The cremated ashes of people have been launched into space, scattered over the ocean, even fired into the air from shotgun shells. That’s why Steve Radz finds nothing macabre about his fledgling business venture. “So, why not take them on a ride on your bike?” he said. “I’m going to be cremated, and my son says he’s going to put me in an urn and put me on a Harley-Davidson and take me to Highway 1 on the coast of California. It’s so strikingly beautiful.”

The 48-year-old Radz, a Massachusetts native who retains a blue-collar New England dialect, is inventor and founder of Final Ride Products of Fayetteville. “And unofficial spokesman, too,” he is quick to add.

He has spent the last half-a-dozen years trying to bring his product to life.

The company, strictly an Internet operation, sells mobile cremation and memorial urns from his home in the Beaver Run subdivision. Eyeing potential profits on the independent enterprise, this longtime Evel Knievel admirer has his rear-view mirror set on the rumbling motorcycle crowd. But he says his “modern funeral item” is good to go bolted to anything from aircraft and police cruisers to firetrucks and mobile homes.

“If your friend was a golfer,” he said, “you could attach it to the cart. That way they could ride the links forever. A policeman would stay eternally on duty if you mounted it to a police car. A fireman can always answer the call. To love a family member, it would be appropriate to give them a final ride.

“If you live this life, you deserve a final ride.”

The idea came to him in what he calls an epiphany.

In February 2002, Radz was working in Bosnia as a master mechanic when he woke up one day about 2 in the morning and sat up in bed. “I had the great realization,” he said.

“I just saw in front of me a motorcycle tubular cremation urn. I invented the product from my mind. I drew it up on paper, and I had one made. The design hasn’t changed much from the one I drew years ago.”

Radz, a short, thin but muscular man with French-Polish roots and a salt-and-pepper Fu Manchu, established Final Ride Products less than two years ago. To date, he has done no advertising.

“I’m just getting started,” he said.

Small stories on his business have appeared here and there, including the pages of the motorcycle magazines Hot Bike, Biker and IronWorks.

Paul Holdsworth is an advertising sales representative for IronWorks, a publication with 15,000 subscribers that targets Harley-Davidson riders. He seems to believe there will be a lot of interest in Radz’s urns.

“If a guy puts tattoos on his body that say ‘Choppers for Life,’ ‘Live the Ride, Ride to Live’ and ‘Harley-Davidson,’ this would be the last expression,” Holdsworth said. “One last ride on a motorcycle with his friends.”

The urn tubes, listed as U.S. Patent No. 7,178, 209 B1, go for $350 a pop. The Final Ride Products Web site is www.1finalride.com.

Cut from solid drawn-over-mandrel steel, the cremation and memorial urns weigh in at 4.17 pounds with a 35-cubic-inch chamber of space. Sometimes called ash tubes by bikers, they are available from the company in service blue, fire engine red and gloss black. They can be customized, too.

“They’re pretty much bullet-proof,” Radz said, before adding that the urns are built to withstand the elements and a possible collision on the highway.

“I can keep you alive forever,” he said.

Should the urn be damaged due to an auto accident, Radz promises to replace it at his expense. His Web site states, “Please mail your urn — ‘less the contents.’”

It figures that he always wanted to be a funeral director.

Like an undertaker, Radz is partial to black.

A segment of his walk-in closet is filled with black jackets, black shirts, black leather, black Levis, black boots. He loved Dracula as a kid, and a collectible “Prince of Darkness” Bela Lugosi-signed picture hangs from his bedroom wall with other memorabilia that indicates a lasting passion for Hollywood horror of yesteryear.

“I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “It was Halloween, and I had stopped by a friend’s house to drop something off. He was working on a car. As I walked up, my friend’s wife said, ‘Look, it’s Steve. He’s all dressed up in black.’ ‘Honey,’ my friend told his wife, ‘Steve wears black on Easter.’”

At 12, when many of the guys in his circle were going after girls, Radz was gawking at both legs and wheels.

He owns a couple of choppers, including a 2002 Harley Road King Classic that he bought overseas. He has training in interior automobile restoration, and Radz custom-designed his hog with such accouterments as Cadillac Hearse tail lights, custom black leather shrouds and blacked-out lights.

Mounted to its front forks is a memorial urn filled with a few of his brother’s personal items: a lock of his white hair, a coin from his unit in Vietnam, a 173rd Airborne combat patch and his parachute wings. “In Memory of Monk” is inscribed on the gold cap.

His brother, Charles, was an avid biker in his early life. He died at age 55 from liver cancer in July 2005, 27 years into a life sentence without parole for murder and armed robbery.

“I loved my brother, regardless,” said Radz. “He waited all those years to ride with me.”

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