Johnny Killmore

My work piloting a camera-bike sidecar during the 2017 Veterans Charity Ride to Sturgis© led me to adding a story to a photo essay in Inked Magazine. I chose 1st-person present-tense to capture the emotion and roller coaster ride of thoughts and moments shared on the journey.

With the continuing rise of flat track racing, it should be no surprise that Roland Sands Super Hooligans National Championship (SHNC) is on the rise with it. With only two pages of rules and a low barrier to entry, riders take 2-cylinder street bikes– 750cc or larger– and have at it on a variety of small racetracks, both paved and dirt.
To make things even more inclusive, SHNC has support classes for pit bikes, scooters, air-cooled machines, supermoto, and the like. And just in case none of ...

[Product/Industry Analysis]

"Riding and hiking have different considerations for obvious reasons, and the design of footwear is where it is most noticeable. Hiking usually asks for..."

[reflection | review]
When We Were Knights
Editor’s Note: 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the legendary Pikes Peak Hill Climb. It will be a year to remember and Team Johnny Killmore will be racing for the record! The sidecar team is piloted by My Life at SPEED contributor, Johnny Kilmore, and he has a new co-pilot this year with stunt coordinator and basejumper, Matt Blank. Here is Johnny’s introduction to Matt. WOW!
If you are interested in helping the team this year at Pikes Peak, here is their Go Fund Me page ...

[ Athlete Interview]

"While change may be the only constant, Bryan Smith is having more than his fair share of it, and that’s a good thing. Coming so close to winning the AMA Pro Flat Track (now American Flat Track) championship for years, the 33-year-old Michigan rider claimed his first title in dramatic fashion last..."

[Event Report, Travel Story]

Event report on a small motorcycle rally along with some industry musings and original photography.

Bringing motorcycle racing to a new audience has been a goal of varying importance since the dawn of motorsport. Some of the biggest hurdles organizers and promoters run into is making the rules easy to understand, finding a nearby venue, and having more to do than just watch motorcycles go round and round.
Roland Sands has solved that and more with the ever-growing Super Hooligans series. Based loosely on “Harley Night,” a run-what-ya-brung class at Costa Mesa Speedway where fans from the cr...

[viral video/inspiration piece]

The little girl in this video reminded me to stop taking myself so seriously, quit worrying about results, and to let myself enjoy the world in general. It also reminded me how child-like I still am, never really worrying about the next day and just living in the moment. I can’t stop watching it.

[Photo Essay | Explorative]

"If you have raced competitively at any level you know the feeling. It could have been running track in high school. It could have been mountain bikes in a local club."

I like to call it Wind Therapy. It’s the state of mind we all get when, leaving our worries behind, we climb aboard a motorcycle and aim it towards “somewhere.” And despite a lack of clinical research, this concept seems to be known by any motorcycle rider that’s spent much time in the saddle. On the bike is a time when the cell phone and other distractions are set aside, letting you interface with the world around you. Even on a group ride, we are “alone together,” sharing memories during fu...

The FIM World Superbike race series comes to the US only once a year, but they pick the historic hills of Laguna Seca (now WeatherTech Raceway) to make sure they do it in style. Better yet, our national superbike series, MotoAmerica, shares the weekend with them, allowing America’s top guns to show off what they can do in front of (and sometimes against) international teams.
And the event is not just for die-hard race fans. Both MotoAmerica and the Motul WorldSBK organizers are actively inves...

While most motorcyclists think of stunning views along the Pacific Coast Highway when they think of San Francisco, the truth is, so does everyone else. From cyclists to RV’s to tourists in the family minivan, California’s Highway 1 can be packed most of the day, year-round.

The simple solution is to ride the interior of the peninsula, which is an excellent alternative. But this ignores the wide-open spaces of San Francisco’s East Bay. The area lacks many of the high-end housing developments a...

Read Johnny Kilmore’s account of Pikes Peak Part 1 here –> Of Sidecars And Summits: A Racer’s View From Pikes Peak- PART ONE
Eventually I found an old article with the 2013 results and compared them to our time. Subculture Racing’s 2013 record: 11:26.987. Team Johnny Killmore’s 2016 time: 11:26.644: a difference of only 0.343 seconds. If I had missed one more upshift, if I had slacked off in one turn, or if Matt had missed one transition… no consolation, no do-over. We didn’t come to win the ...

From the cubicle life as a software engineer to running a small business selling hand-made, all-American parts seems like a huge jump… and it is. But Jay Padilla at FAB28 Industries knew there was more to life than a steady paycheck. Fabricating go-fast stuff had long been a hobby of Jay’s, doing custom turbo kits for import cars as far back as his high school days. With his two sons and only four other full-time employees, FAB28 is churning out high performance, hand made exhausts for famous...

Rally Dakar is without a doubt the biggest, toughest, and most monumental event in motorsport. Just one day of the event is an epic undertaking: racing across open terrain, navigating with an old-fashioned roadbook and odometer, and the need to know when to risk it all and when to hold back.
This year’s event is already more than half over, with the mid-point rest day gone and competitors heading back into the Peruvian dunes. Now is a great time to recap the first half, and I’ll try my luck a...