It's A Brave New (Electric) World

The company that owns and publishes "Cycle World Magazine" is hedging its bets with an eBike on-line publication called Cycle Volta. This is no small commitment because, motorcycle rag fans will notice, most of the technical articles are written by Kevin Cameron. Kevin is the guy many of read Cycle World for and many of us will jump to Cycle Volta for the same hit of rational thinking and technical insight.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fuell-fluid-longest-range-best-pedal-assist-ebike#/

 

Add to that, the fact that Ducati, Yamaha, Honda, and hundreds of start-up eBike brands are in the early hunt for market dominance; or even a decent showing. Supposedly, 60% of all bicycles sold in the EU are eBikes and while US statistics are typically poor it's pretty obvious that our market is experiencing a sea change, too. Midwestern innovator of the century, Eric Buell, has caught the wave and he is going after the high-end eBike market with a 125 mile range eBike, "Fluid," with an assortment of options and a new electric race bike. His brand is called "Fuell" as a link to Eric's name and a nod to the Harley assholes who still claim ownership of the "Buell" brand name. I have no doubt that anything Eric does in this market will blow anything Harley does into history. It would be fun to see HD have to "buy" Eric's new venture just to stay in business.

Piling on the Bullshit

Damn it, when I saw this title “THE PERFECT MOTORCYCLE: KNOW YOURSELF TO KNOW YOUR BIKE” on CycleWorld.com, I really hoped for something semi-intelligent.  When you flaunt around words like “perfect” the expectation is that you will actually put some effort into the discussion. Unless the discussion is being led by Kevin Cameron there isn’t much hope that my expectations will be even attempted on Cycle World. This article fell far below the already low bar set by the motorcycle rag industry.

Idiot advice like this is exactly why I wrote the “When You Need A Faster Bike” column for MMM, "Pick perfect power. From a safety standpoint, the amount of power you need depends on your riding. For my money, 800cc and up lets you beat city traffic, claim-jump any freeway lane anytime, and execute quick passes on the highway." What a load of bullshit. First, as RideApart.com said in their “11 Reasons Why You Don’t Want A Liter Bike” column, "Literbikes aren’t any faster than a 600." Who cares if your top speed is 200mph, if you are really trying to “execute quick passes on the highway?” A 600cc four will do 160mph and get there within a few fractions of a second as quickly as a liter bike and, most likely, exactly as quickly as a 750cc or the non-existent 800cc from Cycle World’s bullshit recommendation. Even better, 99% of American riders who are incapable of using any part of a liter bike’s throttle competently won’t end up sliding down the freeway on their ass when they wheelie-over their big bike pretending to be Rossi.

The half-assed effort put into justifying the advice, “Choose a bike whose skills match your own” was more than embarrassing. My advice for Cycle World, avoid the word “perfect” until you buy a dictionary and thesaurus. Stick with “half-assed” and “mediocre,” words you so aptly typify.

Motorcycle Magazines & Me

[I wrote this one a long time ago, as you can see by the copy-write date on the header. It's still mostly the way I feel about the leading motorcycle magazines.]

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

In looking for product to review, I realized that one of the most arrogant things a writer and a magazine could do is review the competition. Since they don't know we exist, I decided if the cynical Shakespearean adage "discretion is the better part of valor" was catchy enough to gain traction, arrogance and courage might hook up as well. Another motivation for doing this review is that lots of new riders don't know what the rest of us read when we are not reading MMM. With that in mind, I thought it might be sort of a public service to describe our rivals. With that as my guiding light, I decided to do an analysis of the major motorcycle rags. (This is my definition of "major" magazines, your mileage may vary.) There are some pretty good on-line magazines, but I'm not going to look at them on this pass. I decided to list the magazines in order of my opinion of their value, so you'll probably have another bone with which to pick.


