Brammo Logo Commissioned Artwork

I was watching my “Nearby” feed on Google + when I noticed a posting by Louie Buchanan, a Kansas City artist who is slowly carving out a niche in the custom-painted motorcycle helmet world.  Here’s the helmet I saw, initially:

I’m not that much into skulls, especially when they are on the back of something which my skull is currently inside of, but I could see talent here and I was interested.  I began chatting with Louie on G+ and asked him to take a look at my current helmet, an AGV Miglia, and the current design detail, a Brammo bull’s head logo:

I told Louie about my bike – most significantly, that it’s electric.  A few days later, he sent me this:

I liked the “electric” feel of this, but, before I could make any suggestions, Louie sent me one that he thought reflected the “American Made” aspect of Brammo:

I tend to think that Harley Davidson has the stars and stripes angle on motorcycle riding gear pretty wrapped up, so I told him that while I liked his creativity, I didn’t want to go with the “Old Glory” design.  I did, however, appreciate what I thought was a subliminally suggestive figure of a female body under the sheets.  Can anyone else see it, or am I just being a dirty old man?

Louie then sent me the following design, which, I think, is what I’m going with. I like the chrome-like accents, the stripes, and especially, the electric arc effects wrapping around the stripes:

If you’re interested in working with Louie on your ideas for a custom painted helmet, he is extremely easy to work with and has a lot of creative energy to expend on these projects.  He’s got a Facebook page: L B Customs or you can email him at lbcustoms2012@yahoo.com.

Lights? Check. Siren? Check. A peek at the Enertia Plus LE

A word to the wise – turn your speaker volume down before playing this video, which came to me via a Bothan spy embedded in Ashland, Oregon.

Is this the Enertia Plus LE (Law Enforcement) model, getting ready to be loaded into a shipping container headed toward Hong Kong?  

Or is it, perhaps, the new, standard equipment for all electric vehicles in order to comply with the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act that promises to keep our world as noisy as it can possibly be?

Gavin’s VERY detailed Brammo Enertia review

One of the more active (and vocal) members of the Brammo Owners Forum has written a novella about his experience with the Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle. The company let him take it on a test ride that can fairly be described as “extended.”  It may be lengthy, but it’s an easy read and a recommended read for anyone considering making the switch to electric vehicles and, specifically to a Brammo bike.

View this document on Scribd

 

Brammo Enertia Won on The Price is Right

Some lucky dude won his showcase on CBS’s iconic game show, “The Price is Right” today.  Included in that showcase was one Brammo Enertia.

The Prize

The guy also took home a treadmill and will be going on a trip to Dubai.  Memories of vacations fade and the best laid plans for regular exercise seem to fall by the wayside, but we’re hopeful he’ll be zipping along on this beauty for years to come.

Host Drew Carey in the closing seconds of the show.

(and shame on you CBS for making it so difficult to download anything with a decent resolution from your nightmare of a website.  I had to watch almost half an hour of advertisements to get these two screenshots)

Fear Less

Today's mail

I want to tell you about one of my favorite “Let’s save the planet” blogs, FearLess Revolution. That website sprang out of a place dubbed the “Fearless Cottage” in Boulder, Colorado, that was founded by Alex Bogusky, his wife Ana, and Rob Schuham.  If you’re wondering how this relates to Brammofan, well, you haven’t been paying attention.

Go back and read some of my posts tagged CP+B, which was the advertising agency (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) that Alex Bogusky (the B, obviously, in CP+B) ran.  Around the time I started blogging as Brammofan, Brammo CEO Craig Bramscher bid on eBay and “bought” 17 summer interns from CP+B. I had a great time that summer – 2009 – covering their antics, which included an attempt at making a logo for Brammo and a pretty nifty music video that included some great Brammo footage before the Enertia entered full production.

The biggest “campaign” in which CP+B participated was, without a doubt, the Shocking Barack saga.  More than just a story of two guys on Brammo Enertias traveling from Detroit to Washington, D.C. to give Obama an electric motorcycle, it became an internet phenomenon – followed by hundreds, then thousands, then… who knows how many people before it ended.

You know what?  This is not a story about Brammo or CP+B or Shocking Barack.  This is story about fearing less.

A couple weeks ago, the FearLess Revolution blog announced a little contest.  (I’m not going to get side-tracked here, but Bogusky and Brammo used to be really into contests – search for it).  It was a contest to name a new “Occupy Wall Street” themed flavor of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.  Since I love ice cream and contests, I figured I’d give it a shot.  My entry: “OccuPie Wallnut Street – A delicious mix of walnuts, pie crust and the tears of the oppressed majority.”

After pleading on Twitter and on Facebook for my friends and followers to vote early and often, it turned out that I won!  Thrilled, I was, and especially because the prize was quite a treasure: a FearLess t-shirt.  These shirts are pretty awesome and you should go order one before they run out.   Just make sure it’s appropriate – since I have kids around here, I got the “Fear Less Love More” shirt.  (They just came out with the ”Kill Less F@ck More” shirt – uncensored, which I would love, if I were a college freshman again).

Here’s where the “Fear Less” lesson comes in:  One of Bogusky’s lackeys employees sent me an email requesting my size and a mailing address.  I responded with the appropriate answers and then, PUSHED PAST MY FEAR OF ASKING FOR WHAT I WANT.  Here’s what I wrote:

I would like to request a handwritten and signed note by Alex expressing the “thanks of a grateful nation” or at least the thanks of a grateful FearLess Force, and a hand-drawn picture of a rodent or other small mammal of his choice.  I will settle for less, but I have learned to be FearLess when I make these special requests.

And here are the results:

My very cool Fear Less Love More t-shirt - a $25.00 Value!

A little closer, on that post-it:

Yep. It's a small mammal.

So… he took my request VERY literally – the damn thing is almost microscopic.  Yeah, leave it to that ol’ comedian, Alex.  Okay, so no “thanks of a grateful FearLess nation,” but I did say that I would settle for less.

The takeaway:  If your dream is to one day own an original piece of art, signed by the artist, then you’re going to have to push outside your comfort zone to get it.  I did, and now that little Post-It note is framed, hanging in my living room, right where I imagined, long ago, it would be.  You don’t believe me?

Fear Less.  Love More.  Dream Big.

Birds by Audubon, Small Burrowing Mammal by Bogusky