Spam Magnet?

I admit, I don't know what the purpose of spam attached to blog comments could be. Call me "stupid," I'm used to it, but one rant I've written rises above all others as a spam magnet, "Start Seeing Corners and Road Signs." China, Russia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines spammers (in that order) are attracted to that one essay to the point that I once turned off "anonymous" comment access and, now, I automatically route anonymous comments to my spam holding pen. Typically, I will delete 50-75 anonymous comments due to their spammy nature every week. Often, every one of those comments will have been attached to that one rant. 

Maybe I should be flattered? I have a mirror, so that never works. I am entertained to the point that I have left a bunch of those comments in the blog as some sort of reminder that I'm shipping out my thoughts to a autonomous world of non-readers . . . or something. If I were more trusting (could I be less trusting?) I'd have let them all go and I could brag about having written something that received 1,000s of comments. I keep suspecting one of those "anonymous" comments will have an attachment that could do harm to actual readers, but most don't and I can't figure out what their purpose is. 

On another level, I am sort of proud of "Start Seeing Corners and Road Signs." It drew a little attention when it was published in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly (even though the magazine didn't like it enough to post it on their website afterwards). "Attention," to my column always meant pissed off bikers posing as real motorcyclists. In that column, I wrote this, "A newbie rider, Harley-shopping guy, Roger Holmes, 59, said it all with his Trib article quote, 'It makes you feel good. It makes you feel younger.' Holy crap. One more sucker buying into the marketing bullshit. Dude, you need to have someone take a picture of you and your wife on your hippobike. Put it on your mirror and stare at it every day until you wise up and realize that you not only don't look younger, you look downright silly wallowing around the road on that porker. Exercise will make you feel younger. Eating smart, giving up smoking, drinking less (way less, for you cruiser characters), and reducing the stress in your lives by avoiding stupid impulse buying and idiotic debt will all make you feel younger (and look younger than your dumber Boomer friends)."It probably says a lot about me, but I am damn proud of that writing and I'll stick with the content until my bones are incinerated.

Tell Me How Good You Thought My Riding Was

Ripped from a section of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Fit the First:

FORD PREFECT:
Well…if we’re lucky it’s just the Vogons come to throw us into space.
ARTHUR DENT:
And if we’re unlucky…?
FORD PREFECT:
If we’re unlucky the Captain might want to read us some of his poetry first.
NARRATOR:
Vogon poetry is, of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet-master, Grunthos the Flatulent, of his poem ‘Ode to a Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning’, four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve - book epic entitled ‘My Favourite Bath-time Gurgles’, when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck, and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon Poetry is mild by comparison, and when the Vogon Captain began to read, it provoked this reaction from Ford Prefect:
Scene 9: Int. Vogon Spaceship Bridge.
FORD PREFECT:
[Screams]
THE BOOK:
And this from Arthur Dent:
ARTHUR DENT:
[Horrible screams]
VOGON CAPTAIN:
"Oh freddled gruntbuggly…"
ARTHUR DENT:
[Blood-curdling screams]
FORD PREFECT:
[Awful screams]
VOGON CAPTAIN:
"…thy micturations are to me, as purdled gabbleblotchitson lurgid bee."
ARTHUR DENT:
[Ghastly screams]
FORD PREFECT:
[Suffering screams]
VOGON CAPTAIN:
"Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes..."
ARTHUR DENT:
[Dreadful screams]
FORD PREFECT:
[ Agonised screams]
VOGON CAPTAIN:
"And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, for I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!"
ARTHUR DENT:
[Terrible screams]
FORD PREFECT:
[ Horrendous screams]
ARTHUR DENT:
Aghhh. Ahhhhh.
FORD PREFECT:
Ahhhh. Aghhhh.
VOGON CAPTAIN:
So, Earthlings, I present you with a simple choice. I was going to throw you straight out into the empty blackness of space to die horribly and slowly, but there is one way, one simple way, in which you may save yourselves. Now think very carefully… for you hold your very lives in your hands! Now choose: either die in the Vacuum of Space, or -
[Dramatic chord, then several not-so-dramatic chords]
VOGON CAPTAIN:
…tell me how good you thought my poem was.

And that is pretty much what it is often like to be a motorcycle safety instructor when your friends, relatives, and aquaintances ask you to tell them what you think of their motorcycle skills. I would much rather be tossed into the vacuum of space. Most motorcyclists over 40, the majority of motorcyclists I know, are pretty awful and almost none of them know it. They don’t want to hear about it, either. Without getting at least $50/hour there is no chance that I want to be the one to tell them, either.

I didn’t even much enjoy telling strangers that they had no business being on a motorcycle and I did get paid $50 an hour for the privledge and repsonsibility. Damn few people want anything resembling honest when they ask you “Do I look ok in this dress?” or “Does this color make me look fat?” or “All in favor of my decision/idea/self-promotion raise their hands.” Or any number of “let’s pretend I’m able to accept criticism” moments. Most people just want affirmation of their wonderfulness. Most people are not particularly wonderful.

Teaching motorcycle safety classes is a different situation, for the instructors. All of my favorite co-instructors were really quick with evaluations or criticism of both my verbal presentatiuons or my riding demos. They were receptive to my opinion of their performance, too. At least, they pretended to be. Going for a group ride or a track day with a bunch of motorcycle instructors is an exercise in listening to criticism about your riding skills, judgement, and your motorcycle maintenance habits at every stop and, sometimes, on the fly.

I am not complaining. Normally, going for ride in a group of motorcyclists is a weird kind of suicide mission where nobody knows who is going to come back in a box or an ambulance. Watching the characters in most group rides like like observing odd-shaped objects spiriling into a gravity well intended for perfectly round coins. Lots of random motion, nearl collisions, and solid impacts preceded by poor judgement, marginal riding skills, and a misguided belief that gods or nature or Murphy is on our side.

I’m pretty comfortable in the rider-coach group. In fact, as I age out of my motorcycle years I wish I could still have the opportunity to regularly have my riding technique criticized by these people. I have a “test” that I’ll continue to give myself, but that’s not the same as being observed and criticized by riders who have no horse in my riding race. Not only are they competent, realistic riders, but they are my friends and they care (for multiple reasons) that I am doing those exercises correctly and consistently. They are not going to tell me “how good” my riding is if it sucks and if the demos I provide will be poor examples of riding technique. They are going to tell me that I either need to do more work on my demos or, worst case, that I am not good enough to be an instructor. That was a hard thing to give up when I retired from the MMSC this spring. Maybe the hardest thing.

On the other hand, when I watch my friends wobble away from a stop light or wobble to a stop with both feet on the ground dragging on the ground because they don’t trust their ability with a front brake and don’t have the balance to use the rear brake all the way to stopped, I’m supposed to keep my opinions to myself. I’d love to claim that “my training” prevents me from saying something about those riding skills, but it’s really the fact that I am naturally an asshole that makes me say what I think. The only way to avoid blurting out “You Suck!” is just to avoid the whole situation. It is just one more reason why I don’t like riding in a group. In fact, there are about a half-dozen people on the planet that I enjoy traveling with.

So, don’t ask and I won’t tell.

Motorcycle Hate

After an incredibly rational reply from Joe about his favorite motorcycle magazines, stating "RR [RoadRunner, I think] has lots of cruisers but that really doesn't bother me. I just like seeing and learning about where they are riding. It bothers me not what bike they are riding. Motorcycle hate is unhealthy." I couldn't help but think about my own perspective on brands and types of motorcycles as I plowed across the boring flatlands of Wisconsin this weekend. He's right, of course.