#1: Motorcycle Consumer News (www.mcnews.com)
The advantage MCN has over the competition is that this little magazine (practically printed on rag paper) doesn't accept advertising. So, MCN's reviews should be uncontaminated by commercial influences; as if that is possible in corporate America. Sometimes, though, MCN's reviews are the best you will read when the product has serious problems. Unlike the glossy, advertiser-driven rags, MCN writers will occasionally tell you about the things they don't like in a bike, gear, or even the industry.

David Hough's criticism of the MSF's political tactics and training deficiencies, a couple of years ago, was the only voice in the woods. Since the MSF is sponsored by the motorcycle manufacturers and the organization exists to put a happy face on the sad world of motorcycle mortality statistics, the woods were thick. None of the other rags would have touched that subject, but MCN took it on for a series of articles.

Like most of us who review bikes, MCN wastes time describing the technical characteristics of the bikes they review. Anyone who is capable of cutting and pasting data from the manufacturers' press releases can look like a technical wiz by doing this and, since everyone else does it, MCN is wasting precious space in repeating that tactic. Skip the marketing drivel and go straight to the "riding impressions." MCN costs $41/year, so wasting time and space doing what everyone else does for $7/year makes me reconsider my subscription every time they do it. I do, however, hang on to MCN copies until I'm sure I've gleaned all value from each issue.


#2: Cycle World
There is one great thing about every issue of Cycle World, Kevin Cameron. The brilliant author of Sportbike Performance does a technical article, TDC, in which he takes apart yet one more complex idea and re-describes it so that the rest of us have a useful understanding of what is going on inside the mechanical world. Funny thing about CW. In writing this column, I looked all over the house for the magazine and was unable to find a single copy. After working my way through Cameron's column, I rarely spend any time on the rest of the magazine and give it away almost immediately. Kevin is worth the $7/year I spend on CW. No, I am not a Peter Egan fan. Apparently, making that statement alienates lots of local CW readers because Egan is a Wisconsinite and while Minnesotans hate the Packers and successful Minnesotans, we're supposed to love our neighbor motorcycle pundits. I find Egan to be long-winded and a little like listening to Paris Hilton describe her jewelry and makeup.


#3: Motorcyclist
I go hot and cold with Motorcyclist. I, often, love the articles contributed to this rag from outside of their staff. For example, Ed Milich's article, "Field Guide to Common Internet Motorcycle Wackos" was as good as funny motorcycle articles gets; and accurate. The editors of Motorcyclist are thin-skinned, a little reactionary, and highly sensitive to their advertiser's needs/demands. I rarely read the bike reviews or "shoot-outs." Everything is wonderful and you should buy them all is the gist of those puff pieces and I can't afford the time to "read in-between the lines" to sort out what they really thought about the stuff they rode. I can't tell the reviews from the ads and there are pages and pages of ads. Motorcyclist's photo shots cater to the hooligan crowd and that doesn't do much for me, either.

Kenny Roberts mans their "MotoGP Desk," but rag's index is so badly laid out that I usually hear about what he's written from other readers long after I've discarded my copies. Sometimes the mag reminds me of those webpages designed with black text on a dark purple background. Sometimes it's too much work to fight through the format to see what the writers had to say.


#4: Rider Magazine
Rider has vanished into a weird marketing scam (Riders' Club), but it used to be a rider-based, rider-written touring magazine. I have hopes that someday it will return to that standard. I bump into Rider about a half-dozen times a year and in recent years that experience always reminds me of the magazine I used to like, but the current magazine is not it.

The Geezer on YouTube

About 5 years ago, I had a regular local motorcycle show on cable called "Motorcycling Minnesota." The show ran a few more than two dozen episodes between 1999 and 2006. It turned into a regular headache with every show turning into a ClusterFox of assistants/interns/employees deciding they didn't like video editing as much as they'd imagined and with deadlines and sponsors acting as moving targets. I got what I wanted out of the experience, broke even on my equipment, and got a little further into the business I thought I'd left behind. I don't have a history of all of the shows (no great loss), but I have a few of the shorts and complete shows in archive format, so I thought they might as well be taking up space on someone else's computers.
With this website and my regular column turning in a little cash flow, I decided to take another show at being a movie star (in my own mind). So, I fired up a Geezer with A Grudge YouTube channel, posted a few of the old shows, and started working on turning my Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly column into a regular video issue on YouTube and on the cable station that used to run the Motorcycling Minnesota shows.

