A California company hopes to sell a build-it-yourself kit by 2011

By Jim Nash

It is safe to bet that a flying motorcycle will never be a practical transportation option, but that has not stopped Samson Motorworks, a small engineering firm in northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, from playing the long odds.

The company is building a prototype of its Switchblade Multi Mode Vehicle, or flying motorcycle, and hopes to sell a $60,000 do-it-yourself kit as early as 2011 (engine and avionics are sold separately, for about $25,000 total).

Occupants would sit in the aerodynamic Switchblade side by side in leather seats and climate-controlled luxury, behind an aggressively angled nose and canard. Samson is working with a third-party avionics-maker to create an instrument display that switches from air to ground readings on landing.

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Half car, half bike, it’s the 2010 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Trike

Before I rode Harley-Davidson’s new Street Glide Trike, my attitude about three-wheeled cruisers was that they were geezer machines – ridden by old guys whose backsides were as big as their bikes’. The thousands of dollars riders paid to convert their motorcycles into road-going half-breeds seemed a steep price to pay just to avoid putting their feet down.

But riding Harley’s latest, I learned otherwise. The trike’s attraction is even broader than its car-like width, appealing to the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl (who was the first to get one — as a custom — even before the Street Glide Trike went i to production), the gang-bangers in my Northeast L.A. ‘hood and the guy in the Scion XB who threw a complimentary devil horn from his window less than a minute after I’d taken possession of my temporary wheels.

Powered with a 103-cubic-inch twin-cam engine, rather than the 96-incher on the regular Street Glide upon which it is based, the sporty 2010 Street Glide Trike is the second modern-day Harley-Davidson to be released as a three-wheeler. After a 36-year hiatus from triple-wheeled machines, Harley debuted its Tri Glide Ultra Classic last year, responding to customer requests for a trike that could be purchased off the floor and ready to ride instead of making buyers jump through the hoops of buying a motorcycle, purchasing a kit and ripping the motorcycle apart to convert it. The added benefit of a stock trike: matching wheels, matching paint and a full factory warranty that wasn’t voided by the conversion, all of it for less money.

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Get your motor running. Head out on the highway. Looking for adventure. And whatever comes our way…

The words to Steppenwolf’s bikers’ anthem Born To Be Wild whirled around in my head as I clunked my Harley-Davidson Rocker into gear and pulled away from the lights.

It was just after 10am and I was leaving the Chicago city limits, heading due north along the western shores of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee. It’s a 90-mile journey along Route 94, crossing from Illinois into Wisconsin, with my ultimate destination the new Harley-Davidson museum in the company’s hometown.

America’s premier motorcycle company began life in Milwaukee back in 1903.

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