Geezer with a Grudge: This One’s for You, Chris

Oct 13, 2013

This One’s for You, Chris

For some reason, this picture has been sitting on my desktop for almost a year. When I saw it, I thought about my friend, Chris Luhman, and his fascination with the Ural machinery. I think if you can ride a Ural, you could tolerate this silly-assed idea. Right?

Everything about three-wheels, side-cars, and riding with this kind of mass evades me. It looks considerably less fun than a decent convertible and a lot less comfortable. If you can’t lean it, why ride it?

On a not-very-related topic, I got caught up in a bar discussion about luggage and travelling light vs. carrying the kitchen sink. This is another picture that has sat on the desktop for several months waiting for a reason to shift into the blog-o-sphere. I don’t think I’m going to find a real “reason” to use this, so I’m just posting it to clean up my desktop.

3 comments:

Andy Mckenzie said...: I know I've seen at least one video of a side-car rig that allowed the bike to lean normally, but I think it had been custom built.

I have to agree, though... I look at Goldwings with sidecars, and I think "Why didn't you buy a convertible? You can get a fairly nice car for what you just paid for that bike, and it will be more comfortable to travel long distance in."; 10/13/13, 7:35 AM
Trobairitz said...: Ha, that side car is funny. I'd be laughing if I saw that coming down the street.

Cool idea though. Has to be aerodynamic if shaped like a plane doesn't it?; 10/13/13, 10:46 AM
T.W. Day said...: I sat on one of the Goldwing trikes at the last Bike Show and . . . it was creepy. It feels more like a wheelchair than a motorcycle and at my age I don't need to be reminded of how close all that shit is.; 10/15/13, 9:49 AM

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.