One of the original shows is linked above. This is my video take on the cool stuff from the 2004 Cycle World International Motorcycle Show. The kid who keeps popping up in the show is my grandson, Wolfe.

Again, if you are getting this column by email and wish to continue reading the silly crap that pops into my head, please consider subscribing to the Geezer with A Grudge blogsite. The email service is temporary and the list changes regularly.

Another Year, A Couple More Bikes

The 2010 Cycle World International Motorcycle Show has come and gone. Every year it feels like I spend less time circling the show looking for something new to care about. This year it's safe to say I'm not the only one. Wolfe and I planned a late day at the show to catch more than just the bikes. In the past, I have hit the show early on Saturday or as early as possible on Friday to avoid the crowds. That way I can get shots of the bikes without having to wrestle my way around bodies on the bikes. With a press pass I can slip in before the doors open on Saturday and have the run of the show with a camera or video. Last year was my last year for that approach.

Since 1998, I'd been doing the CWIMS as a segment of my cable access television show, Motorcycling Minnesota. But interest has been flagging in that segment. Not view interest, my interest. Lugging around a 25 pound video camera to get shots of the same bikes I shot last year in this year's colors just doesn't seem worth the effort. An advantage of being underpaid or unpaid is that I don't have to shill for anyone. I don't even have to do the show if I get bored with it. Last year, Wolfe and I did the early-Saturday bit and we ended up done in about 15 minutes. We went out for breakfast, came back, watched the bike watchers and talked to friends for a couple of hours and gave it up for a day back home building stuff out of his Electronic Projects for Evil Geniuses books.

This year, I knew there wouldn't be much new to look at so we timed our trip to hit the maximum crowd. As we arrived at the auditorium, I knew this year would be different. There were no crowds in the skywalk. Outside of the auditorium, no smokers in motorcycle jackets or patch-decorated jean vests. Unlike every other year, we instantly found parking on the streets for cheap. In the auditorium, there were no lines for tickets. No motorcycle accessory vendors outside of the hall. No free motorcycle magazines by the entryway. The upside was that I didn't have to stand in line for my press pass and there was no confusion about getting the pass.

Inside the show was more space than I've ever seen in that room. There was no waiting to sit on any bike you chose. I went out of my way to get shots of bikes that included people in the background, foreground, and on the bikes. I worried that those hyper motorcycle salespeople would be traumatized by loneliness. These are, indeed, hard times. Recreational items, like garage candy and overpriced toys get hit hard when people are just trying to hang on to their homes and jobs.

A couple of parts and accessory distributor reps were pretty depressed about the depression. One sales guy said he was taking on a line of non-motorcycle related clothing in hopes of finding enough income to keep his doors open. A couple of reps really wanted to drop samples on me for review and were disappointed when I didn't want to haul their stuff around the show, but opted to contact them later this month. The Zook guy remembered me from my review of his goo from a couple of years back. That didn't go down well. The state's MMSC booth folks looked lonely and bored. No Aerostich. Buell is dead. Observed trials is a thing of history. Still, I saw a few things that were cool. Outside of Jed Duncan's Rider Academy, there didn't seem to be much action around the small booths. Since Rider Academy is also doing the Total Control Advanced Rider Clinics, the downturn/depression hasn't affected his business as much as it has Harley's marketing/sales-based Rider's Edge program or the MSF's entry-level BRC course. This is one instance where targeting the high end of motorcycling (high end skills) may be a niche with a little staying power.