If this isn't a picture of some level of Dante's inferno, it has to
be damn close. The sound  and smell of those miserably

tuned 14hp girls' bikes would be enough to make Richard
Dawkins pray for salvation. 

I've been accused of being a "motorcycle bigot" and worse because of my general distaste for cruisers and the obsolete technology they represent. I'm working on an engineering-based analysis of that opinion for MMM that might be in the September issue, if I get it together soon enough and Sev and Bruce go for it. While plodding through Hardly territory, I had lots of opportunity to examine my "bigotry," since an easy 90% of the bikes I saw in Wisconsin were cruisers of one sort or another, probably Hardlys. They all look the same to me. Ugly and slow.

From a distance (across a four-lane medium, for example), I have little-to-no opinion, one way or another. They are big, slow, and awkward but I don't have an emotional reaction to opposite direction cruisers. Up close, I found I do hate the damn things passionately. As I would approach one of the garage candyasses, the closer I got the more I hated the experience. Sitting behind a blubbering noise generator at a stop light is a miserable experience. I found myself trying to get a few cars between me and any in-town Hardly. On the road, passing one of those hippomobiles is painful. (No, not once in 720 miles did I experience getting passed by a cruiser.) The closer you get to the ass-end of an asshole's bike, the more painful it gets, so I discovered I have an automatic reaction of shifting to 5th and hammering by those derelict machines as fast as my 650 can go. On the little WR, I just have to grit my teeth and get by as quickly as possible, with the 85mph top speed limit putting a cap on how quick that can be. Of course, once I'm ten feet in front of the blubber-machine, the pain is done and they are out of sound and mind.

That sums up my emotional reaction to hippobikes. If they are quiet (not one in hundreds in Wisconsin), I don't notice them and have no more reaction to them than Goldwings hauling trailers, SUVs, or other land yachts. If they are "fags" (as accurately defined by South Park), my reaction to those screwed-up 16-year-old girl machines is exactly the same as "everyone" else. (In case you just arrived here from the fifth planet from Alpha Centauri and had been deluded by HD's marketing into believing Harley's are "cool" and "every body loves 'em," here is your opportunity to re-calibrate.)

For me, the big payoff was discovering that I'm neutral on the "type of bike" you ride and I'm no more a biker hater than 90% of the public. Sitting behind a few cages, with a pile of steaming garage candy in front of us all gave me the opportunity to look at the expressions of the people in those cars. As they rolled up their windows on an otherwise beautiful day, they were glaring at the asshole on the hippobike and hating his existence as if he were that moment's worst person in the world. I, on the other hand, didn't appear to exist for anyone in that line of traffic, for the moment. [I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing.]

From my informal observations, I know that a huge number of people hate motorcycles, generically. I mean they automatically hate us all. Noise is the reason. We are the loudest thing in the urban environment. Babble all you like about how, if government goes after our noise it should go after other noises sources, but we're an unimportant portion of transportation and contribute nothing of noticeable value to relieving urban congestion. We are at the top of the irritating noise ladder and so easily knocked off that most people will just smile if motorcycles are banned from public roads, altogether. Think that can't happen. You wish.

What's the Opposite of a Grudge?

A couple of weeks ago, I listed ten (just to keep it short) companies, products, and concepts that have earned my long-lasting distrust. During the following week, I ended up at my neighborhood motorcycle accessory store buying replacement summer gloves and discovered that I naturally passed over several brands because of mediocre past experience and immediately picked out a couple of versions from the one brand the store carries that I generally like. From that experience, I decided to list a few of the companies, products, and concepts that I have (probably) unreasonable faith in

1. icon -- icon is, in fact, the company that provided the motivation for this rant. Some time back, I reviewed a pair of mid-priced icon gloves. Five years later, those gloves are still providing good service. A few years later, I reviewed a pair of icon ventilated pants that I still wear, often. Both products have been reliable, tough, and functional. When I stood in front of that rack of gloves, icon was my only real options, since I've been burned by TourMaster, Alpinestars, and FirstGear. Joe Rocket was an option, but the first pair of gloves I picked up had failing seams, I went for the icon twenty-niner and have been very happy with the choice. Lousy gloves are a memory that sticks with a rider for a long, long time. Good products have the same sticky quality.
2. Aerostich -- Just mentioning this brand is 'nough said. Aerostich makes great products and I've reviewed so many of them that it would take a page just to list the wonderful products I've bought from the company. Even the products they carry that are manufactured by other people are checked out as thoroughly and supported as consistently as their own stuff. Aerostich/Riderwearhouse is a great American-made company.
3. Yamaha -- Over the years, I have owned a variety of Yamaha motorcycles and scooters.The first was my wife's MX100 which gave her spectacular service for years before she sold it. She has nothing but fond memories of the bike and out grandson still wears her old bumblebee yellow Yamaha jersey. My first Yamaha street bike was a 1982 XTZ550 Vision that suffered at least 50k miles of LA commuting traffic before I sold it and bought a 1986 Yamaha XT350 that I still regret selling almost a decade later. Along with the XT, I owned a 1983 Vision that moved me from California to Indiana to Colorado and, finally, was sold for a profit to a guy who drove his truck all the way from LA to Denver to pick it up. My 1986 TY350 was and is, likewise, one of my all-time favorite motorcycles along with the pair of 1992 850 TDM's I owned and loved. The current mechanical love of my life is my WR250X, the most fun motorcycle I've ever ridden. The Super Ténéré I reviewed last week joined the list of impressive Yamaha motorcycles I've experienced. I've only owned one Honda, but it was an equally excellent motorcycle. My experience with Suzuki has been less consistent. My two Kawasaki's have been disappointing.  Yamaha has done very well by me and that makes any Yamaha vehicle look a little better than the rest, in my view. 
4. Dell Computers -- I own four of them: two Latitude 410 laptops, a desktop tower, and the 1012 Netbook I'm working on as I write this. The Latitude 410's were the convincer for me. After wearing out a half-dozen laptops on my motorcycle trips, including two of the grossly misnamed Panasonic Toughbooks, I stumbled on the 410 just before I left for Alaska. 70,000 miles and hundreds of hours later, that first unit is still working. So, I bought another. And another. And . . . Dell's customer service has been exceptional and knowledgeable, on the rare occasion I've needed it. 
5. Avon Tires - Way back in the 1970's, I was commuting about 60 miles a day in a VW Beetle. The Nebraska roads were poorly maintained, there was often black ice and drifted snow to contend with, and I went through a VW motor about every 60k miles and a set of tires every 15k. A rally driving friend recommended Avon tires and I bought a set. They outlasted the VW's motor and were great on those crappy roads. The whole time I lived in California, all of our cars wore Avons, but I didn't discover Avon motorcycle tires until I put a pair of Distanzias on my V-Strom. After getting 3-5k out of the previous rear tires, I doubled that with the Avons. I don't drive that much these days and my car tires usually dry out and start weather cracking before the treads are 2/3 used. I put pretty much anything that fits on the cage and, sometimes, I go cheap on the bike when city commuting is the primary task. When I'm going long on the bike, I'll go with Avons. I have never been disappointed with an Avon tire.
6. Chase Harper - Currently, I do not own any of their products. However, I have had several in the past. Their product support (warranty and repairs) is second to none. I owned a pair of Grand Millennium 4000 saddlebags for 30 years and wore them out, twice.  The company not only repaired the bags under warranty both times, but they upgraded the bags to current design standards each time. 

