Geezer with a Grudge: Dream Bike, Irritating Song

Sep 1, 2012

Dream Bike, Irritating Song

I will absolutely admit that there was a time when "Born to be Wild" seemed like a cool song. Fortunately for me, I had heard Steppenwolf's song before it was misused in Greasy Rider or I'd have never thought it was cool. I suspect the last year I tapped my foot to Mars Bonfire's only big hit was around 1968. After that, the song was always attached to some damn Fortune 500 product and has been a signature of girly-boy admen since.

On the other hand, The Yamaha XT660Z Ténéré has been around for a while (since 2008) and it is the kind of bike that we may never get in the USA. The 660 was preceded by the XT600 Ténéré that was sold in Europe/Japan from '83 to '96 and Yamaha only taunted us with the DP XT600.

No comments:

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.