Geezer with a Grudge: When You Know the Bike Is Smarter than the Rider

Aug 14, 2014

When You Know the Bike Is Smarter than the Rider

Ok, I know that Facebook isn’t where anyone would go to find signs of intelligent life on this planet. Still, I’d once hoped that the yamaha wr250x & wr250r group wouldn’t be non-stop stupid. I was wrong. Overwhelmingly, the kiddies who populate this page are all about making their bike noisier, sticking silly “artwork” on top of previous owner’s silly artwork, and making cobbly “improvements” so guys like me will offer them about 1/3 of what the bike would have been worth if they hadn’t messed with it at all. Most of these kiddies will be back in mommy’s cage in a year, telling stories of their awful experiences on a motorcycle.

I am clearly incapable of comprehending members of the human race. If what you want to do is stick crap on a motorcycle, light it up with pointless LEDs dangling from random mounting points, and turn a perfectly serviceable machine into a loud moped, buy a Hardly. Don’t fuck up a real motorcycle when you could start with something that is already more art than vehicle.

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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.