In the OEM booths, Kawasaki has the KLX250SF 250 Supermoto, which they had in the catalog last year, but didn't show at the Minnesota CWIMS and didn't seem to exist as far as local dealers were concerned. It's not light (302 pounds dry) and (ouch!) it's not fuel injected and it's not cheap ($5300). Ducati's Hypermotard is, still cool if overpriced, but who would put a Ducati on the dirt? Honda's NT700V is new, only to the US, but it's cool and I could see owning one if I could make a little room in the garage for it. $11,000 for a 650 is a bit stiff, though. The Honda supermoto, the CRF230M, was also new last year but didn't put in much of a presence on dealer floors. At $5400, with a carb, and no great weight advantage (280 pounds), the Honda seems like the Kawasaki; too little and too late compared to Yamaha's much hipper WR250X. The Kymco Quannon 150 is interesting, although $3000 for a Chinese-made 150 with limited dealer support seems steep even by today's over-inflated prices. Suzuki's RMX 450 Z is an amazing DP bike, but two things -- the $8400 price tag and the 955mm (37.6") seat height -- put it out of my sights. I desperately wanted to swing a leg over that bike, but I had visions of lying under it and listening to my grandson laugh. So, I passed on the experience. If Yamaha brought anything new, I missed it. Several of the brands that might have had something new to show didn't show at all. BMW, for example, had a lot less of a display going, for a company that is bragging that the economy isn't hitting them as hard as the rest of the industry, than I've ever seen from them. In fact, I'm pretty sure the factory wasn't there at all, although I did see at least one farkled-out BMW at one farkle shop.

After a couple of hours, we'd exhausted our interest in laughing at cruisers, checking out the vintage bike displays, and looking at bikes we don't fit on but love. Wolfe still has hope. He's 14 and growing. It's only going to get worse for me.

Riding Down the Tubes

This is just a depressed observation on the state of the motorcycle industry, media, and the economy that was inspired by this month's Cycle World. The first inkling that this might not be an issue I’d put in my archives came at the end of the gushing review of the $15,000 H-D Wide Glide. I skipped the article because I have no more interest in what anyone thinks of another Hardly hippobike than I have in the terrified whining wisdom of the ClusterFox characters. For some reason, I did skim over the “Editors’ Notes” and Edward’s comments reminded me of why I try not to read this stuff. The Wide Glide wasn’t noisy enough for him he wanted it to have “Louder pipes, too, though not obnoxiously so.”

Douche. Anything louder than legal is “obnoxiously so.” These damn things already get a welfare noise check from the EPA to keep them in business. If you need more noise than that, you’re suffering from 15-year-old girl insecurities. Rubrubrub, to you too dude.

CW followed that up with a “customizing” of the $14,000 Honda Fury that took a geek bike and turned it into a really noisy over-weight piece of crap that only a character like Dave Edwards would think is “cool.” This silly-assed customization job removed the license plate (completely, now you can only ride your bike in your own driveway), replaced the legal pipes with straight pipes, polished up the aluminum so that every weekend will need to be spent removing oxidation from the unprotected aluminum pieces, and shortened the fenders so that the bike will splatter crap all over the motor and rider. Of course, no one would ever consider riding something as silly as this in the rain, on a gravel road, or away from their manicured gated yuppie communities.

The only good thing about the article was the hilarious picture of Mr. Edwards posing on the Fury, looking as dorky as a stock broker on his way to the Hollywood Hard Rock Café for a designer beer and a plate full of Santa Fe spring rolls. All those shiny bits, including Dave’s half-helmet, reflecting Hollywood’s asphalt glory and the desiccated palm trees reminded me why I wanted out of California so badly. If I was dreading winter before, now I’m looking forward to the weather that “gets rid of the riffraff.” We don’t have a day mild enough to allow someone to ride a bike as useless as the Fury. As Dave says, "The $600 the polisher charges is us money well-spent." Holy crap. If that's well-spent money, I should be looking for the next Bernie Madoff to take care of my retirement funds.


