Ural Motorcycle Review - Our Best Sidecar
FortNine
Sidecars are . . . what? Weird? Wonderful? Sidecars have been around forever, but I'm not sure they were ever a very good idea. The certainly capture the imagination, and whenever one makes an appearance they cause a stir, but a good idea? Maybe an expedient solution to a shortage or four wheel vehicles, but I don't think they were ever a good idea. They make good movie though.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (4/10) Movie CLIP - Motorcycle Chase (1989) HD
Movieclips
The motorcycles used in the movie were not the original Beemers, but other brands dressed up to look like German army motorcycles, which were what the Ural was copied from.
I remember seeing Sean Connery hopping about on the giant boulders in the underground temple in the movie Never Say Never Again and thought he was not as spry as he used to be. He was 53. I was still shocked to see him in this Indiana Jones movie playing an old man. He was 59.
I sort of knew most of what's in here, but some of the numbers were very surprising. I am now carrying a cell phone with me. I've had it for a year or two, but recently my life has gotten a little more complicated, so having it with me helps. It's just a flip phone from Tracphone with a miserable camera, but the cost is negligible.
I guess the biggest surprise is the business about "easy to use". I don't think Apple products are easy to use. Seems to me like they make you take a zillion steps to do the simplest things. I think people like them because the endless maze of menus gives them something to play with. "If you just do this, and this and this and this and this and then this other thing you can send a smiley face to your BFF." Wonderbar. Not. But since Apple is making money and I'm not, I must be wrong. I still think their products are overpriced crap.
It's kind of like Ural Motorcycles that way. Ural Motorcycles might be decent bikes now (I don't know), but a few years ago they were the epitome of Eastern European junk. They were cool though, if you were into 60 year old mechanical designs, and they were cheap. But they were unreliable, the dealership network was non-existent, so your best hope of getting any help fixing your broken machine was from another Ural rider, and so a network of Ural riders grew up. Sort of the same thing with iPhones. Kids saw other kids do cool things (for some value of 'cool') with their phones and the best way to find out how to do that cool thing was talk to other iPhone users. Which is what iPhone people like to do: talk to other people. Me, I'm more like Sargent Joe Friday of Dragnet: just the facts, ma'am.
01.28.2015. Chinese PLA Women's special troops conduct special warfare training.
Looks like a scene straight out of Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade. Okay, sort of, barely, but hey, military sidecars!
Seems the Chinese segregate their personnel by sex. Women are in their own units, not mixed in with a bunch of men.
Yes, I know, lots of 'Girls with Guns' lately. I've got a few other issues on my mind that are kind of clogging up the works, and there have been more of these pics coming across my screen lately. They are easy and entertaining filler. Makes me wonder why I'm finding more of these pictures. Are women becoming more militant?
U.S. Army motorcycle and sidecar at Fort Myer, Arlington, Virginia, 1917. Also a four-wheel-drive truck (note the FWD emblem on the radiator grill, and differential in the front axle). From Shorpy via Scott.