It's a short list, I know. I imagined I'd come up with at least ten companies, but I didn't come close. I've hung on to this post for a couple of weeks, hoping that I'd remember a few more companies on my preferred vendor list. There aren't many to choose from. Forty years ago, a Peavey sales manager explained to my partner why Peavey products were such crap, "Dan, there will never be a pre-CBS (Fender or Harley) Peavey market. We don't want any of our current products having to compete with our older products." Most modern corporations can make that same claim. None of their new stuff will last long enough to leave a memory for the majority of consumers.

An executive I worked with three decades ago once complained that "customer loyalty" is dead. He was the kind of guy who believed that warranties are made to be ignored and all of the inventory of a crappy product should be sold before the product is abandoned. He argued that our customer warranty database was a waste of time and effort, even though we were one of the few companies that stored the data customers filled out on those usually-worthless warranty registration cards. For ten years, I beat back this guy's arguments and we developed a loyal customer base that had high expectations of our company and paid a small premium for our products. A few years later, the company moved production to China, shipped a collection of marginally reliable and under-performing products, and wiped out thirty years of reputation in a few short years. Now, they are one of many equally positioned companies and battle for the lowest cost point, since customers are no longer loyal to the brand.

Customer loyalty is a two-way street. To get it, a company has to be loyal to its customers. Most companies can't even manage to be loyal to the country that provided the resources for their existence, let alone the customers who buy their products. The cost for that disloyalty is that the products become a commodity that can be purchased equally reliably -- or unreliably -- from any vendor. Once you're in that world, the only advantage you can offer is price and that means quality is sacrificed even more and customer loyalty slips away even further.

The high price for maintaining customer loyalty is beyond the capability of most corporate management. In my life, that has been the most obvious thing that is slipping away from US corporations; management with ability. The skills that we have lost and are least likely to regain are intelligent, skilled management with foresight. We can't build stuff because manufacturing management requires the most energy, talent, and commitment. Any lazy idiot can invent fraudulent security "instruments" and sell them to other fools; as long as we're willing to give up on being a nation ruled by law. The few companies that still do business responsibly and are customer-oriented deserve our business more today than ever.

My Alaska Adventure

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

When I was a kid, growing up in flat-as-a-pancake and boring as television western Kansas, I led a kind of Walter Mitty life. On the surface, I was a normal kid. I went to school during the week, went to movies and church on Sunday, played sports, threw a paper route and had part-time jobs, and tried to act normal. Under the surface, I read science fiction and adventure books, listened to jazz records, and planned my escape. My two favorite writers were Mark Twain and Jack London. My two favorite escape destinations were California and Alaska. I lived in California for almost a decade and discovered that frontier had been overpopulated long before I got there. Alaska is different.

I read about Twain and London's adventures in the wilderness and among men who risked their lives for a chance at doing something unusual and imagined myself living that kind of life as soon as I ran away from Kansas. I imagined myself saddling up a couple of horses and taking off for some remote part of Canada or Alaska, never to be seen again. The phrase, "this isn't Kansas anymore, Toto" held nothing but positive connotations for me. I couldn't wait to get as far from the Midwest as I could travel. Life didn't turn out the way I'd imagined and I've spent most of my life near the center of this country, including a dozen years in Minnesota. Now that my kids are grown and on their own and I'm in pretty good shape, financially, and in reasonable shape, physically, some of that old wanderlust returned to itch at me.

Three years ago, my 60th birthday was on the horizon and a collection of unrelated events jumpstarted my interest in traveling to Alaska. I began to seriously plan an extended trip to Alaska in the spring and summer of 2007. "Extended," for me, meant more than two weeks. I've been employed since I was 14, so two week vacations have been the limit of my adventures for more than 45 years. I planned to take 30 days to ride to Alaska and back. I mapped a route through northern Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, up through Alberta, nicking British Columbia, into Alaska. I'd hoped to hit every significant historical and natural high point in the Alaska before I headed back down through British Columbia into Washington. I had a fairly extensive route planned for my return, too. There was a lot of wiggle room in my plan, because I'm usually pretty spontaneous once I get on the road, but I had a specific set of goals in mind for my first real adventure.

Then my wife stepped in and starting maneuvering some "security" into my plans. She, apparently, decided that I'm too old and fragile to do something like this on my own, so she recruited a work friend, Michael, to ride with me. She and I had dozens of conversations about how this wasn't going to happen, but I lost. "Conversation" is the word wives use for "argument" and "agreement" is the word they use for "I won."

For 50-some years, I have done almost every cool thing in my life on my own. I backpack alone, scuba dive alone, bicycle alone, and I dislike riding in a group, even for short distances. A "group" is two or more people. Having someone else along on my first month-long trip was a major concession for me. "Concession" is the word I use for "losing."

Michael and I met once, in January, as part of my wife's plot to get me to take on a co-rider. My wife introduced us. Michael asked when I wanted to leave. I said, "the first of June."

He said, "That's too early, it will be cold."

I said, "That's when I'm going."

He said, "Huh."

He rightly seemed to think I was far too stupid to ride with, if I thought Alaska in June was a good idea. I figured that ended that and went back to planning my trip. In May, my wife mentioned that Michael had put in for his vacation days and had been given the time off from work.

I said, "Huh?"

She had, apparently, continued recruiting him for the trip all through the winter and he'd decided that June was good enough for him. Now I had a co-rider, so I began to rationalize how this might turn out to be a good thing. By mid-May, I'd almost convinced myself a traveling companion would be less uncomfortable than a sharp stick in the eye. I figured we could start off together and, if it didn't work out, we could go our own ways. We'd both been on long solo motorcycle trips and we'd proven we could do it alone. That's the ointment I used on myself to keep from giving up on the trip altogether.

We had one more meeting, a week or so before June 1, and I discovered that Michael had his own route planned and it was a lot different from mine. I assumed we'd be going our own ways a lot sooner than I expected. You know what "assume" means, I assume.

Due to two cases of Midwestern Guilt and both of our well-evolved desire-to-get-along genes, it took us ten days to split up. The first 3,500 miles of my trip plan were scrapped for a route that Michael picked and one that only included a few hundred miles of my plan. I'd waited more than 50 years to make this trip. Some of Michael's plan was better than mine, but I'd have rather gone where I wanted to go. We went north, mid-Montana, into Saskatchewan instead of making the crossing at Glacier National Park where I’d planned to exit the US. We attempted to ride the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, where I crashed, separated a shoulder, cracked a collection of ribs, bruised a kidney, busted a bone in my right hand, and gravel-rash’d my bike and luggage. The Dempster had not been on my route plan, but I'd hoped to make a run at the Dalton Highway to Deadhorse. 

In Glennallen, Alaska after a day of rest and maintenance, I was sort of back on track; although I was off schedule and busted up. Michael and I shook hands and began two different adventures. He needed to get back home for work. I needed to get used to being on my own with my mending injuries. I arrived at the base of the Dalton Highway, just north of Fairbanks, where it took me an hour of staring at the road to accept the fact that I was too beat up to take on 1,000 miles of dirt road. As I turned south to explore more of Alaska and Canada, I also realized that I was completely in charge of where I’d go next. The next 6,500 miles and 18 days were some of the best moments of my life, let alone on a motorcycle. Nothing beats being by yourself, in the middle of nowhere, knowing that you are in control of everything that happens in your life at that moment.

