It is an interesting time to be alive. You rarely hear any positive news these days while a good number of my friends are loosing their jobs. One of my  best friends just let me know that he will be closing down his bike shop by the end of the year.

The fact being that the majority of his customers just aren’t able to spend the $80 an hour to have their bikes worked on.  Not to mention that loosing their homes may take priority over their bikes. We are heading towards a time that requires more simplicity. For a while you could find your average American with at least one house, cars, Harleys, boats and all kinds of other excessive crap. People would come into our shop and blow money at the drop of a hat. Now that money is becoming more scarce and most people are thinking twice before spending it on.

Fortunately one of the business beliefs Build A Hog has built itself on is that people should be able to work on their own bikes to further enjoy the experience of motorcycling and save some serious cash in the process. In these crazy times I hope people can still look to their motorcycles as a source of happiness.

Michael Durham

On Monday November 9th we are launching a new product that isn’t ours. We came across this item at a rally and tried it out and love it.

No matter what the cost of gas is right now we are hoping people that own Harleys are using them as a daily driver instead of a pick-up or SUV. Now we know in the winter that is not possible but if you can then please do it.

We just went through a long election cycle and with all the promises from everyone, lets face it after 30 years the government will take us nowhere!

We as Americans need to stand up and put in place our own energy policy! We can not wait another 30 years for government.

Back to point at 12 noon pacific time we will launch a headlight modulator that blinks your high beam during the day. A great safety feature in daytime driving.

What is neat about this modulator it is just plug in and ride! No wire splicing. It was designed and manufactured in San Diego Ca.

We only ordered a few to start with so we expect them to go fast.

Remember no matter what the price of gas is…….start riding your bike to work!

 Ray

I am downright pissed off at the weather!

Easy thing to say about something you can’t control. We have a couple of things on tap to produce but we need to tape it first! This weekend the American Heat Show is back in Palm Springs. The big news is the city is putting it back on the main drag as compared to last year in the parking lot of a casino. What a bust that was. This year it has a new sponsor but the rates they were charging for booth space was out of our range. I think they would have been smarter to lower the price to try to build the event up from the last few years in a parking lot.

What the hell do I know I’m just a video head. We will be down there walking around and giving away some stuff.

 Ray

I am getting very impatient with the weather! I want to get up and running for another season of production. The two car garage we shoot in is still too hot, let along 2000 watts of lights would put the temperature up to about 115. Too hot for the camera crew let alone Michael as the sweat drips down his forehead.

I want to get more instructional videos up for you, our customers. Our mission is to educate our customers about working on their Harleys. To save them tons of money in these tough economic time. To give you the satisfaction of doing it yourself and the knowledge to talk to any mechanic from a position of knowledge. Instead of hoping this persons knows what they are doing.

It may sound strange to most of the world but pray for fall and winter please.

Ray

Been taking some time off here at BAH. August in the desert is crappy to say the least. Everyone is tired of summer and waiting for the first hint of fall.

We do have some trick stuff coming up in September. Little things that we have been working on for a while. I am waiting for fall to start production on some new material. It gets hot during the day (in the 90’s) but cools off at night. Since we shoot everything in a regular two car garage with no ventilation August with humidity is not the time to shoot.

Keep an eye on us in September.

 Ray

We just launched our B.Y.O.B. today! To tell you the truth we did a half launch. The DVD is done and on the website. I hope to have downloads in a few weeks.

Ya see we have a slight problem with the downloads. Disc B that runs about 95 minutes long, when compressed for Windows it is about a Gigabyte in size. Just a huge file. The key in video is bit-rate. The higher the bit-rate the better quality you get hence the files are huge. So now the experiments begin changing the bit rates makes this file how big? The time it takes to compress a file like Disc B is about 4-6 hours. So I compress for 5 hours and then look at the video and how big the file is. Then compress it again at a different bit-rate and compare again.

So my part in B.Y.O.B. is far from over. It took us 3 months to shoot this and then the fun began in post production.

OH well back to work!

Ray

Just putting the finishing tweaks on our build your own bike video. The first disc is about 54 minutes long and is the mock-up stage of building a bike. The second disc is about 94 minutes long and is the final assembly of the bike. Did it (the bike) ever come out fuckin great! I mean it looks bitchin.

Last weekend we were at the L.A. Calender bike show in Long Beach. As I understand one of the largest in So. California. It was great and met a lot of great people. The bike was sitting out in front of our booth and drew a lot of lookers.

Need to get some DVDs cut next week and then get everything loaded on the server.

All of you VIP members will get a special offer right before launch. If you have not signed up do it now!

Ray

Tonight? Ah last night we finished shooting B.Y.O.B. . I can’t believe my eyes. This was the video we were going to start the company with 18 months ago.

It’s in the can now and I have a lot of work to do to get it out in the next two weeks. Keep your eyes peeled and to get a special deal sign up as a VIP.

Ray

Still in production on B.Y.O.B. and we have had a few interruptions. We had our first what I would call trade show this weekend up at Big Bear lake. Put on by Big Bear Chopper “Ride The Mountain”. It gave us a chance to set up a booth and check it out.

Thank you to our customers who stopped by to say hi and it was great to put a face to some of our customers. I was very impressed with how well organized the event was and what a great job the Big Bear Chopper staff had it together.

Tuesday night we go back to that little two car garage and start shooting again. As it happens, we are running behind schedule and it has gotten hot. So we shoot for a few minutes then shut off the 2,000 watts of lights and go inside to cool off and come back out and shoot again. We do this because we want this stuff to be the same as you would have it at your garage.

We hope to have this video on the market by the end of June. We are going to have a booth at the L.A. Calendar Custom Bike show in Long Beach the second weekend in July. So if you attend swing by and check us out.

Ray

Two nights of shooting on our Build Your Own Bike (BYOB) Disc 2 assembly DVD as of today. We have all the painted parts back and we are shooting the assembly video. Michael has many tips along the way for kit builders and parts builders. One of the tips is to tap all threads even on kit bikes. Another is grinding the paint off the motor mounts for good grounding contact.

I can hardly wait for electrical. Michael is going to dive into theory and troubleshooting. The extent of electrical coverage should be worth the price of the DVD alone!

 Ray