Dad-Daughter Day at 2014 Laconia Bike Week

Summer kicks off in Laconia with at 91st annual bike week!!

Laconia Bike Week is the oldest motorcycle rally in the USA, whose roots date back to 1916, but became official in 1923 as part of the Loudon Classic motorcycle races.  The event is held in June each year and is still called by some of the old timers as the Gypsy Tour.  An explanation of the name was given to an attentive crowd by the lead singer of one of the Rock Bands that played in one of the beer tents.  Today motorcycle enthusiasts call these gatherings “runs or rallies”, but Gypsy Tour is truly an American term that described riders from all parts of America that would meet at favorite destination.   Laconia in New Hampshire, Sturgis in South Dakota and Daytona Beach in Florida are a few of the more popular locations.  Bike riders would travel long distances, with the bikes loaded up with camping gear, sleeping along the roads, sitting around campfires, thus they were called gypsies.

While there are many makes and models of motorcycles at the Laconia event, the predominant bike is the Harley Davidson and it is really exciting to see the antique models with nicknames like Panhead, Knucklehead and Shovelhead.   They were given these names because of the distinct shape of their rocker covers.   In the more recent years some claim that Harley Davidson has paid less attention to “style and quality”, and more on being a marketing machine.  While the brute marketing approach is true, there is still something about the sound of the pipes and the thrill of riding an American Classic. Some of the new 2014 bikes are absolute eye candy.  If you enjoy Motorcycles, there are thousands of them to see during the week and most proudly show them off in various ways.

Making the bling look good

A number of years ago, our company, Static Clean had the fortune to work on Harley Davidson parts with one of their outsourced manufacturing partners.  Besides the Harley sound, the most attractive thing about a Harley is the chrome or bling as it is called today.   The speedometer and tachometer instrument gauges were being manufactured in Connecticut and secondary processing such as decorating or chrome plating were required.   Any debris or particles on the parts would show up in the finished product.   Our ionizing air nozzles were implemented and the reject rates were vastly reduced.   Static Clean helps hundreds of companies towards yield improvements by controlling the particle attraction of static electricity.  The automotive industry in general considers static to be a major problem that needs to be addressed.  It is exciting working on “cool things”.