So, if my wife ever tries to recruit you into going on a motorcycle trip with me, she's working on her own agenda, not mine. If she tells you I'm old, feeble, incompetent and suicidal, she's probably right. If she tells you that I need someone to take care of me in the wilderness, she's still probably right. If she says I want someone to ride with, she means she wants someone to ride with me. She is working from the purest of motivations. However, she is also working with poorly socialized material; me.

I'm as likely to want company on the road as I am to want you to slide your foot into my airport bathroom stall. I'll call you if I want company, otherwise, I'll be on the road; alone and enjoying my solitude.

You Didn't See Me

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

Last winter, in the span of two days, I had a pair of "you didn't see me" events. The first was heading east on Rice Street across from the capitol building. Traffic was heavy, it was snowing, the road was covered in ice, and as I approached an intersection a pedestrian dressed in a gray business suit and overcoat stepped into the crosswalk in front of traffic. He was well within his rights to expect traffic to stop, in fact he dramatically pointed to the iced over crosswalk-way in an attempt to illustrate his rights, but most of the traffic sailed by him without even slowing because stopping at that point would have caused a multi-car pileup. The first car that stopped for him received a jolt from the rear as a reminder that there are more pressing issues in that situation than a pedestrian's rights. Of course, the pedestrian could have pushed the "walk" button to make his passage easier. He could have worn clothing that provided some contrast from the road surface. He didn't because he was convinced that drivers were obligated to see him. Another American who believes that physics and nature should give a flying damn about man-made laws. Reminds me of Kansas ruling that pi should be a nice, clean three-point-oh.

A day later, I was leaving work late at night, exiting from a downtown parking garage. It was pitch black outside and raining. As I approached the street, a young guy--wearing a knee-length black fur coat, black sneakers, and a black fur cap--stepped in front of my car and glared at me as he passed a few feet in front of my car. He was clearly pissed that I hadn't seen him until we were both startled. I was amazed that I had seen him at all. 

Now there is a motorcycle safety ad running on YouTube called "You Didn't See Me." Not one of the YDSM characters depicted in the ad appears to know anything about motorcycle gear. A safe bet would be that none of them every wear a helmet, own a single piece of retro-reflective clothing, know that armor is available in leather jackets, or would consider doing anything other than blasting really loud "brub brrub brrrub" noises at the vehicles behind them as a safety measure.

Not being seen is a big deal to folks who either have difficulty watching out for themselves (and for folks who dress for some kind of success and need to be seen to make that triumph occur). Personally, I think being inconspicuous is overrated.

The examples provided in the YDSM video are cases in point. "You didn't see me squeeze my wife's leg as she told me to take the next turn." "I saw you stare at my long hair, but you didn't see me and my friends . . . " "I saw you complain about how noisy our bikes can be, but you didn't see me when you were checkin' CDs and drifted into my lane." All of these guys were doing something other than watching out for themselves. If I see someone screwing around with anything other than the steering wheel (that means you cell phone morons), I assume they will be drifting, lane changing, and crashing without a clue to their environment. I don't have time to worry about their opinions of my hair, exhaust noise, or lifestyle or for leg squeezing social moments. This is motorcycling dude. Pay attention to your business because nobody else will do it for you. Of the bunch of YDSM whines, the worse one was, "I saw you run a yellow light just to save a few minutes in time, but you didn't see me tryin' to make a right turn." How many things are wrong with this whine? You "run" red lights and if someone whacked a bike turning right at an intersection on yellow, that means the bike ran a red light or the bike was turning right from the left lane and was doing something less legal than the cager he's criticizing.

Finally, "I saw you waiting impatiently for my friends to pass . . . " about does it for me. I have exactly as much sympathy for parades of noise and air polluting tractors as the average cager. Packs of bar-hopping gangbangers only elicit empathy from bar-hopping gangbangers. Spend some time in a Hudson Highway 30 front yard on a Saturday afternoon and imagine yourself cursed with that sort of idiocy all summer long. It would make me want to run for city council just to be able to hire a real police department instead of the useless sort that small towns usually get.

There is a lot about the "right of way" motorcycle movement that pisses me off. The idea that motorcycles are a protected class because of our lack of protection, embarrassing skills, and minimal common sense is pretty high on the list. Any motorcyclist with reasonable intelligence has a lot more going for him than the average bicyclist or pedestrian. We throw around more weight. We have no good excuse for not wearing modern armor. We have better technology--accelerate faster, stop faster, have more escape routes, and have better visibility--than cages. More often than not, we get killed because we are ignoring those advantages or because we're being idiots. (Maybe that's just one problem said two ways?) If being mostly white, male, middle-class and having had access to public education (regardless of how that privilege was squandered) and state-provided training and regulation isn't enough of an advantage, motorcyclists want special laws to punish other road users who disrespect those rights.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for restricting driving rights to those who are competent drivers. If it were up to me, getting a driver's license for a cage would be fifty-times more difficult and getting a motorcycle license would require evidence of extraordinary intelligence, on-and-off -road racing experience, and exceptionally uncommon sense. I absolutely believe that when someone is caught making a right turn from a left lane their existence should be aborted immediately and on the spot. If your cell phone is on and you are moving at more than 20mph, the closest cell tower should terminate you with expedience. And the list of my favorite population-reduction solutions goes on for miles and days. However, none of that will happen on this plane of existence, so we just have to assume no one sees us and look out for ourselves as best we can. Yeah, you didn't see me, but I saw you, assumed you were a moron, and did my best to stay as far away as possible. If I succeed, I live another day.

Making A Miserable Experience Worse

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

I've lived in Minnesota for almost a dozen years. You'd think that would be long enough for me to remember some of the dumber things about buying a motorcycle here, but you'd be disappointed. In my defense, I don't buy a lot of motorcycles; three in a dozen years. Almost every time I venture, title in hand, to the local DMV I get reminded that Minnesota pretends to record and track engine numbers. I've lived in a collection of places--Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, California, Indiana, and Colorado--and Minnesota is the only place that has asked me for my engine number. Why do they care about the engine numbers?

Now, we all know that the state can't hang on to Social Security numbers and our local police couldn't find a stolen Boeing 747 if it were parked on 35W. What do you think the chances are that a bored DPS bureaucrat would notice a reported-stolen engine number, track it to the original owner (the rare owner who bothered to report that engine stolen), and hand that information over to the police? Even more unlikely, what are the chances that a cop would pause from his busy parking-ticket-writing day to chase down the engine-stealing thief and ensure that justice is done? Better than a million-to-one? Probably not. I'd put better odds on my being able to count the stars in the Colorado sky before that scenario would occur.

The first time I was asked for my engine number, I was told that this little song-and-dance was instigated by the Harley garage candy crowd, since their ride is stolen and parted out more than any other vehicle on earth. The engine ID line on a motorcycle title was added to the form sometime in the 1970s, when stolen Harleys were more common than purchased bikes. A lot has changed since then, but we're all still paying the bureaucratic price for all those stolen chopper parts.

My most recent bike purchase was a 2000 Kawasaki Super Sherpa KL250. It's sort of an enduro, very much a multi-purpose small motorcycle, and probably most often spotted strapped to the back of a big RV. Of course, I forgot to note the number on the title before I brought it to the DMV. The clerk noted the missing number and tossed my paperwork back at me, noting that "Everybody forgets to get the engine number. Come back to the front of the line when you get it." I trudge out to the parking lot and spend a half hour looking all over the motor for the number. No number. I give up, ride home, and dig out the owner's manual.

