Payback Is A Bitch

I’d been on the road (as a cage passenger, sadly) sans-electronics for a few days and when I came home my email inboxes were filled with the usual crap. I don’t know how people survive with cell phones and the inability to automatically screen callers, texters, and email. I flag practically everything as “spam” and I still ended up with more than 150 pieces of crap in my email accounts after 4 days and, at most, there were a half-dozen things to which I actually want or need to pay attention. And all that is after my spam filter has automatically trashed about 50% of everything sent to me. One of the things that caught my eye was from a local motorcycling (not biker) group. One of the members linked a few pages of the jury decision in the case of a truck driver who crossed into the oncoming lane and killed 7 bikers. WebBikeWorld has some additional information on the case here. where it is noted that “One of the motorcyclists had a BAC nearly double the state's 'too drunk to drive' limit.” The poster speculated that the jury found Volodymyr Zhukovskyy to be innocent because “the jury was filled with idiots. Or the prosecuting attorney was an idiot and didn't present any of this [drug use] information to the jury. Or maybe Westfield Transport is run by the mob and they threatened to harm the family members of the jury?”

Possible. But I have a different theory.

Since the trucking company has bankrupted due to civil payments to families and survivers, I think this case is pretty much done in civil court. It could be the state will bear some liability due to the driver's past history and the fact that he shouldn't have had any sort of commercial license. Somebody else’s problem.

However, I wonder if the real takeaway from this decision is that the jury, like most Americans, are fed up with motorcycles. The general impression of motorcycles and motorcyclists are taken from the unnecessary and arrogant noise, regular well-publicized bad behavior, and the general impression that most motorcyclists are dangerous, sub-human, psychopathic gangbangers. A more successful tactic for the prosecution might have been to spend a lot of time bringing in experts to establish that motorcyclists are sorta (at least closely related to) humans. Hardly has worked pretty hard to create the sub-human image. You'd think/hope there would be some downsides to promoting anarchy, violence, and chaos.

About 20 years ago, I was on the MN Governor's Motorcycle Safety Council. A friend and co-worker, who was also on the Governor's council and was an ABATE officer (most of the council was made up of ABATE gangbanger wannabes) were walking to lunch in downtown St. Paul and talking about motorcyclists' public image. Most of the kids I knew at the school thought motorcycling was for "old people and assholes," but my friend disagreed with that general image.

His disagreement held up until a couple of noisemakers went past us and pretty much everyone on the street said something along the lines of "crash and die assholes." Once exposed to the real world, his take on many of ABATE’s positions changed enough that he quit his club office and took a back row seat in most of ABATE’s key political positions.

So, back to my take on the jury decision: Since police are clearly terrified of bikers and their gangs, maybe the jury just decided legalizing motorcycle highway carnage is the only way to get the bangers off of the street?

For calibration purposes, we got back last night about 9PM after a long vacation return trip (long for us). Went to bed about 11pm and spent the night being noise bombed by nitwits on Hardlys (and other garbage fish) on our un-policed county road well past 2AM. Personally, I keep hoping Amazon will sell a hand-held holographic projector sometime soon. People living in those noise traffic zones could project deer, moose, bears, cops, baby carriages, etc on to the streets in front of the local idiots on blubber-mobiles and entertain themselves watching the goobers try to remember where their brake levers are. My street is decorated all summer long with morons and their unmuffled, 2 hp bikes, and 4 hp sound systems. "If wishes were fishes" there'd be a whole lot of Hardlys buried in half-rotted carp.

A couple of years ago, a friend and I were talking about the herd of anti-vaxing, science-denying goobers who were (and still are) decorating hospitals with their dying breath and crazy conspiracy theories. I’m not a big fan of humans and so my take was “That just seems like the usual price for stupidity.”

His response was, “Being stupid shouldn’t be a death sentence.”

“Dude, that is always the result of being stupid,” I said. In fact, that is exactly how evolution works, it’s the whole point of the Darwin Awards.

