of world, zombies everywhere looking to eat your brain and you choose a 30-year-old beat-up chopper to escape pending doom week after week. Don’t you ever ride by a Harley dealer and think, “You know what? I should check out what they’ve got.” Nope keep riding thosse POS until you find another just like you did again.
Now I don’t know whether the builder of our feature bike is planning for the zombie future with a little more taste than Mr. Reedus’ character or he’s just a fan of the whole uptick in zombie love, but the paint theme behind this build is quite clearly zombie, zombie and more zombies. The sunset orange paint (which seems to be orange over gold) that covers the custom Softail frame and all the bodywork provides a nice background for the zombie tale that’s airbrushed all over it. There’s certainly a lot of hungry-for-brain-zombies scattered about and would probably be a popular theme at any show or gathering.
Unfortunately the only thing that zombies (according to folklore) still have left of senses is attraction to light and sensing motion. Obviously this paintjob might be the wrong zombie approach as it literally turns light into more light, but the builder did his best to accommodate this possible oversight. There’s an S&S 96-inch Super Stock engine on board that should make quick getaways a breeze. Plus it comes with its own zombie protection with a forward-facing spiked air cleaner, a beast of a one-off 2-into-1 exhaust which could literally blow them away and a big-ass open belt drive to squish them up if they got too close on the other side.
This quite attractive build also features a raked-out springer which kinda acts like its version of a train’s cow catcher but for the undead instead. The fact that it’s longer than Daryl’s bike allows the owner to pack even more heat up front like Daryl does with his bows. If they come after you from the back, there’s a nice pointed sissy bar to impale them before they get to you. Even the highly protective and good looking bars are fitted with pointy ends
that could be used as weapons in a close call situation –stab and gun it. Fending off zombies on a bike should never be so much fun as this bike is.
But, the nicest part about this bike is that it doesn’t look as crappy as Daryl’s rides and I can only imagine being cool still has its style points during an apocalypse. The orange-gold paint is set of quietly by the copper plating on the rims and engine bits to give a little more depth and interest with the fairly close contrast. It may be close, but it is a very nice looking contrast.
The best part about this ride, though, is that the owner has a great looking ride that should survive him even if there is no apocalypse. It’s a ride that’s ready for anything even if everybody’s dreams of the world turning to sh*t comes true. They’ll be one guy doing it with class.