The chances that someone would steal this bike for parts are slim-to-stupid. It's not worth enough to bother stealing, unless the thief needs money to buy a pack of cigarettes but doesn't need the money quickly. The owner's manual indicates that the engine number is stamped on the starter housing, a part that might be replaced when the electric starter dies. However, it's not there: it's under the starter, requiring the removal of the starter to read the number. I was lucky. A previous owner wrote the number in the owner's manual, so, rather than starting an unnecessary engine overhaul, I copied the number from the manual on to the line on the title. If that manual ever gets lost, I pity the fool who buys this motorcycle from me. Of course, I have no idea if it's the right number, since I was unable to find it on my own.

With the microscopic possibility that the police might identify and chase down a stolen motorcycle engine based on the serial number, the minor economic impact that a lost rat bike would have on an individual, and the thousands of lost hours from "everyone" having to quadruple the time necessary to register a motorcycle title due to forgetting to get the engine number, I think this is a stupid, obsolete law that should be reconsidered. Maybe the law could be modified so that only grossly expensive garage candy owners are obligated to crawl under their vehicles looking for non-existent numbers. Those bikes probably have the engine number printed when it can be found, though. Good for them. I, on the other hand, buy rat bikes and am about as inconvenienced by the engine number egg hunt as I would be by having my bike stolen. Any trip to the DMV is a miserable experience. Compounding the humiliation of paying sales tax on a vehicle whose previous owners have probably paid that same tax multiple times with groveling around my own motorcycle looking for a hidden number just adds to the pointless misery.

Here's an idea. Instead of ganging up on our legislators to battle laws that only affect the few, how about we get really mad about something that affects us all? Let's ride in mass to the capitol building to protest multiple taxation on used vehicles, road use restrictions on fuel efficient vehicles (like small displacement motorcycles and scooters), and if the DMV wants my engine number let them find it. If I were any less convinced that the state government could find a stolen motorcycle based on this identification, I'd doubt that they even have a department that attempts to find stolen vehicles. They do have a department that does that, don't they? Yeah, right.

Couldn't Catch a Break

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

Scotty couldn't catch a break. He got tangled up in office politics and ended up laid off during of one of the worst economic periods in seventy years. Out of work and with the usual expenses knocking on the door, he still wanted to take a long motorcycle trip in 2008. It wasn't looking good for him, one week from the day we were planning to leave town. It would get worse.

In 2007, after I got back from Alaska, Scotty got the bike bug. He asked what I thought would be a good bike for commuting from Hudson to downtown St. Paul and I gave him a short list of my recommendations. He started shopping and found what looked like a good deal from an old biker in Wabasha. It was a 1992 Yamaha TDM, one of my all time favorite motorcycles, with low miles and in mediocre condition. We drove down to look at the bike and found it was moderately beat up, but ran, and seemed to be in neglected but reasonable condition for the asking price. Scott bought it and rode it home, struggling with carburetor problems that caused the bike to run insanely lean below 3,000 rpm and worrying about brittle and bald tires.

He cleaned it up and started working on the carb problems right away. After taking the bike apart a dozen times, wrestling with the overly complicated carburetion that was always a hassle on that generation of motorcycles, Scotty gave up and took the bike to a "reputable" Minneapolis independent repair shop to get the last of the tuning problems tweaked into shape. The three-day turn around he'd been promised by the shop turned into three weeks. When he got the bike back, the original $300 estimate had turned into an $800 repair bill, but the bike ran and he was happy.

At least, he was happy until he tried to do some minor work on the bike and discovered the shop had stripped the mounting bolts to his fuel petcock, lost some fairing screws, and done assorted damage that took him a few more hours to sort out. When he called the shop to complain, they admitted to having set a rookie tech loose on Scotty's bike, apologized, offered to "make it right," and asked him to submit a copy of the invoices he'd collected in fixing the stuff they'd screwed up. When he arrived with the list, he was blown off by the shop owner and ended up with a reimbursement offer that was more insult than compensation. A few hundred miles later, the bike was back running as badly as ever. The shop's "fix" was expensive and temporary.

Scotty kept plugging away at the obstacles to his making the trip, though. He found freelance work and filed for unemployment to make up for the lost job. He got involved in starting an on-line school teaching the stuff he'd been teaching at the college. He kept working on the bike and his travel gear, fine tuning both into something he felt confident in traveling with into the "wilderness" of eastern Canada.

Three weeks before the launch date, we made a backroad trip to Duluth where Scotty picked up some extra gear at RiderWearhouse and we put on a few hundred miles finding out how we'd travel together. On the way back, we took a side trip through Jay Cooke State Park and Scotty lost control of the TDM in the first of a pair of quick turns. He crashed, softly, in the gravel beside the road, avoiding a trip into a gully but doing some minor damage to the bike. He put on such a good demonstration going down in his riding gear that a lid-less cruiser rider traveling in the opposite direction vowed he'd be buying a helmet as soon as he got home. Scotty was in pretty good shape, until he swung back on the bike and hyper-extended his left knee. All the way home, he worried about the knee and he was right to worry. By the time he got home, his knee was swollen, painful, and barely mobile. He set to work in a home-schooled physical therapy program and was pretty mobile about a week before we were planning to leave.

Due to his time pressures and a little reluctance to take on a new mechanical task, he decided to have a Hudson shop replace his chain and sprockets. A few hours after dropping the bike off, he got a call from the repair tech asking him to come back to the shop. When he got there, the tech showed him that the previous owner had screwed up the countershaft retaining nut and, in a moronic attempt to repair his mistake, had welded the nut to the countershaft. The sprocket was worn out and moved freely on the shaft spline, behind the weld. The repair estimate was a dozen hours and nearly $2,000. Scott called me, hoping for some miracle, but I could only think of one possibility that didn't involve partial transmission disassembly; carefully grinding the weld away and using a wheel puller to break the sprocket away from the shaft. He had given up on riding the TDM east and didn't want to test my theory. The bike went to a Bayfield, Minnesota repair shop and Scott had his fingers crossed, hoping for a happy outcome. Three weeks later, the shop was still waiting for Yamaha to deliver some key parts. The repair costs were more affordable, but the time estimate for the repair was beyond the point of no return.

When he hung up, Scotty was done in. He'd been working for almost a year, getting himself and his gear and his bike ready for this trip and, short of buying a new bike, he was stuck. At every turn, something happened to keep Scotty off of the road. He couldn't catch a break on a used bike, on a repair shop, or on his own body and skill. He went on a little of the trip in his Toyota, but it wasn't the same.

When we got back from the East Coast, the second shop delivered the bike with parts missing. Important parts. The bike was leaking oil from a missing oil filler gasket. The chain had been installed with no slack. They'd installed the wrong front sprocket, gearing the bike down radically. They tried again and brought the bike back with even more problems. After several passes at repairing the problems they'd created, they started howling "What did you expect?" And even became downright threatening when he asked them to fix the problems they'd caused. Scott had to pull the whole bike apart to figure out what the shop had screwed up. A year later and dozens of hours of labor, Scott finally figured out the fuel delivery problems and the TDM is running like a TDM. He still hadn't taken a decent trip on the bike.

Sometimes, instead of calling for you, the open road does exactly the opposite. If you believe in omens and signs, it's probably best to listen. If you are of a more practical bent, you just tell yourself "the best laid plans of mice and men" and write off all that work and frustration as preparation for life's next event. Sometimes, you are just beaten by events and if there is a lesson in there, somewhere, you try to find it and learn from it.

