Geezer with a Grudge: Gone International

May 3, 2012

Gone International

The new issue of Riders' Digest is out and the gonzo sometimes-biker-courier guys from Britain have made me international with the catchy title: "The Clutch Cable; Our Midwest correspondent considers the ageing process." It's an honor to share pages with one of my new favorite journalists, OldLongDog (aka Peter Martin). Along with lots of space, the magazine printed some of my favorite pictures (at least, favorite pictures with me in them) and a generous link to Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly's webpage and my blog.

Thanks Dave and Peter. I'll be pawing through this issue for a week or so and I'll be back with more to say about it. TRD's PDF format is a little weird. Pictures are often spread or divided between two pages and the two pages are encoded as one wide page. Adobe can't tell one page from another, so searches and small eBook readers work weirdly.

There is one article, a review of a Triumph Street Triple ("Long Range Middleweight") that uses a phrase I'll never comprehend, "British engineering genius." Having owned and had maintenance experience with MG's, Triumphs, BSAs, Brit-designed gas welding rigs, SSL and Trident recording consoles, and a variety of English-designed products, I can not put "British engineering" and "genius" in the same sentence without either sarcasm or some clearly negating adjective. The review of the slightly-used and abused Cagiva Rapture (with a carb'd SV650 motor) has style and information all wrapped up in one piece of writing. It's even a little bit of a review. Not the usual thing for TRD. Many of TRD's "product reviews" are more like autobiographies wrapped in some product's packaging. Sometimes you learn about the product, but usually not.
One of my favorite things about TRD is the photography. Early in this issue, there is a shot of a pair of race bikes that is one of the best I've ever seen; anywhere.

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The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.