Likewise, after 75 years of Hardly’s convincing every white male that looking like an unreconstructed off-on-bail convict on a last binge before a couple of decades behind bars is “manly,” we have a problem. Minnesota has a “road guard” law that allows a moron with a reflective vest and a paddle to stop traffic indiscriminately for any unreasonable amount of time to allow totally useless, law-breaking, and decadent bikers to parade through any street or road in the state. You don’t think that tactic creates animosity? I’d bet it generates enough hate for motorcyclists from at least 50% of the inconvenienced population that you wouldn’t want them on a jury if you wanted that jury to convict anyone of killing a motorcyclist with any kind of weapon. Sit through two of those clown parades and you’ll be running them down yourself.

Cars and Winter: Can't live without them, gotta move somewhere where I can.

Last Friday night, just as I arrived at my freeway exit, the serpentine belt on my old Escort broke. It sounded like a bunch of ice breaking loose from the car's front end. After I came to a stop at the light, I discovered that the little car could barely turn without the assistance of the power steering pump. It was barely zero Fahrenheit that night, so I put off messing with the belt until Sunday when we were supposed to "enjoy" a blizzard but the temperatures would be closer to freezing. That's what passes for moderate weather in Minnesota in January.

I have to admit that I'm less than patient with cage repairs. I used to love working on my VW Beetles and Toyota Hilux pickup, but I have always hated cars in general and complicated cars in particular. I just don't live where cars live long enough to become vintage, if you drive them year-around. This place isn't called "The Rust Belt" as a joke. It's not funny at all, in fact. Getting the new $30 belt strung looked almost possible, from the start. The new belt is frozen into a tight, unyielding shape that has nothing in common with the Hawking-string-theory mess required to circumscribe the Ford's five pulleys. About an hour into the job and I discovered getting the belt wrapped around the pulleys requires the disassembly of about 1/2 of the right side of the engine compartment, elevating the car to be able to get to the underside of the crank pulley, and fingers twice as long and flexible and hands half as thick as mine. So, now I have power steering oil spilled under the car, engine bits spread out over half of the garage, and I'm no closer to getting the goddamned belt on the car than I was four hours ago. It's cold, the belt won't flex, my fingers are frost-burned from touching frozen metal, and nothing wants to go where it belongs.

While I worked on the POS car, about 6" of snow was collecting on the driveway. The temperature is dropping and I gave up for a day or two. I'm not sure if this job will require patience, more equipment than I own, or just the usual abundance of luck. The damn belt is twisted in the folded-up shape that Gates packages it and it refuses to take the shape required to stay on the pulleys long enough to set the tensioner.

Which brings me to the realization I received this week having done the cost-per-mile calculations for the bikes and car, quickly followed by the misery of working on a semi-modern car. "We gotta get outta this place." For the last 16 years, I've either enjoyed or pretty much tolerated the long cold of the frozen north. Last year was pretty much the end of that. Suffering in the constant cold while I rehabilitated my replaced hip was miserable. Twelve months later, I spent Thanksgiving in the hospital waiting to find out how badly a heart attack has botched up my old ticker. Again, recovering in the cold is a dismal affair. When my wife and explored the Oregon coast this January, I began to think "This ain't the hot setup."

You could bicycle year-around and still take an occasional trip to the mountains for a real winter if the urge struck (I can't imagine that, but it's possible.) I could can the who car-ownership crap and ride a bike or motorcycle for every transportation need I'll ever have. I do that here for 8 months out of the year, but Minnesota mass transit is pitiful and those four months are an overpriced waste of resources. Portland, for example, has a functioning urban rail system and an extensive bus line. The Cities are just now realizing that they and their 'burbs comprise a substantial city and are playing catch-up to the spare standards of the 1970s. I'm not going to live long enough to see a functioning winter transportation system here.