UPDATE: This fall, Scotty moved to New Mexico on his TDM without incident or mechanical interruption. After a couple of years sorting out the booby traps left by the previous owner and a collection of MN mechanics, the TDM appears to be a real motorcycle again. He's enjoying spectacular rides in the NM mountains and is even getting into riding the 850 off-pavement. Sometimes the break just takes a while to catch up to you. 

Highway IQ

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

I stare into every car, truck, van, or SUV that shares the roadway with me. Women probably think I'm checking them out. Sometimes there might be an element of that. I'm human. I stare at guys just as often, though. No matter what they think, I'm not checking them out. I am stereotyping them, though. I know that's politically incorrect, but there it is. Like the marketing gurus say, "impressions are everything." Or "image," something like that. I don't have time to get to know these people. I'm not even interested in doing so. I just want to know, as quickly as possible, what kind of hazard they present to me. Cops call this "profiling." Lawyers get really upset at this practice. So sue me.

The average person has an IQ of 100 points. I grant that and start from there. My built-in point system adds or subtracts from that number almost as quickly as I can make out the interior of the vehicle. From there, I either disregard the driver, more or less, as a threat or apply evasive tactics to get as much distance between me and the hazard. The dumber the driver, by my IQ accounting system, the quicker I want to escape their sphere of disaster influence. You probably do the same thing, either more or less aggressively than me.

• Driver is in a 4(or more)-wheel vehicle: -5 points (How smart do you have to be to drive a cage?)

• Driver is a cop. This class of government official has an inflated sense of driving skill, not reflected in performance. They are prone to make sudden, irrational moves when their radio distracts them. They regularly ignore stop signs and stop lights. They scare the crap out of other drivers, making everyone in their vicinity a little less skilled and attentive: -10 points.

• Coffee, hairbrush, and/or cigarette in hand: -15 points for each item

• Driver is tipped at 45 degrees, so that his (always a guy) head is right under the rear view mirror: -20 points (This appears to be a Minnesota thing, because I've never seen it anywhere else, but it always means the driver is drunk, stupid, physically incapable of holding himself upright, or all three. I treat this driving posture as a flashing "beware of idiot!" sign.)

• Backwards baseball cap, blue hair, cowboy hat, or ski mask on driver's head: -25 points

• Coffee in face or driver is most often looking in any direction other than the vehicle's path of travel: -30 points

• Driver looking at self in rearview mirror with hairbrush, coffee, or cigarette in hand: -40 points

• Cell phone in use or beer in hand: -50 points

• "Start Seeing Motorcycles" or other pro-biking sticker on the vehicle: +2 points

• I catch the driver's eyes in the rear view mirror: +10 points

• After seeing me once, the driver looks again every few moments to see if I'm still there: +10 more points

• Both hands on wheel, head and eyes in motion: +25 points

• The driver is towing a trailer full of dirt bikes: +50 points

After I've made the above calculations and classifications, I use a modified version of the David Roth (ex-Van Halen frontman, current-EMT-has-been) crowd intelligence rule. I roughly count the number of vehicles in a 100' distance, front to back and both sides, of the vehicle and divide the driver's IQ by that number. In heavy traffic, everyone is a menace to my safety, almost by logical default. I'm the least likely vehicle on the road to harm the passengers of another vehicle, so I'm in the logical space for an escape route for other vehicles.

Just to calibrate your appreciation of my scoring system, an article in Scientific American Magazine once stated, ""Adults in the bottom 5% of the IQ distribution (below 75) are very difficult to train and are not competitive for any occupation on the basis of ability. . . " and "Persons of average IQ (between 90 and 100) are not competitive for most professional and executive-level work but are easily trained for the bulk of jobs in the American economy. . . " That's pretty cold, isn't it? Nature and the highway are cold as the floor of an icehouse. As far as my own survivability is concerned, a web article on IQ gave me the following information about the brainpower behind the numbers and I've added my own "Estimated Driving Skills" column to assess my own risk based on the driver's IQ:

IQ Range	Estimated Driving Skills (Alert Level Color Code)
Below 30	Flashing Red: This driver is clearly an unpredictable moron, an outrageous hazard at any speed, expect any damn idiot move from this rolling example of chaos theory. Ultimate alert.
30 to 50	Red: Mostly unpredictable, slow-witted, prone to panic and irrational lane changes. High alert.
50 to 60	Orange: Unless a slight change in traffic, road condition, or the moon's position relative to the sun occurs, you can probably count on this driver to remain stable. Check for distracted behavior every second or two.
60 to 74	Yellow: Loud noises, bright colors, anything sparkly or in motion will distract this driver, but he/she will probably do something mildly predictable when panic occurs. Moderate alert.
74 to 89	Blue: Mostly, this driver is stable. Pay special attention to this driver at intersections, on curves, and near fast food entrances. Fairly low alert.
89 to 100	Green: Probably not a risk, if anyone else in the above categories is sharing the road, this driver warrants minimal attention. I'd still avoid spending any time in an adjacent lane with this driver.
Above 100	Invisible: The chances are slim that this driver provides much risk. Based on past experience, one of these guys will probably be who kills me.

I realize these generalization are culturally "unfair," "biased," and even irrational. They are based on my nearly half-million miles of motorcycling and they are habitual. I constantly and automatically balance my belief that most people are decent and well-intentioned and that most drivers are nuts and "out to get me." My riding state boarders on paranoia, I'll admit. My confidence in my ability to deal with these contradictions varies with the road conditions and my concentration. You'd think that this would take the fun out of riding a motorcycle and it does put a damper on outright highway euphoria, but I'm disinclined to that mental state as you might have noticed. Riding a motorcycle is risky and that's part of the attraction. However, there is a definite line between assuming risk and committing suicide and evaluating the folks I share the road with is part of my risk assessment.

Not Much Fun?

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

"That can't have been much fun."

I'm getting to work on a late October morning. It was raining fairly hard on the way in, so my riding suit is dripping wet and I probably look like something the cat decided wasn't worth dragging in. A co-worker commented on the weather, the fact that I was still on the bike, and his impression of my appearance.

I looked worse than I felt. Yeah, it was cold and wet, but my 'Stich kept me dry. My helmet, heated vest, and the rest of my gear kept me warm. My piddling commute is probably barely worth suiting up for, but I do and most mornings I enjoy the ride in as much as anything that will happen to me all day. In fact, I felt pretty good. Any year that I'm still on the bike as Halloween approaches is a good year. It won't be long before would be condemned to a cage or the bus, but so far was still on two wheels. I get a little taste of faster-than-natural travel, feel the bite of the coming winter, enjoy a few moments of the sensation of moderate competence as I maneuver my bike through traffic and into the parking garage in the morning's rush hour, and start up my day with the mild charge that I always get from being a motorcyclist. It was, in fact, fun.

Motorcycling is a physical thing. That's some part of why it's hard to explain to a non-rider. Intellectually, riding a motorcycle is pretty hard to justify. We get pretty decent fuel mileage, but tires and other maintenance costs probably make up for that. We don't tear up the roads, require as much space, contribute to congestion, and a few other advantages but, mostly, motorcycles are a rare event on the highway and those of us who ride barely manage being a blip on the traffic radar. We're on our bikes because we want to be on a motorcycle more than we want to be warm, surrounded by a crumple zone, sucking on designer coffee, yakking on a cell phone, surrounded by a high fidelity sound system, or lounging in a plush bucket seat. You have to admit, that's weird. At least, I have to admit it.

