Apr 28, 2021

Maybe Not the End?

Early Wednesday morning, I got an email from Andy Goldfine with the subject line, “certain I am a geezer now.” Andy was mostly commenting on how modern motorcycles are “too pointy” and not cosmetically to his tastes. My reply was that not only are the cosmetically weird looking, but they are too tall and wide, too heavy, insanely powerful, incredibly fuel inefficient, too cluttered, and not particularly fun to ride. I whined that now that my eyesight seems to be somewhat stabilized I’ve been looking for a Suzuki TU250X for the last two-and-a-half years without any luck. Even the state’s MSF program can’t get them and used bikes often list for pretty much what a new bike sells for.

Not an hour from writing that response, my Craig’s List search sent me an email notifying me that a 2012 TU250X was available for $2600 “practically brand new with 700 miles on it and not a scratch on it.” Suddenly, it was put up or shut up time. I emailed the seller, got a little more information, loaded up my ramps and tie-downs, collected my gear and $2600 cash, and with an address somewhere west of Rochester I was headed south just after noon. On the way to the buyer’s location, I thought of all the things I did NOT want to suffer again in a used motorcycle: #1 no damn kids, #2 check for the existence of an air filter, #3 no modified or aftermarket exhaust or intake systems, look at the drive sprocket to be sure it hasn’t been mangled or the countershaft retaining nut, and crash damage. I made a mental list during my hour drive and checked it a dozen times. Any one of those items and I planned on thanking the seller for his time and driving back home without a quibble. I’ve dealt with all of that shit before and I don’t have the patience or tolerance to do it ever again.

Our 2-and-4 wheeled menagerie.
You’ve probably heard the used car salesman line “it was driven by a little old lady only on Sundays to and from church?” This motorcycle was owned by a 60-something Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist who (seriously) only used the TU250X to drive from his house down his very long driveway to get his mail. His “real motorcycle” is a very new Goldwing. There are 700 miles on the TU’s odometer: brand new looking everything and not a scratch on it. It even has a heated vest Quiconnect2 12VDC cable already hooked up for my heated vests. The owner generously let me look for all of the fatal flaws on my list and even helped me push the bike up my ramp on to my pickup. The whole transaction probably took 20 minutes from when I drove into his driveway until I rolled back out on to the street.  

My wife is sort of, let’s say, neutral about my new bike. When myasthenia gravis took away my vision three years ago, she was of two minds: #1 at least I won’t have to worry about you when you are one one of your long motorcycle trips and #2 just when you are getting comfortable with retirement you can’t do the things you love anymore. So, now that the vision thing appears to be under control and the bike I’ve been looking for suddenly appeared, #1 is suddenly back in her life again. The Honda CR-V in the picture at left is her new vehicle (new to us, anyway) as of a couple of weeks ago. She has big plans for us to travel and even “camp” in that little SUV and I know she worries that the motorcycle could put a damper on those dreams. I will try not to disappoint her . . . too severely.

A little while back, I wrote “What Really Signals the End?” That essay mostly moaned about the trauma of making the decision to sell my Aerostich and Giant Loop gear. It was premature. I’ve waffled about putting that stuff up for sale since last fall and it is all still hanging in my closet. I did give away some stuff to friends and had plans on giving away a lot more stuff. But the two Darien suits are still there, my HGC and Shoei helmets are still hanging from the rack, and my beloved Gaerne boots are still in the closet. Hell, I didn’t even get around to putting my barely-used ICON Patrol boots up for sale, although I did try fairly hard to give them to someone locally.

So, we’ll see where this all takes me this summer. I’m old, so all of my systems are on the verge of failing and I’ve already experienced a pretty severe system crash. It won’t break my heart if I can’t pass my own baseline test. I haven’t taught an MSF class in two years and the last time I tried to ride my WR250X through the BRC course I couldn’t see the lines or stay inside the box, thanks to double-vision and myasthenia gravis. So, the first thing I’m going to do, once I get the bike insured, is ride over to the local college parking lot and run myself through that series of exercises. If I don’t ace it, this experiment will come to an abrupt end. Stay tuned.


Apr 12, 2021

“They Love Us!” turns into “Why Don’t They Like Us?”

If you are any kind of observer of the hilarious “human condition,” watching self-delusions dissolve into disappointment is particularly entertaining. The little tourist town where I live is a biker destination, mostly because the roads are straight and wide, traffic is moderate and generally at the local speed limits, there are lots of bars in Wisconsin and Minnesota small towns, and local cops on both sides of the state lines are terrified of bikers. It is a fact that pretty much the whole “economy” in these places are biker bars and filling stations. We get pirate parades from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Wisconsin, Iowa, and we’re on the parade path from all points east to the Sturgis gangbang. From May to September, the roar of poorly-tuned, oversized, and underpowered twins with straight-pipes completely obliterate the sound of Amtrak and freight trains that regularly pass through our village. It’s a “feature” our town’s tourist literature never mentions, but become immediately obvious to anyone foolish enough to visit Red Wing on a summer weekend. (During the Corona shutdown, the entire summer was filled with that pointless noise every day of the week, since Harley owners are, apparently, unlikely to be employed in essential occupations.)