1966 VW for sale outside of Portland.

1974 Hilux motor in all its complexity.

I could go back to an emissions-spewing VW Beetle or an old Japanese pickup, if I didn't have to worry about it rusting out from under me. You can buy a pretty good used Beetle for reasonable money in Portland and they still have floorboards. If I have to own a car, might as well own one that is mostly a 4-wheel motorcycle. The pickup is a likely option, too. It could carry a motorcycle, if necessary, wood for the woodstove, and whatever other crap I have to haul for the 3-4 times a year I need to haul something my bike can't carry. I had a 1974 Toyota Hilux for 8 of the 10 years I lived in California and only sold it because I knew it would dissolve in the Minnesota salt and I couldn't bear to watch that happen after 300,000 miles of faithful service. A kid who read my water meter bought the pickup and planned to drive it to the vintage car show at the fair grounds, once a year, and store it in his dad's barn the rest of the time. It's tough to beat that little motor for simplicity, outside of an air-cooled VW.

Most guys would have a serious problem pulling off something like this because of their wives. Not me. My wife has hated winter for as long as we've been married, or longer. When I took my first Minnesota job, she was convinced that I was moving us her to force her to divorce me. She is a west coast lady and would sell everything we don't need, pack up what's left, and be ready to hit the road before I finished saying, "Ok, I give. Let's move to Portland." You can see she's a serious tree hugger and she likes to hug serious trees.

It's also possible that this, too, will pass. Every winter for the last five or six, I've burned out on the concept long before the misery was over. When my grandson quit playing in the snow with me, I sorta quit playing in the snow, too. We are part of a wonderful collection of Minnesota communities that I can't imagine replacing anywhere else in the country. By April, I will have forgotten winter altogether and be happily riding the bike to work every day, blissfully unaware that winter is just around the corner. Again. But I won't have to think about my car problems until sometime in late November and that's almost as good as not owning a car.

My Vehicle Ownership Costs

A while back, blog reader and old man abuser Andy Mckenzie, challenged me regarding my assumptions that motorcycle ownership isn't an economical transportation alternative, relative to cheap car ownership. The chart below describes the results of my careful accounting of my operational costs since I purchased these 3 vehicles. The actual odometer reading \on each vehicle is greater than that listed below, but the only significant variance in the "Miles" spec is on the Ford Escort Wagon which had about 100,000 miles on the odometer when I bought the car. The two bikes weren't even broken-in when I bought them from their original owners (less than 900 miles).

Economy Comparison between My Cheap Car and My Motorcycles
	1998 Ford Escort Wagon	2008 Yamaha WR250X	2004 Suzuki 650 V-Strom
Costs/Mile	$0.225	$0.290	$0.172
Cost/Year	$1,865	$1,414	$1,114
Miles/Year	8,294	4,882	6,497
Years Owned	9.4	1.9	6.4
Miles	78,053	9,469	41,778
Average Fuel Economy (miles/gallon)	24.4	52.6	50.3
Vehicle Expense	$2,700	$3,200	$3,400
Total Fuel Costs	$9,437	$531	$2,450
Tires	$280	$426	$1,540
Oil Changes	$120	$39	$328
Major Repairs	$3,572	$0	$0
Minor Repairs	$84	$439	$1,056
Taxes and License Fees	$517	$253	$310
Insurance	$1,468	$410	$956
Farkles	$275	$845	$627
Current Resale Value (estimate)	$900	$3,400	$3,500
Total Lifetime Costs	$17,553	$2,744	$7,166

This is not the data result I expected. For years, because of the cost of drive-line repairs (chains and sprockets) and tires, I've assumed that owning a motorcycle is inherently more expensive than driving a cheap car.  The comments I made on a past blog/rant more than implied that and Mr. Mckenzie called me on it. It's only luck that prevented me from putting money on this claim.This is a discussion and assumption I've shared with the publisher of Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine, Victor Wanchena, and a disagreement that has continued with the owner/founder of Aerostich, Andy Goldfine, for years. I have, clearly, taken for-granted an erroneous assumption: motorcycles are not an economical transportation option.