That morning, I had a boat load of stuff to do. I got out of the house early, hit the library, stopped at a friend's house to drop off a project I'd finished over the weekend, took the long way to work through neighborhoods and side streets. I managed to turn a 7 mile commute into a 20 mile journey. It was raining, 42^oF, and in every way a dreary, depressing kind of morning. I, on the other hand, was having a terrific morning. I managed to hook first dibs on the new Elmore Leonard book at the library. I was pretty satisfied with the project that I'd been working on, but my customer/friend was blown away. I got paid and felt pretty good about it. The route I'd taken was pretty much traffic-free and I didn't have to mess with the usual culprits of cagers. How perfect is that?

I admit to being a little proud of the fact that I was doing something different every day. Something slightly adventurous. Something that takes a bit of skill to pull off day-after-day without incident or worse. It's arrogant or smug or conceited or damn silly, but I'm 62 and I don't get a lot of physical stuff to feel good about. I'm going to wallow in the few I get from here until . . . whenever.

Riding my motorcycle is just icing on the cake of living. Every day I get to ride somewhere is a pretty good day. So, screw the weather. Nuts to getting old. It might not look like fun, but it is. It is always fun.

Why They Hate Us

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

A while back, I taught an MSF Experienced Rider Class (ERC) with a guy who, apparently, doesn’t get out a lot. During a discussion about scanning for hazards, he intro’d the subject by saying, “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but a lot of people don’t like motorcycles. I don’t know why, but it’s true.”

At first, I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. He was truly clueless as to why much of the public has a grudge against motorcycles. He’s not alone. Several of the experienced riders in that class were equally stumped, even though a good number of them were obviously part of the problem. I often hear sportbikers complain that people cut them off, intentionally, in traffic. I’ve heard half-ton, black leather incrusted, biker gangsters wearing satanic and Nazi patches and decorated by more scars and tattoos than a retired pirate ask why other citizens shy away from them. Apparently, in our eyes we’re all a bunch of harmless innocents who are being unfairly singled out for discrimination. An informative Cycle Attorney article in Motorcycle Consumer News recently discussed the likely anti-motorcyclist bias of the typical jury in liability claims. Apparently, it's hard to find 12 of our "peers" who would decide in our favor in almost any circumstances. A nation of victims and we’re the most abused of the lot.

Actually, my family could provide a bit of insight regarding how the rest of the world regards motorcycles. My oldest daughter, who grew up amidst a small forest of moderately silenced 2-stroke dirt bikes, lived in Daytona for a year and came away solidly disgusted with motorcycles and motorcyclists; mostly thanks to “Bike Week.” My youngest daughter lived in Vegas and developed the same allergy to noisy and ill-mannered 2-wheel transportation. My son-in-law considers motorcycles to be pointless, dangerous, environmentally and socially irresponsible and suspects all motorcyclists are hooligans. He knows me pretty well. The rest of his family barely bothers to separate me from their generally low opinion of motorcyclists. My own father hasn’t removed Marlon Brando’s disrespectful biker from his mind and I’m solidly linked to that goofy bunch and have been for more than forty years. Of his four sons, I'm still a "dumb kid" and I'm the oldest. I can carry this list on for miles or days. About one-eighth of my immediate family rides motorcycles, the other seven-eighths dislike bikes and fear bikers. Practically every Minnesotan I know, who isn’t a motorcyclist or a wannabe, dislikes motorcycles somewhere between a little and infinitely. In this regard, there is nothing unusual about Minnesotans or my family.

Here are some of the reasons people dislike motorcycles, for those of you who have limited peripheral vision and no personal awareness:

The top of the list is noise. Mad TV’s Michael McDonald does a great imitation of the loud pipe mentality with his “look what I can do” spoiled brat. Loud pipes don’t save lives, but they do attract attention and piss people off enough to make them consider taking a motorcyclist's life or two. A while back, my editor, Victor, received a fair number of hate letters when he made critical comments about loud pipes. At least one of the writers made the claim that no one had ever complained about her loud pipes. Anyone who really cared to learn what people think of loud pipes should spend a few hours in downtown pedestrian traffic. Every time a loud bike potato-potatoes its way past the peds, the comments directed toward the rider always include “f****n’ a**hole” and “there ought to be a law. . .” and “where are the cops when you really need them?”

When an unmuffled twin-cylinder farm implement blasts through my neighborhood, I’m not much less negatively inclined toward motorcycles than my neighbors. Loud pipes are, obviously, a legal violation and the assumption is that either the criminal making the noise is well connected or the local cops are lazy, corrupt, and doing everything but “protecting and serving” the public. People have the same reaction when they see a pollution-spewing rat-truck fogging up the neighborhood. Pollution is pollution; air, water, noise, or otherwise.

That strongly negative response comes from low rpm, low frequency noise exposure. At road speeds, the response is more dynamic. When a bone-rattling, window-shaking, ear-damaging exhaust rolls up next to your cage at 70mph, the natural response is either to get the hell away from the noise pollution or squash it. Another way to quiet the noise is to ban it. Due to the limited technical capabilities of most police departments, many communities will find it easier to ban motorcycles than to limit their noise output. In the meantime, we’re going to be disliked by millions of folks for this reason alone.

That’s not good enough for some bikers. They want to be universally hated and feared and won’t stand for anything less.

On the road, we are the poster boys and girls for bad behavior. The sportbiker model for uncivil road manners is to play the wannabe-road-racer, constant-lane-swapping, tailgating game, which practically makes the motorcycle appear to be an irritating vanishing mirage to the typical cager. To be as irritating as possible, this crowd buzzes from lane-to-lane, running up on to the bumper of every vehicle “in the way,” making a whole new collection of enemies for the rest of us.

The cruiser parade really goes a long way toward making sure that nobody can recall motorcycling’s positive qualities. This isn’t completely limited to cruisers, because touring groups, sportbike groups, and even dual-purpose groups like to create their own special variation on traffic congestion. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, however, cruisers are the predominant parade masters.

A friend who lives in Hudson, WI, considered running for city council solely on the platform of ridding the city of loud motorcycles and motorcycle parades. He has contested the city’s practice of allowing parade “sergeants” to direct local traffic for the benefit of parade participants. He’s devised some clever experiments to force the city to admit that they don’t have an enforceable noise ordinance, which might eventually result in some changes being made. In the meantime, you are within your rights to invite a rock ‘n roll band to perform in your backyard, because even Iron Maiden makes less noise than a herd of big twins.

If you hang out with a group of motorcyclists, you can document your own list of reasons the rest of the population, including other motorcyclists, hate bikers. Here are a few that I’ve heard or read recently:

• “Some dumbass tailgates me, I toss a handful of marbles (ball bearings, paintball pellets, etc.) back at ‘em.”
• “What I like to do is, I see one of them yuppies with a brand new Harley hanging out in one of ‘our’ bars, I show him my colors and I let him know we don’t appreciate boys like him in our places. One of those Jap rice-burners parks next to our bikes, I kick it over. That let’s them know what’s what.”
• “Every time I see another biker on the road, I salute him with a straight-up wheelie. I really like doing that in heavy rush hour traffic. It scares the crap out of all the cagers.”
  “When I get through tuning, I test my bike by blasting up and down my neighborhood. Nobody ever says anything, even when it’s two in the morning.”
• “I can’t ever seem to hit a light change before I get off of the phone. People are so rude, they honk at me until I have to hang up and ride through the light. Do they think I can ride my motorcycle and talk on the phone at the same time? Usually, it’s yellow before I get through it, so those ill-tempered people are stuck waiting for the next green light.”
• “I say ‘screw the damn tree-huggers.’ I pay taxes, too, and if I want to shred a state park, I ought to be able to ride anywhere I want to ride.”
• “I put on my leathers, the do-rag, and my wraparounds and go out ridin’ and give ever’body I see a hard look; kids, ole’ ladies, yuppies, the crotch rocket boys, everybody. I make ‘em all afraid of me. Makes me feel good about bein’ a biker.”

