The Fastest Loser

Rob, Rouser, Robot, whatever you call this dude, you'd be fortunate to just call him "friend". If any one person embodies the spirit of the EDR, it's this dude. Build a bike yourself, then ride the piss out of it and have a good time all the time. That's what this run has been about since the inception and it's exactly the kind of guy Rob is. I call him an "experience whore" because when everyone else is content to chill, Rob will hop on his bike and haul ass out into the desert just to see what it's like out there. He rode down to Mazatlan with Mark and Randy from St. Louis- two guys he had never met before the trip. When Randy busted his arm in a crash down the infamous "Devil's Spine" Rob helped tape his arm to the bars so he could finish riding into town. Once Randy was at the hospital and taken care of, Rob took off north and met me and Brooks, Nick and Joel in Los Mochis for the ferry ride over to LaPaz. We rode with him the next few days up the baja peninsula and eventually ended up in San Felipe to meet the rest of the EDR crew. (Randy and Mark made it too, ghetto cast and all, just a day or two behind us!) Rob's bike is built on a Flyrite Smokin Gun and should be considered the ultimate test mule. It never let him down, even after getting stuffed under the bumper of a Scion just across the border into the USA, the bike started right up with only minor damage. Rob went away in an ambulance but was able to cram the bike into a rented mini van a day or two later and limp home to Corpus Cristi, Texas to lick his wounds.



While in San Felipe and Ensenada, Rob's sporty didn't escape the inquiring eyes of our judges and he netted a third-place over all bike trophy. The one-off trophy was a bad ass belt cooked up by the DicE guys and made by Baltazar. I have a feeling Rouser is gonna keep this memento for a long time, and he should, he earned the sucker! I asked him for a run-down on the bike and this is what he sent:



I got the bike as a 99 buell m2, under 4k, $3thousandsomething in the spring of 2005. rode it in colorado, and texas for the next year. Then in the summer of 06 I put together the first set up. it had a dna springer, no fender, shity hair pin seat springs, a velocity stack, and some other nifty touches. It looked awesome, TFL had arrived. Rode it, rode it some more, kept riding it. Springers look rad, but in my case looks were badly defeated by function. Lame, why hadn't I used my buell forks sooner? Ass! Knew it was a rider already, but it needed to be an all situation rider. ditched the springer for the inverted Buell fork wasting away in the garage, inserted an hd takeoff fender, twin cam filter set up, attached a saddle bag, and placed quite a bit of other needed pieces of new and improved equipment in strategic positions on the motorbike. Now i had a rider, wait I already had a rider, but after the spa treatment, the lines I chose on the road were previously untaken. Gone were the days of pogoing across a beat up intersection. TFL II, I Love you!



Rob, Thanks for coming out, sorry you got wadded up at the border and I'll ride anywhere with you again, just name the time, son!

-Bill