The fact that the WR250X is, so far, the most expensive vehicle I currently own means nothing. The bike needed a lot of TLC in the form of returning it to stock after the original owner chopped it to bits in an effort to make his dick appear to be bigger (or whatever motivation it is that causes children and fools to ruin perfectly good engineering in an attempt at proving they're smart). All of the Minor Repair costs on that bike have been the expense of buying stock parts and one chain/sprocket replacement at about 1,200 miles (obviously, the previous owner didn't believe in lubrication). My first set of tires were actual SuperMoto tires and they were expensive and didn't live long. The current tires are dual purpose Korean cheapos and are wearing like iron. I also installed a 3.1 gallon tank, a new seat, a suspension-lowering link, and a rear rack which jacked up the Farkles costs considerably. As usual, I don't expect to get anything back from the Farkle "investment," but it is a one-time expense that will obviously be overwhelmed if the bike holds up and I'm able to put some serious miles on the 250 in the next few years.The more I've worked on the WR250X, the better the fuel economy has become, so it ought to show some serious "improvement" in cost/mile driven by next winter. Since I'm finished Farkle-ing the WR, now the fuel economy will start chipping away at the Cost/Mile figure.

The V-Strom ownership costs are artificially lower than they should be, due to my writing "business." The bike has a lot more Farkle-investment than $627, but I picked up most of those bits as evaluation "samples" so I don't have any money in my aftermarket luggage, chain-oiler, seat, and a bunch of other "improvements." I'm just working this out by what I have invested, not what the stuff might be worth. Most of the V-Strom's Minor Repairs costs have been in chain replacement. The bike has seen at least 12,000 miles of off-pavement travel and that chews up O-ring chains fast, even with an auto-oiler. In fact, if the Escort had seen the same kind of terrain, it might have not survived.

Since the Current Resale Value (estimate) is subtracted from the Total Lifetime Costs and Cost/Mile figures, if I get less than those estimates the numbers will, in the end, reflect that. I might be optimistic on the Escort and WR250X's resale, but from last summer's experience I don't anticipate getting less than $3,500 for the V-Strom whenever I sell it. Those numbers are just estimates, but I don't expect to be particularly surprised or depressed by the final values.

For most of my life, I suspected that car ownership is stupid. The cost of renting a brand new Kia in Portland and driving it to San Francisco this past January and the above data proves that point. I paid about $0.34/mile to lightly use that car for eight days. I would have paid 2/3 of that if I'd have returned the car to Portland. The "convenience" of car ownership is overwhelmed by the cost of the damn things and, since I hate driving them in the best of times, I will happily divest myself of at least one of my cars the day I retire.

Seriously? I'm Supposed to Care?

My editor recently tried to shame me into not using the word "cager" so much in my column and the news. Apparently, cagers think being called "cagers" is insulting. I only have one thing to say about that; who gives a fuck?

They should attend one of my MSF classes where I warn new riders to look out for cagers because their choice of vehicles has clearly marked them for incompetence. "If you need four wheels to balance yourself in your vehicle, you're obviously handicapped, incompetent, and dangerous." A cage is just an oversized Hooveround. If you need one, fine. Just don't ask me to call your crip-mobile a race car. Yeah, I'm specially pissed-off today. Live with it.

The Pace or the Ride

Sev Pearman, my Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor and long-time friend and co-conspirator, sent me an article written by Motorcyclists' Nick Ienatsch called "The Pace." In the article, Ienatsch extolls the virtues of a particular sort of group ride. After several people on Sev's email list responded, I felt compelled to put my $0.02 worth of bullshit into the mix.

"Responsible? A bit. Educational? Probably. Fun? Most certainly not.

"Nothing about any sort of group street riding sounds rational to me. The opportunities for misjudging the surrounding riders, for getting overwhelmed with input data, or for becoming so bored that I drive off into a ditch to keep from falling asleep and to provide myself with a little entertainment are all reasons why I always "get lost" in group rides. Make one wrong turn, and you own the road again and don't have to worry about who fell down up front or who's about to run up your tailpipe on a boring straight section or where you're going to sit when 70 bikers decide to descend on a hapless coffee shop or greasy spoon. There is an aspect of 'togetherness' that many people link to motorcycling that is, as my hero Eric Cartman would say, 'Lame, dude. Totally lame.'"

