MMM's Last Issue

Way back in 1999, I met a pair of "kids" at a party for a long-defunct music magazine that, lucky for me, employed my daughter, Holly, as a writer/editor. I was introduced to Dan and Erin Hartman as a "motorcyclist," by the music magazine's publisher and we eyed each other suspiciously during the introduction. I was wearing the remains of my work uniform, a dress shirt, a loosened tie, slacks, and cowboy boots and they probably thought I was the prototype for Peter Mayer's "Brand New Harley Davidson." They were wearing black leather and I figured they were yuppie Harley posers with a trust fund to burn. We were, I think, both wrong and after discussing what we rode we hit if off well enough that our conversation went into the late night. Their complaint was that MMM was dying because advertisers weren't convinced anyone read the free newspaper. Nobody bothered to write the editors to complain about or praise their articles, editorials, and, most of all, ads. I offered to write an article that would absolutely get a response if they'd promise to publish it. The article, "What Are We Riding For?," appeared in the October, 1999 issue and I've been a regular columnist in MMM since.

As of the 2018/2018 Winter Issue, Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly will cease publication. The magazine hopes to maintain a presence on the web, MNMotorcycle.com after this "final issue" of the print version, but don't hold your breath. My favorite Euro biker magazine, Rider's Digest, went from paper to PDF to web-only a few years back and died a slow, discouraging death in mid-2016. The last "issue" is still there, August 2016, but advertising revenue just didn't happen for the on-line magazine. The UK, like the US, isn't a world leader in internet coverage, speeds, or even reliability. Being big believers in the "magic of the market," a good bit of the UK (like the US) is stuck in the late-90's technology-wise. The UK is a more motorcycle-friendly transportation culture, though, but that didn't help RD. It's possible that advertisers and readers will move to the webpage "magazine" and I really hope they do, but "plan for the worst and hope for the best" has been my motto for about 50 years.

Whatever the future may bring for MMM, I clearly failed in my job over the last few years. Hardly any of you are pissed off enough at something I've written to let the publisher know. Trust me, Victor loves to publish letters from people who want to fry the Geezer. If there had been letters, you'd have seen them. I almost managed to get 20 years of my silly shit in print with MMM. A few years back, Victor sent the MMM writers a really neat note saying that the Minnesota History Center had begun archiving the magazine and that's a pretty cool thing to know about the work we did with the magazine. It has been a good, long ride with MMM. I wrote 158 essays/rants the magazine published over 18 years, plus a bunch of bike, gear, and equipment reviews and a few trip articles. Most of the things I've done over my 70 years on this planet have had highs and lows. That wasn't true for MMM. It was all highs and even highers. I haven't loved everything I've written for the magazine, being my own most severe and least tolerant critic, but I have loved the opportunity and the experiences. I'm going to keep submitting crazy shit for the on-line magazine and as long as they'll take my stuff I'll be there.

Thanks for . . . everything.

Training for Actual Motorcycling

David Hough recently posted an excellent article about the purpose of motorcycle training, “Situational Awareness.” I strongly recommend reading the article and the concepts he’s presenting.

#158 What Kind of Wolf Are You?

At the time this appeared in MMM, #188 October 2017, I didn't know this would be my last Geezer with A Grudge column for, at least, the print magazine. The next issue, #189 Winter 2017-2018, was the last ever print issue and my column didn't make that issue. Honestly, the issue was so skimpy that I glanced through it in a few moments and tossed it on the pile of stack of yet-to-be-filed MMM hard copy issues. Other than an essay from our publisher, Victor Wanchena, explaining why MMM was history and an odd Chinese motorcycle review and a rehash of the Aerostich Roadcrafter by the editor, Bruce Mike, the magazine went out with a whimper. 20-some years of publishing should have had a little more spunk than to fizzle out in four pages and "So, readers of MMM, thank you for the good run. We will see you on the digital side. Print is dead, long live print." But, that's how it happened. 

However, I'm not dead . . . yet. I have written (to this moment) 34 Geezer columns that were stacked up in my que waiting for MMM's publisher or for some other motorcycle magazine to pick them for publication. I had them scheduled to begin appearing in this blog starting in July 2018 and there are enough of them to run every week until March 2020. Worse, I have a backlog of more than 30 more columns scattered over three computers and I'll start wrapping those up and putting them in the que or jumping right to the moment as the whim strikes me. The big difference between appearing in MMM or here will be that I always returned to whatever article the MMM editor picked to be sure it was current. I'm not gonna be doing that anymore. So, if a new essay appears to have been written in 2008, it probably was. I am that far ahead of the magazine's publication schedule. 

Even more that in the past, my politically correct filters are off. Believe it or not, I used to worry about offending MMM's advertisers, at least a little bit. No more. From here out, it's just you and me and the World Wide Web. 