Not that I like any part of the Fury, but the page 60 before-and-after picture left me with a little more respect for Honda's stylists. The finished "customized" Fury is a cluster of crap stuck together with lots of cash and Tijuana velvet painting taste. Another example of more money than sense.

It took me a lot longer than usual to read Kevin’s TDC column because of the ad for the Cycle World Vintage Memories Calendar on the adjacent page. I couldn’t get over the picture of the side-hack monkey with his chin a couple of inches off of the asphalt and his shoulder dragging on the ground. I’ve never seen anything like that. I’m not sure I’d want to see it as it happened. However, my eyes kept wandering to that picture as I tried to read about “twitchy monsters” and electronic throttle control circuitry. That is one sick picture.


Those were the good old days of motorcyclists and giant huevos (or little tiny brains). Today, the American motorcycle market is all about rich guys and their useless toys. If you aren't Jay Leno and don't want to own a barn full of bikes that you touch once a year, you aren't worth considering in this Timid New World. I guess this is all a prelude to turning motorcycles into dedicated recreational vehicles unfit for highway use and illegal on public roads outside of the occasional parade. It's hard for me to find a reason to be glad I'm old, but this gets close.

Just Lucky, I Guess

One of the coolest things I've done as a writer (if you'll grant me the privilege of calling myself a "writer") was interviewing Cycle World's Kevin Cameron for the Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly magazine. I've interviewed a few cool folks in my career, from product designers to musicians to business people and athletes, but I was more nervous about the interview with Kevin than I had been for several of my earlier interview experiences combined. The whole interview can be read here, since it's unlikely to be turned into another interview. This is my personal website and I don't do much to advertise it, but because it's the only place where whole interview lives I'm telling you about it now. It would have been easy to make three or four articles out of that one interview.

As a fiction author, one of the things I find most difficult is creating really intelligent characters and keeping them in that character through the story. The problem is, as too many science fiction authors don't seem to know, really smart people consistently think and speak above the level that most of us operate. Interviewing someone who is extremely intelligent is a similar problem, except that the interviewer's task is to try and keep from boring the interviewee with predictable and idiotic questions.

Kevin turned out to be easy. Not because I overachieved, but because he is a very kind and generous person. We still have something of a friendship going, since he regularly comments on the silly crap I write in this blog, and he's is always good for insight into complex mechanical and social issues. So, I hit him up occasionally for his views on many of the things that baffle me. He has never let me down. Sometimes, that pay received from doing this writing thing is a small part of the total compensation.

In Case You Didn't Go (2009 Cycle World International Motorcycle Show)

Here are some of the pictures I took of the things I found interesting and/or amusing:

What the Show Showed

I spent a few hours staring at bikes, bikers, gear, and the usual suspects at the Cycle World Motorcycle Show this afternoon. There are, in fact, some cool new motorcycles, but (as my editor, Victor, suspects) they will probably be economic failures.

Honda, Yamaha, and Kawasaki have new 250cc dual purpose street bikes. A variety of companies have mid-sized bikes, most of which are not new. Honda put a lot of effort into displaying their new Fury VTX chopper-thingie. It is one of the silliest vehicles I've seen since my last visit to Pioneer Village in central Nebraska. The average age of the characters surrounding the Fury had to have been over 60. The same sort of geezer was seen climbing off and on of the Polaris Vision.

Friday afternoon wasn't a good day to judge the turnout or the character of the Minnesota crowd, but I talked to several people who said the show was down at least 20% at all stops. There is an air of desperation you can almost taste coming from the vendors. The customers emit something more like resignation.

I got home in time to watch a PBS movie called "Horatio's Drive" about the first cross-country auto trip, in 1903. About half way through the movie, our youngest daughter called to tell us she'd been laid off by Bank of America. She is an optimist and is convinced that she'll find a job soon. I've been through this sort of economic mess before, in the 70s through the 80s, and I hope she's right, but I worry for her and my son-in-law.

Times have been bad before. The country was less organized, more socially-segregated and stratified, and more destitute in 1930, but we don't know where we are in the curve of the current economic catestrophe.