Yep, I felt pretty good about that opinionated opinion. I'm still about half-doped up with my morning dose of 15mg of morphine sulfate and 5-325mg of oxycodone-acetamineophen (Percoset), so I could be wrong.

Sev whipped right back with, "I'm gonna disagree w/ you on this one, Thomas. There are times when I LOVE riding w/ 1-5 other riders of similar skill and mindset. Parade rides of pirate-costumed riders on clown bikes? No Thanks But a spirited ride among a small group  of riders can be invigorating."

Which, finally, brings us to the point of today's Geezer rant. As you know, I can't tolerate disagreement; unless I get a beer out of the deal. When it comes to off-road riding, I'm sort of in agreement with Sev, although my group size would probably be smaller (1-3, with 1 being exponentially better than 3). I found, on my trip around Superior last fall, that I'd rather be in a cage if I'm trying to hang with someone (preferably with them doing the driving) than do the group ride thing. Economically, ecologically, practically, and socially, it makes more sense.

The conversation and, probably, the drugs brought up some old memories that had been almost entirely in the old age fuzz. Must be the morphine or Alzeheimers.

In Colorado, there were a group of three guys I hung out with for almost everything. We worked together, explored Colorado's cities and mountains and ghost towns, fixed cars, did off-road remote controlled car racing, hot-wired the company's intranet so we could play networked Doom and Hell on Earth (Doom II) all weekend, and generally hung out a lot. When I first moved to CO, I was the only active motorcyclist in the group, so we naturally did a lot of stuff in our cages and the "driver" of the event picked everyone up and sort of set the tone for whatever we were going to do. The two vehicles of group excursion choice were often my hippie Toyota van, which had no back seats, but was "decorated" in two large beanbags (for camping), an icebox, and a great surround system and a 1960 Pontiac Catalina convertible with an even better surround system. We covered a lot of ground in those two vehicles, including trips to New Mexico and Wyoming, an excursion to visit my family in L.A., fishing on Colorado's Arkansas River, road trips up Mount Evans and Pike's Peak, and at least one lap around Colorado's state RC off-road electric championship series.

A couple of years later, everyone decided they needed to become motorcyclists. We started to try to do the same things we'd done in cages by bike. It was a miserable experiment. Our skill levels were all over the place. Every trip ended up with one of the rookies in a ditch or dragging his ass back home with parts dangling from their poorly maintained bikes. In the end, I took to planning the route and heading for the end point at my own rate, expecting to spend an afternoon in that spot while the other guys straggled in hours later. On a Denver to Pike's Peak trip, I rode the whole mountain, twice, performed a thorough maintenance on my bike, had a long conversation with one of the Peak's railroad engineers, and had lunch before the other three guys straggled into the parking lot. Around that point, I decided group rides weren't going to be my deal and I have avoided them since. I will always miss the road trips we took, but none of the motorcycle adventures.

Irritating Follow-Up

Edmund's InsideLine followed up my comment on automotive boredom with a list of "The 100 Greatest Cars of All Time." I agree with exactly 10 of their choices (the numbers are theirs, the comments are mine):

4. 1938 Volkswagen Beetle: Edmund's comment was that this car "May be the most beloved car ever." I would still consider owning and driving a '67 Beetle if I didn't live in the Rust Belt. If I were going to drive the South American Pan-American Highway, it would be in a Beetle. This car was in production for 65 years with minor improvements. If this isn't the greatest car ever made, the standards for "greatness" are stupid.

