So Paul is back from Afghanistan and was visiting the weekend before last. I come over to his place and he’s on the web checking out miniature motorcycles. I’m just thinking to myself, “wtf Paul?” Well somehow his search for trucks turned into a search for mini motorcycles, but he came to a site called minipocketrockets.com where they were selling some of these things for under $200. Intrigued I went on you tube and checked search for some pocket bike videos and found a bunch. Apparently this thing is pretty big in China as there were several videos feature championship races or something.
After watching a bunch of videos I got to thinking shit $200. Is that really it? I gave the place a call to ask a few questions about the bike and after some rounds of “I’ll get one if you get one” back and forth withPaul two bikes were ordered for $237.12 shipped each. It’s a tiny motorcycle that comes in a cardboard box! It’s shipped with standard FedEx shipping!
So a week later on Friday the bike arrives in all it’s cardboard box glory. When I pulled it out of the box I have to say I was impressed. The quality is remarkably good for such a low price. The welds looked good, the plastics were nice, and the engine fired right up in no time. A few hours later the fun began. I took my bike over to Paul’s and it was race time!
The first thing I noticed when I started riding, it’s kind of scary! You sit in a really weird position and until you get some speed it isn’t very stable. After you do get some speed it’s kinda scary trying to steer for fear of hitting the ground during the lean. The bike is after all only about 16 inches tall. The next thing I noticed though was how remarkably fast these things are. The site said they do 40 m.p.h. I haven’t been able to confirm that, but they definitely go about as fast as you would want to go sitting that close to the ground. They also accelerated quicker than I expected. With only a 47cc engine I didn’t expect much in the way of power so I was happy to see it was pretty decent.
So for the racing. We drove by this one guy’s house where he was working on his motocross bike. He see’s us drive by and later comes out on a kids 50cc dirt bike. I joke with him, “you wanna race?” and he’s just like sure. We all get lined up and go. He had us on acceleration and pulled away early on, but the mini pocket rockets had higher top end speed so I was able to pull up and past him before we hit the finish line. I wish someone had a video camera because I has to have looked hilarious as grown men raced on tiny motorcycles!
I put up some photos of my bike on my site. Check them out here.