Motorcyclist Online just posted this rant, " Your Bike Sucks! (Or, How NOT To Enjoy Motorcycling)No tolerance for people who dislike the variety of motorcycling." There is some grist to chew on here. Motorcycling is not just a group activity and many motorcyclists are purely on two wheels for functional reasons. Some of us simply think motorcycles are excellent transportation. I can easily see why someone who bought a bike to get from point A to point B without spending a lot of money or taking up a whole traffic lane would be damn tired of all the gauntlets other motorcyclists seem to think we're supposed to put up with. I can see getting tired of reading about motorcycles that are of not interest ("articles" that are barely more than advertisements). All of that in mind, it's not a stretch to get to being “sick of taking s—t from the Harley crowd because we prefer to ride something that is going to bring us back home at the end of the ride" and cancelling a subscription and killing the online feed.
It's no stretch for me to imagine Motorcyclist's editor being an asshole about losing a subscriber and not having the grace or common sense to avoid losing a few more with his response. About a decade ago, I wrote my last article for Motorcyclist and haven't picked up a copy copy since the editor at the time fired off a similar jackass response to someone who was sick of the magazine's insistence that every test bike needed a noisier pipe and some pointless engine fiddling before it was fit to ride.
On the other hand, the fact that motorcyclists are in no way a coherent group is why here in Minnesota there are hundreds of miles of trails paralleling state and county roads open to ATVs and snowmobiles, but closed to motorcycles: licensed or not. We are exactly like Will Rogers' political affiliation, "I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Democrat." We have industry groups fighting against our best interests like the AMA and MIC and rider groups doing even more damage like ABATE, but intelligent, supportive, practical motorcycle rider organizations are non-existent. It's a mystery that I won't live long enough to solve.
2 comments:
We have the same attitude here up in Canada. It seems for a group of folks all claiming freedom of the road and no rules or being part of the herd, there are distinct herds just the same and they treat others as interlopers. I get tired of this bullcrap and really couldn't care what someone rides. The only thing that matters to me is that when they do ride they take care on the road.
Dar, I hope no one can argue with that.
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