9. 1908 Ford Model T: This is more of a political choice, for me, than engineering. The Ford Company was beginning to become something democratically revolutionary, inspite of the company's fascist owner. "It was the first car most people could afford." The people behind and on Ford's assembly line created America's first middle class. They are still doing it, too.
15. 1964 Ford Mustang: The original car was just a screwed-up Ford Falcon and how it "made Lee Iacocca an icon" is more about how modern management pulls credit up and pushes blame down than saying something about Iacocca's "vision" and leadership. Since the Falcon wasn't on Edmund's list, I'm left with the residual choice. I like the Falcon better, though.
24. 1949 Ford: My first 4-wheel ride was a '54 Ford convertible, which was definitely one of the models that Edmund's said "would follow" the '49. Solid car that proved it could run without an air filter for longer than it should have. I was a dumb kid.
27. 1990 Acura NSX: I don't lust after sports cars, but I always lusted for an NSX. If I won the lottery, I might have one. Probably not, though. I'm too old now.
34. 1984 Honda Civic CRX: Edmund's silly comment, "The first fun economy car" just shows how out of touch their writers are with history. The VW was fun, especially the convertible. The VW Karmann Ghia was fun. The original 1972 Civic was fun. The CRX is unnecessary, for me. Honda made a mark with the introduction of the Civic and has been denting the auto industry since.
46. 1992 Toyota Camry: This was the 3rd version of the Camry, but I thought the original '82 Camry was pretty "standard" setting. I owned a '73 Toyota Hilux at the time and was already sold on Toyotas.
45. 1976 Honda Accord: Nothing to be said here. A nice, Americanized Japanese car that everyone wants to own.
74. 1946 MG TC: Like all MG's, this is British crap, but it was fun crap to drive when it worked and sort of fun to work on (which owners had to do all the time).
79. 1950 Volkswagen Type 2: The VW microbus was the original do-everything vehicle. I loved mine, low mileage engine and all. You could camp with the family or bag up your 125 and drive to the motocross in a VW Bus. This vehicle started the whole mini-van business.
97. 1968 Datsun 510: A cheap, sort-of-sporty car that got good mileage and held up during every challenge except Midwest salted roads. Had one, liked it, thanks Doug.

My additions to the list:
A. 1986 Nissan Pathfinder: the only real SUV Japan ever made.
B: Datsun 520 Pickup: the Japanese break-through vehicle to the US market (mostly in California).
C: 1973 Toyota Hilux Pickup: The single toughest vehicle I have ever experienced.

 I probably don't disagree with Edumnd's about the other 90 cars, I just don't care about them. The whole "great car" argument is lost on me. Cars have two too many wheels and make driving so simple even the simple can do it. When it comes to driving, I'm an elitist; if you can't do it well, you should be on the bus. When it comes to expensive and mostly useless cars, I can't generate enough interest to even look. Cars are for carrying people and stuff you can't carry on a motorcycle.

That is all I have to say about cars. Let us never speak of this again.

A Partial Gearhead

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

Most of my friends think of me as a gearhead. It's true that I like almost all kinds of gear; motorcycles, guitars and other musical instruments, recording studio equipment, computers, manufacturing and machining tools, almost everything mechanical or electrical. It's not true that :I like all things mechanical, though. I particularly dislike gear that has passed into obsolescence and continues to waste human resources and energy; like cars. I don't like driving them, riding in them, thinking about them, and, especially, I hate owning them.

My wife ruined her knees walking on concrete, while working for one of the big box hardware stores. So, riding a motorcycle is no longer a pleasant pastime for her. For our anniversary this year we took a cage trip south along the Mississippi into Iowa. She gets carsick, so traveling by cage, plane, boat, or bus isn't all that pleasant for either of us. She usually drives and that's fine with me. Other than the knee issues and the motion sickness, she's a fine traveling companion.