If I get my druthers, we'll struggle through this recession/depression for long enough that many of the social inequalities and irrationalities get fixed but not so long that the nation seriously suffers. I'd like to see a little resurgence of American frugality and, along with that, a little attention paid to small motorcycles because of their economy and practicality. I don't, honestly, care if gas costs $5 a gallon at the end of the decade. That might be good for motorcycling, too. I would provide some initative for us to cut free from foreign oil.

I wouldn't mind if the whole gangster biker fad died a painful death. If the Angels, Outlaws, Bandidos, and the rest of them all end up replacing the crowd in Guantanamo, I wouldn't care. If even looking like that bunch of degenerates caused bikers enough trouble that leather fringe, bandanas, and Valley People butt-less chaps became fashion misstatements, I'm good with that.

In the end, maybe Honda will have to back off of their Orange County biker junk-mobiles and return to promoting the Nicest People. That's a future I can look forward to.

Thinking Bi-Futuristically

The Cycle World International Motorcycle Show is hitting Minneapolis this weekend. Being a media kind of guy, I don't have an excuse not to go and it's usually kind of fun. It's an excuse to bump into old friends, look at the usual suspects of two-wheeled toys, and avoid thinking about five or six more weeks of winter.

Last year, for the second time, I took my grandson to the show and we had a particularly good day of fooling around with mechanical objects. He's 13 this year and will probably be even more interested in motorcycles. None of my kids have been bikers and I don't really expect Wolf to be any different. I think the two-wheeled jones is going to live and die with me. My brother was into it for a while, until a close encounter with a deer demolished his ankle, but he's mostly over it now. My step-brother was a dirt biker and a bragging-rights Harley owner/crasher for a very short time, but he and his son have "grown up" and moved on to big trucks. Like I said, I'm the family's lone two-wheeler and, outside of bicycles, I'm probably going to be the last.

There is some speculation among industry insiders that my family experience is similar to the national trend. As an answer to the often asked question, “Honda has a marketing department?” Honda has dumped the Honda Hoot (apparently, permanently) this year and blamed the economy for the demise. Honda has been making noise about abandoning motorcycles in the US, due to liability issues, since the 1980's economic crash. Yamaha and Kawasaki are about equally enthralled with our low-tech, high maintenance, marginally economic stability marketplace and, if they could find a replacement for the US income, they’d probably dash to it so quickly that there would be a small tornado caused by the vacuum.

I’ve heard off-road distributors describe vanishing youth from those sports and road bike dealers and marketing gurus wonder if street bikes will become a “rich kid’s toy.” The companies who positioned themselves to take advantage of characters who would be willing to spend $30k-$100k on a giant cruiser and now wondering where their customers went. The biggest of the bunch, Harley, is stuck with hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans after chasing the poor credit risk crowd that is wiping out the housing market. I imagine it won’t be long before we hear that the other companies in this market are suffering similar pains. In the end, the only people who will be buying a $20,000 Polaris Vision will be the guys who handed themselves million dollar bonuses for screwing up their companies and got out before the feds slammed them in jail. That might be a small crowd if those of us who are paying their bills have our way.

Risk is a big topic in the country, too. I’ve listened to several big-time ex-offroad competitors explain why they wouldn’t consider letting their kids ride motorcycles. For a country founded by folks abandoning their homes, history, and security to gamble on a life in “the new world,” we seem to be turning into a caricature of conservative, old-world. Hell, almost every European country is more progressive than the US and if we keep going backwards we’ll get to enjoy hearing China brag about being more contemporary than the United States. Won’t that be fun?

So, I’m going to take in the Motorcycle Show with the thought in mind that I might be the last of a breed, watching obsolete technology fun its course in my lifetime, wondering over what kind of world it will be without risk, adventure, surprise, or even real-world sensations over virtual experiences. Maybe, I’ll even look for something new from the motorcycle industry. That would be a surprise.