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Thomas W. Day

Supposedly, there are three kinds of wolves: alpha (leader), beta (follower), and solo or lone wolves. Most of my business career I spent as some kind of manager, which might make you suspect that I am an alpha-sort. There are some bits of evidence that would probably contradict that assessment. An experience in a recent motorcycle course with an actual alpha reminded me of how far from that guy I am.

In 30 years of management, I probably called no more than a half-dozen meetings because I have always believed that meetings are what lazy managers do instead of talking to people, individually, where you can get their honest, un-pressured opinions. Also, I hate meetings. I absolutely believe in Dave Roth's "crowd rule" that says you can divide the IQ of the smartest person in the room by the number of people in the room to get the crowd IQ. Why would I hire smart people, then force them to sit at a table and be stupid?

The same goes for packs or groups of motorcyclists. Individually, most of the people I know who ride a motorcycle are pretty interesting. Even the hippobike crowd has a fair number of members who do interesting things, can surprise you with their intelligence and insight, and tell great, funny stories. In a pack, they're about as funny and entertaining as a pack of rampaging Comancheros who just broke into a 55 gallon barrel of rotgut whiskey, but they can be actual human beings in small quantities.

As difficult as this might be to believe, I hate conflict. As a manager, I tried to enforce my own version of the "no assholes rule" and I fired people who violated that rule as quickly as I could identify them. Firing people sounds like conflict, but one bad hour is a lot less painful than months of disagreement, disappointment, and team dissolution. I look at a non-performing team member as someone who is dragging the rest of the team down and the good of the group overwhelms my inconvenience and discomfort. The hour I take firing someone pretty much screws up the rest of my day or week, but I get over it. If I don't do it, I'm screwing up everyone else's weeks until I bite the bullet.

The whole group ride thing begs for otherwise pretty decent people to show off their asshole sides. Either by pretending that maintaining the spacing is important and playing "formation enforcer" or by showing off real or imagined skill that puts other riders at risk, the alpha assholes in a group ride are encouraged to bark and howl.  I've tried a couple of these rides, on and off-pavement, and the magnetic pull of going somewhere else always takes control of my bike until I'm on my own on a road to nowhere anyone else is going. It only takes a couple of seconds of exposure to the group riding asshole to fire off my escape magnet. There must be some kind of reward for staying in the pack, but it escapes me and I'm perfectly happy to be escaping the pack.

You'd think that teaching would be an alpha dog kind of thing, but it doesn't have to be. Adult education is pretty much student-driven. Lectures are minimal, the assumption is that students have pre-read the materials that will be discussed and will have questions about what they didn't understand or would like to explore further. The "sage on the stage" routine is for teaching little kids and I'd rather explore extensive dental work than stand in front of a room full of kids. Bored or disinterested adults are even less inviting as a student audience and a big part of the reason I retired from what should have been the best teaching gig on the planet--teaching recording engineering, equipment maintenance, and acoustics/physics--was because 90% of my students were there because they didn't know where else to be. Unlike them, I never have a shortage of places I'd rather be than bored and disinterested, so I handed in my whip and chair and went somewhere else.

I got a reminder of all of this stuff when I taught a motorcycle class at a school where I haven't been for several years. Where I usually teach, we've been calling this place "the wild west," because pretty much all of the MSF guidelines and "best practices" had been tossed out the window for instructor convenience. Most of those rules/guidelines are designed to keep the training safe for both the students and instructors and the rest are to maximize the learning experience.  Blowing them off because they are inconvenient or boring or require a little extra work is an alpha dog kind of thing and deciding the other coach is going to go along with that decision without question is really alpha dog'ish. What I learned from the experience was that I'm not a willing follower and I'm not interested in being a leader and my preference when exposed to either option is to head out on my own.

Which, I guess, means I'm a lone wolf/dog/guy. No surprise, I suppose. I can't remember the last time I was on a ride with someone and at some time didn't wish I was somewhere else. In fact, I can't remember the last time I didn't end up somewhere else when I started the trip with another traveler. It's not that I mind the company, it's that I dislike the complications. The best trips I've had with a friend have involved a brief discussion of where we're going to end up/meet and a quick split-up immediately afterwards. Usually, we meet at the designated place at the assigned time, but if that didn't work out we're both adults and can manage our lives alone and we do that. No whining, no power plays, no aggravation, we just didn't end up at the same place for whatever reason and moved on from there. Motorcycles are, by design, a one-person vehicle and I think they are best experienced alone. Cars, buses, trains, and planes all have comfortable seating, are reasonably quiet spaces, and are nicely designed for conversation and socializing. If I want that, I'll leave the bike at home.

Originally published in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly #188 October 2017