I hate driving cages. There are two too many wheels and the damn things give me an unpleasant feeling of instability and cumbersome awkwardness that is mind-numbing and a little scary. For three to four months every winter, I'm stuck in my Ford Escort wagon wishing bus service was even close to practical where I live. No, having a "better car" wouldn't help. I've driven Beemers, Porsches, stockcars, dune-buggies (my favorite cage), and a collection of staid Eurotrash luxury sedans and unpronounceable Italian "sports" cages and they all leave me bored. Convertibles are almost tolerable. If I could poke out the windshield, they'd be better. If I could legally drive a dune-buggy wearing a heated suit and helmet, I'd be about as happy in a cage as I'm likely to get. However, if I have to be in a cage I'd rather be a passenger than a driver. Being a passenger in a cage is at least productive, since I can write stuff like this as I ride along isolated from the wind, weather, and all sensations of speed and motion. If I'm going to be caged, I prefer the biggest cage I can get into: buses, trains, and such.

Floating past my favorite letter roads along WI35 was particularly frustrating. My GPS is littered with routes I would be taking along the river, if I were on a vehicle that well-tolerated dirt roads and twisty two-lanes. That kind of path is a perfect formula for agitating my wife's nausea. And her getting sick doesn't do my traveling Jones much good. I can hang upside down in a moving box while reading a technical journal without a lick of stomach instability, but if someone else gets sick near me I'm following their path like a cow heading to the barn. Barfing is something else that never happens to me on a motorcycle.

I keep hearing about "man's love affair with the automobile," while talking heads try to explain why we're pouring money into the black hole of cage manufacturing. I don't get it. What's to love about a cage? To me, that's like loving a chair or a wheelbarrow. At best, a cage is another utilitarian device that has outlived its usefulness; like horse-drawn plows or buggy whips or cell phones. We only cling to the damn things in the US because we haven't been bright enough to maintain our mass transit infrastructure. We're going to pay for that within a few years.

In San Francisco or New York, I could rent or borrow a cage on the rare occasion I need one. Where I live, the bus stops running anywhere near my home at 6PM. A decade ago my route ran till midnight, but that schedule ended after the current administration took office. I don't expect to live long enough to see real mass transit in the Cities. We're way too conservative and oblivious to reality to put rail or any other alternative on the burner until the last pump drips its final drop of gas. Then, in true conservative fashion, we'll shriek "the sky is falling" and it will.

We made the Wisconsin-and-back trip safely. She didn't get sick. I didn't throw a boredom-inspired tantrum. That's as good as cage traveling gets for us.

The next day I mounted up and headed back to Wisconsin. Almost immediately, I got stuck behind a gaggle of doddering cheese-burners on WI35, but at the first county road (which happened to be gravel), I split off and got back on my pace. Within a couple of hours, I had almost forgotten the torture of being trapped and strapped behind a windshield, listening to poorly selected radio music or talking head babble. On a real vehicle of transportation (physical and mental), I was swinging through the countryside with my own music in my head, pacing my own rhythms, thinking my own thoughts, enjoying the ride and the place. I hate cages and love motorcycling.

Missing the Point, Harley Style

Hardly's newest ad, "No Cages, Free Yourself," demonstrates the Company's legendary ability to completely miss the point and piss off much of the public at the same time. Hell, lots of motorcyclists call Hardly's hippobike "cages" because of their legendary inability to travel anywhere the road isn't cut and planed perfectly flat and straight. So, the following is funny and clueless:


I'm all for convincing cagers to abandon their gas-guzzling, road-hogging, resource-abusing single-occupant rolling houses (or cages, if you like). However, depicting peds (a means of transportation that we all use) and the 1.7-4.5 million commuting cyclists in cages is silly, even by Hardly's deranged standards.

When I'm touring the country's backroads, the only people I'm even a little bit jealous of are the bicyclists. As much as my motorcycle makes me feel like I'm "out in it," I know the bicyclists are that much more in the world around them. Hikers are even more free of society's restrictions and technology's crutches.

The fact that Hardly's uncaged motorcyclist is the noisiest vehicle in an already noisy environment didn't seem to register in the Hardly marketing department's little mind. Obviously, the Hardly rider should be in an acoustically isolated box, which wouldn't be a huge improvement from the screeching of the cages. An electric bike company ought to reshoot this video, including the Hardly, all wrapped in soundproof plexi boxes showing how the would would be improved with noiseless vehicles.