On an eBike forum a while back, one of the odder characters who frequents that group was bragging about his Harley and how he’d “customized” it as insanely as he had mangled his eBike (installing at least $2,500 worth of “upgrades” on a $1,500 Rad Power eBike). Being a sucker for troll-bait, I foolishly replied with a comment on how much his neighbors must hate him (because of the Harley, not the eBike). Like the usual character of this sort who we all know and suffer, he came back with “No, they love me and everyone always comments on how great my Harley sounds.”

I know a lot of motorcyclists and non-motorcyclists. I have never heard any of them even mention exhaust noise when they are admiring a vehicle of any sort. I have, however, heard almost all of them curse a noisy vehicle when it interrupts their lives. Maybe that’s what the loud pipes folks call “love?” If so, that explains their typical bachelor in a swamp of beer cans lifestyle.

Late last fall, I was on my usual ebike run for groceries when I got passed on the uphill section of my ride by a couple of goobers on illegally loud hippobikes wobbling down a straight section of county road. I could hear them coming a mile away, so I had a hand over my left ear when they passed. I got a one-finger salute from the biker broad when she passed me. I suppose she imagined I would be upset at not being her friend.

This pair usually runs with a pack of four or five other noise makers. They blubber and roar through our neighborhood several times every warm day and you can hear them for miles in all directions. The local cops are terrified of bikers, but they are especially blind to gangs of bikers. So, as a neighborhood and town we’re pretty much torn about on-coming nice weather. At least when it’s raining or snowing, we don’t have to listen to goobers on Harleys.

When I got to the stoplight at Highway 61, they were waiting for the signal to change and yelling at each other about some menial bullshit when the old fat guy started to lose control of his bike and fell over, knocking the broad and her bike into a tangled heap of black leather, crappy mechanical engineering, and fat people. Of course, neither one of them knew how to shut off their bike, so there was some flesh tangled in the spinning rear wheels and lots of squalling and shouting before the blubbering (human and mechanical) stopped. I watched the Laugh-In tricycle action and did my best not to laugh out loud.

The goobers were in the left hand lane when they tipped over, so traffic had two lanes in which to pass up the mess and until the light changed three cars made a right turn without doing much more than gawking at the bikers. Two pickups pulled up to wait for the light to change to either make a left turn from the center lane or go straight. Nobody made any effort to help the bikers untangle themselves. I was on the sidewalk where the pedestrian crossing button lives, so the trucks provided me with a nice bit of insulation from the biker pile. The light changed and three of us went on our way while the bikers struggled to untangle and pick up their oversized hardware and do whatever those folks do when they aren’t falling down or occupying bar stools.

I did my grocery run and came back the same route, about 15 minutes later. The bikers were on their feet by then, but the bikes were still down and tangled up. Now, I’m on the opposite side of the road and there is no traffic coming my direction, so the light is going to run against me for a lot longer than it does when there is car traffic triggering the intersection controller. I thought it might be entertaining to see how a fat old Santa Claus biker and a bar bimbo pick up their 900 pound hippobikes, so I waited a while before I pressed the pedestrian call button. I was right.

Santa Gangbanger’s full dresser hippobike was on top of the pile and he clearly had never picked up his motorcycle, let alone from on top of another equally oversized, overweight pile of junk. The two of them were high side of his bike tugging helplessly at the handlebars or trying to drag the bike by the front or rear wheel and I really regretted not carrying something with which I could film the action. At least a half-dozen cars and pickups and a couple of delivery trucks rolled past them, but nobody stopped to help and the goobers did pretty much everything but step in front of traffic trying to enlist some assistance. Biker bimbo discovered, for the nteenth time in her life, that outside of biker bars she wasn’t attractive enough to draw flies let alone human assistance. Santa Gangbanger probably wondered why his biker glare didn’t intimidate anyone into helping. Finally, the two managed to drag Santa’s bike off of the bimbo’s ride, leaving paint and chrome and plastic on the road. The two of them together finally righted both bikes.

When the light changed, we all crossed 61 and went on our merry ways. Me with a cool story to tell anyone I know (since most everyone in Red Wing hates motorcycles) and them with a sob story of how nasty people are to old, fat, noisy, incompetent bikers. “I thought they loved us.” Whenever this dichotomy rears its head in small towns, the bikers threaten not to spend their money in our bars and we mostly wouldn’t mind seeing the damn bars go broke and the bikers gone. If it were possible to get small town cops to do their jobs, this problem wouldn’t exist.