It was an amazing experience building the Today Show Chopper in so many ways. Just parking in NYC is anything but a simple matter - that is, if you have trucks with trailers. The parking garage we were supposed to park in, refused to let us in. I blocked the street with my rig, refusing to move and creating a commotion. It attracted the attention of a group of people standing outside the back entrance of a business next to the parking garage that came over to talk to us and who became our friends. We had just enough room to pull upon the street and park in front of that entrance with the back end of Athena’s trailer partially blocking a loading dock door. We stayed parked there all weekend with that business’s security cameras watching our rigs. It turned out to be the most secure parking spot in all of Manhattan. It was the rear entrance to Christie’s Auction House.
Standing out there on Rockefeller Plaza at midnight, gazing up at the tall buildings surrounding us, knowing we were about to be filmed for the most-watched morning news show on TV. The Today Show crew was easy to work with, although they were a bit nervous. Nothing like this had ever been done. That is, an overnight filming outdoors on the Plaza, let alone it being a custom motorcycle going together. There were many issues to deal with, especially in a city like New York where it is against the law to sit on a milk crate on the sidewalk. The trucks and trailers were unloaded. It was an amazing feeling to push our choppers onto a place we had only seen on TV. Bikes that were built with heart and soul on shoestring budgets, now the centerpieces for a first-time television event. The crew rolled out a large piece of gray material to protect the stone of the Plaza. Enormous lights were set up. Heavy toolboxes were rolled across the Plaza and stacked up. Tables set up and parts and paint laid out. Cables unrolled and suddenly the cameras were rolling. There was no time to be nervous. At 2:30 am we had 4½ hours until we went live.
The ladies set the frame on the bike lift. I plugged in the small silent compressor and hoped it would have enough power to work the lift. It did, but it needed a little help and the crew gathered around the lift and helped it rise. Don, Athena’s husband and our "Toolboy," fed us tools. The ladies were inconstant motion around the lift. Installing the engine and transmission, running the wiring harness. We worked like a machine, everyone with a task. Wheels were bolted into place. The Biker’s Choice Aces High kit bike was going together like a smooth breeze. Gypsy stood on the lift holding the springer front end while Kate secured it onto the neck of the frame. I airbrushed the Today Show logos on the tank, using the heat gun to help dry the water-based paint I was using. It was a chilly NYC night, but while the paint dried, our crew was too busy to feel anything.
Brake lines and cables were run along the frame. Calipers went into place.
There was food set up in the famous NBC "Green Room," but not many of us would partake. As if we could have eaten anything anyway. That bike had to fire up on the first turn of the key.
As we worked away, the sky began to grow light. It was when the rear fender went on the bike that we noticed it. Suddenly it was not dark anymore. At that point, adrenaline was flowing and we were wide awake. It was nearly sunrise. Russ Torres, the Today Show producer we worked with, came over to us and went over the live film schedule. Various assembly tasks would be filmed live as teaser updates to be shown right before commercial breaks, as in "Coming up in the next half hour, the Chopper Chick Crew and the Today Show Chopper." The exhaust would go on the bike at 7:50, the gas tank at 8:00, the bike would be started at 8:15.
A crowd of people had already gathered on the other side of the barricades to watch the show and the cameramen were filming them screaming. And the clock began to race. Two hours went by in flash. They introduced the Chopper Chick Crew by running a piece of film that NBC News had shot at my custom-paint studio back in April. We stood there in the Plaza, watching on the monitors for the first time. I could not believe what I was seeing. 28 years of unreal hard work, many disappointments, ups and downs, all of it, condensed into 2½ minutes of film. I would have never guessed back then where it would all lead, to here on the Plaza, on a major television network. It was all very surreal after that point. Then I was up on the lift, putting on the tank.
We cheered and the crowd yelled out their approval when that key was turned and the bike fired up on the first turn of the key.
Suddenly Athena and I were fitted for microphones and there was Lester Holt walking out to interview us. I spoke about the paint; Athena talked about the bike. And then just like that, it was over. Nine hours had gone by in a flash.
We started loading up our equipment. I hopped on my bike to run it around the block to get it onto my trailer. And then it hit me; I was on the streets of New York riding a hardtail chopper. Hair flying out behind me. Open pipes thundering off the canyons of the buildings. Give midtown Manhattan a wake-up call from the Chopper Chick Crew. So I rode around the block twice.
And then the trucks and trailers were loaded. The Plaza was empty once again. It was as if the Chopper Chicks had never been there. But was it really? There on the brick pavement was an oil stain. Despite all the precautions taken, some oil had been spilled. The Chopper Chick Crew had left their mark and New York had left its mark on our hearts. For more info go to http://chopperchickcrew.com. 
ges one's perception of weeds, for she sees weeding as a pleasure giving her time to let her mind drift while at the same time getting close to her plants from ground level!
e pages and looking at the pictures and illustrations, some of which I reproduce here so you can see what I mean.