And on we go, making enemies, restricting our own access to public roads and parks. We're on our way toward segmenting ourselves so much that even motorcyclists don’t like other motorcyclists. Sooner or later, we’re either going to grow up and treat riding as transportation or keep regressing until only rich guys can play biker on private property.

A Most Un-American Idea

For the last month, I've been barraged with catalogs, junk mail, and e-mail all promoting the "top 10 things to buy for the motorcyclist in your life." It's a sad fact, but I am the only motorcyclist in my life for whom I'd be inclined to buy Xmas gifts. Even worse, there is nothing that I want that I don't already have.

This is my all time least favorite "holiday" in the history of humanity. From the Coca Cola inspired Santa Claus propaganda to the wash of weirdness that comes from marketeers hoping to make a buck off of sentimentality and religion, I have overloaded on Midwestern guilt and am now suffering an allergic reaction to the whole idea. Like a life-long drunk who suddenly develops an intolerance for alcohol, I have developed a knee-jerk intolerance for anything that attempts to inspire guilt. Every phrase that begins with or sounds anything like "you should feel . . ." trips an anti-sales reaction that eliminates me from the vicinity of the pitch-maker. From the sad sort of douche who listens to every phone salesperson's routine all the way to the end before saying "no thanks," I have mutated into someone who hangs up the phone in 1 second if I have the slightest notion that I'm about to hear from an automated phone message or an auto-dialed live sales squid.

If it weren't for the rare phone call I get from my kids and grand kids, I'd disconnect the phone altogether for the month of December. With an encouragement at all from my wife, I'd just yank the damn thing from the wall and be done with telephones for the rest of my life.

As for motorcycle paraphernalia, I have more of that stuff than I know what to do with. I don't need more riding gear, a new motorcycle, an old motorcycle, or anything other than another set of tires for when the V-Strom's current shoes wear out early next spring. There is a lot of cool stuff in the catalogs that I could imagine wanting, if I had room for more stuff, but I don't want any of enough to bother my family with making a list. If I wanted to buy stuff for myself, I'd do it anything but during the Xmas season.

And that is my most un-American idea; buy your stuff anytime but between Thanksgiving and Xmas. Wait for the end-of-year sales. Wait for the beginning-of-year sales. Wait for spring. Wait for summer. Wait for your birthday or your wife's birthday or your kid's birthday. Just wait out Xmas. Don't encourage this idiotic behavior, this national frenzy of guilty and irrational spending. Statistics demonstrate that $15 billion of the $40 billion spent every Xmas results in unappreciated and unwanted crap that most of us throw away rather than bothering to return to the store. If you know you are going to be wasting $0.37 out of every buck you spent, why are you still doing that?

Yeah, I know. "Bah humbug." It's true. Outside of giving to people who actually need help, the rest of this season is lost on me. I don't need help with anything but my grumpy attitude and that won't be likely to change until the damn "holiday season" is done with.

However, if you can't control yourself, the V-Strom tires are 110/80 19 front and 150/70 17 rear. Honestly, I don't care all that much what brand you buy me, as long as I don't have to buy them. I never look a gift tire in the tread. If I get my druthers, I'd druther have Metzler Tourances, but anything that fits will get me down the road. Since I don't do Xmas thank-you notes, I want you to know I appreciate the tires even if I don't take the time to tell you so.

A letter from a "fan":

From: Foxster5 . . .
Subject: MMM #103 (http://www.motorbyte.com/)

Thomas, in Statistics vs. Useful Information I found it disturbing that you would refer to the use of a PUBLIC way, by which the people PAY for, is referred to as a PRIVILEGE and not a right. A "driver" is a paid occupation, a "traveler" has the right to use the roadway free of charge and only so far restricted as the rights of others may be respected. We have the right to life, liberty and property as well and the STATE can not TAX our personal and private property, 10th Amendment of the Constitution.The STATE can not restrict or prohibit the right of movement. Almost all courts in the country agree, including the Supreme Court. I gave you a load of information on just this subject and you must not have read any of it. To say that the STATE may "BAN" motorcycles from the roadway is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. THEY CAN NOT!! It is our right to own property and included in that right is the right to use that property any way we see fit so long as we respect others rights. I would think that being your age you would have read the Constitutions and the Declaration of Independence and now these things to be self evident. Are you employed by the Rothschilds and are you part of the New World Order? Only a journalists that is employed by these morons would make such absurd and defeatist statements. I really want to meet you and explain the whole truth. You can reach me at 76 . . . and we can talk about meeting, I will even buy you dinner.

Cheers, Don

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don,

Even worse, I'm "subsidized" by the infinitely powerful Wanchena family. They are beyond New World Order and well into the Usual World Disorder, something far more likely to occur in my lifetime.

I read lots of silly stuff on the web, but I don't believe everything I read just because someone took the time to document their paranoia. If you really believe the government can't ban motorcycles from the road, try riding an unlit, unlicensed 2-stroke dirt bike from New York to California. Let me know how many dirt bikes you have to buy before you finally reach the Left Coast. Hauling it in a pickup doesn't count. How about putting a horse and buggy on the freeway? Or a 50cc scooter? Tried that lately? I don't find it difficult to imagine a high risk, low value recreation vehicle like motorcycles being legislated into limited use RV status.

A few years back, a self-described "ex-cop" took time to rant at me about his right to damage the ears of anyone foolish enough not to wear hearing protection as he rode his unmuffled Hardly through neighborhoods. I love discussion, but if I wanted to be preached at I'd join a church. His idea of "discussion" was to call me an idiot and to wave his years of meter-maiding as evidence of his superior knowledge. Again, I can get argumentum ad hominem and verecundiam at any bar or church. It's not worth crossing the street to hunt down. I've watched "rights" far more important than motorcycle transportation vanish without a whisper in my lifetime, especially in the last ten years. I'm unconvinced that standing behind our great Constitution provides much solace for those who are held in prison without hope or who are spied on because they aren't Republicans.

Anyone who has spent a moment or two looking at the history of economics, transportation, and individual rights can see that some "rights" are more inherit than others. Where privilege comes into play is nested in your own statement, "so long as we respect others rights." Publicly financed facilities, like public buildings, highways, and many state-managed natural resources (state and national parks, for example) are regulated by the will of the whole public for the good of the majority (even when we disagree with their assessment). I'm simply arguing that we should try to fix the unnecessarily disproportionately high mortality and morbidity rate for motorcyclists and reduce our irritation quotient before we join the long list of "historic" transportation modes.

As for the "whole truth," I've been an engineer too long to believe in it, or a close approximation, exists. You can wave the "I won't stand for this" and "You can't do this" flag at the rest of the population, if you think that will get any traction, but I'm not betting that it will be successful. You probably have noticed that many people have, even recently, ended up in jail imagining that the "STATE can not TAX our personal and private property." Evidently, they can. Ask Wesley Snipes.

Thomas Day

Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine
http://www.motorbyte.com/mmm/
http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/
thomas@motorbyte.com