You Can’t Have It Both Ways

Gangsters and cops have similar problems; they both want to have the public’s fear and respect. Fear and respect are, however, not the same thing and you can’t have one and the other.

Fear is easy to generate. You just have to be willing to do things decent people would never do. Shoot a few unarmed minority kids in the back and you have successfully terrified a community. Dress up like Hell’s Angels, Banditos, or the Outlaws and make more noise than a freight train hauling 100 tanker cars while the cops pretend they don’t see or hear you and you’ve sent a pretty powerful message to the public, “Even the cops are scared of us.” That’s fear.
Respect is what cops get when they run toward an “active shooter” when everyone else is running away. Respect is what firemen earn when they go into burning buildings to rescue people. Nobody respects bikers, but bikers aren’t bright enough to know fear from respect or they don’t care as long as they can convince themselves that they’re getting respect from the people they’ve terrorized.

Recently, our city police chief was asked, on Facebook, to explain the law surrounding Minnesota’s idiotic “Road Guard” legislation. Obviously, the questioner was pissed off at being detained by some nitwit pirate waving a pile of even dumber gangbangers through a public intersection. Being at the tailend of my life, between myasthenia gravis and CHF, I’ve pretty much had it with political correctness and fear. So, I commented on how stupid I think that whole law and pirate/gangbanger biker parades are. The response was expected and predictable, including the hilarious claim that pirate parades raise money for charities; as if it is impossible to contribute money to charities without the noise and air pollution of motorcycle exhaust.

Honestly, I didn’t expect any sort of rational response from either the police chief or the bikers. The bikers are flat out fun to fire up because they are consistently a pack of clueless nitwits.I really do hate the "road guard" legislation and our simpering wimp legislature totally bend over and took it up the ass from ABATE and the biker/gangster crowd in passing this total joke of a law. Asking working people to wait while a parade of incompetent jerks on tractors pretends to be doing something important really highlights the decadence in our lawless, irrational Failing Empire. There is NOTHING about a biker parade that is worthwhile and, at the least, a rational society would relegate this sort of silliness to unpaved farm roads. 

And that is exactly what I think.  

Sharing the Load

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Thomas W. Day

When I'm home, which is most of the time these days, a character I've known for years used to regularly stop by the house with his motorcycle in some state of disrepair hoping that I'll drop whatever I'm doing and fix it for him. In my withering years, I'm disinclined to multi-task for anyone at any time and I ignored him until he went away. Along with the "fix this for me" chant, he regularly includes "Why don't we ever ride somewhere together?" 
 

We bought an RV a couple of years ago and I spent the summer fixing up the damn thing, getting it ready for what I'd hoped would be a 12,000 mile winter trip. By "we," I mean "me." My wife encouraged this purchase, provided the money from a normal inheritance she'd received from her father's estate, and nagged at me to find an RV until I put aside the stuff I wanted to be doing that year and researched RVs until I found something we could live in and that she might be willing to drive. The limitations were serious: has to be normal enough to feel like driving a car, costs under X-dollars, gets good mileage, can be parked in town, and has a collection of "must have" accommodations. Not many US-sold RVs met her requirements, so we ended up with a very low-mileage 2000 Winnebago Rialta. I flew to Portland and drove the damn thing back by myself because she decided, at the last minute, she didn't want to take that trip. Huge warning flags waving right then, but I am as perceptive as a sightless fish and as smart as a sightless worm. 
 
8,500 miles later and a good portion of the winter spent re-engineering Winnebago and Volkswagen's poor quality assembly attempts, and I know way more about "adaptive transmissions," VW's many quality problems, automotive computer systems, and being an RV owner. My wife, on the other hand, knows almost nothing about any aspect of our vehicle and its functions as a moblie home. I signed up for a couple of users' groups for this vehicle and a woman recently posted, "I had no idea what my husband did with our Rialta until he died last summer and I discovered I didn't know how any aspect of this motorhome worked. I had to spend nearly $2,000 doing the basic maintenance he did every spring for a few hundred dollars and a weekend of puttering around. I didn't even know how the stove worked until one of you showed me at the Nevada rally." I'm not saying my wife is incompetent. She gets around the kitchen pretty well and has sort of adapted to my "everything has a place and belongs in it" Captain Bligh routines, she took over most of the cabin-cleaning duties. I cook, she cleans up afterwards. She's a good driver and put on a few hundred miles behind the wheel on the first half of the trip and a few thousand on the way back. While she knows there is a setup and teardown checklist and can read it off to me, she would be helpless if the roles were reversed. Among our RV-aquaintances, my wife and other wives pretty much agree, "If he weren't with me, I'd sell this thing in a minute." Like motorcycling, RV-ownership appears to be a guy thing.
 
If I were to "go riding" with the wannabe co-rider about whom I started this rant, I'd be stuck in the same situation, but on a motorcycle. I have always tried to surround myself with people who are smarter than me; and that's not often a difficult task. When I go for distance on my motorcycle, I am exercising my Inner Hermit and I have no desire to babysit anyone. Since I turned thirty, my motto has been "Hermits don't have peer pressure." In fact, I'm going to have a t-shirt made with that on it; in big letters. There are some people with whom I have obligations and I'll set aside my better hermit judgment for them. There are a very few people with whom I would happily travel anywhere, anytime, for as long as they want to go. For everyone else, I'm not going there with you. I have enough problems taking care of myself. Adding you to my load is not on the menu. I've had my kids and you're not them.

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.

Group Posing

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Thomas W. Day

An early June Sunday morning, my spouse decided we needed to take a drive to River Falls, via back, Wisconsin highway patrol-free roads. We have a leisurely route, after escaping WI 35 ticket-free, that will take us to our usual destination pretty stress-free most days. Not Sunday, however. That county road was cluttered with arrogant middle-of-the-road bicyclist obstacles and blasted with a half-dozen pirate parades and a couple smaller groups of lane-challenged sportbike pretenders. The drive, in either direction, was way too tense to be enjoyable.

As I watched one pack of pirate bikers waddle towards us, marginally in their opposite lane and demonstrating no signs of competence, I wondered, again, why people feel compelled to ride in groups. In an Experienced Rider MSF course, a few years back, one of the students described motorcycling as a "social activity," which about floored me. He was, obviously, right, but it had never occurred to me that anyone would pick a vehicle that is clearly designed for solo exploration, minimalist transportation, and general anti-social behavior (Yeah, I'm talkin' about you, Victor.) and imagine it to be the perfect platform for a group activity. A few years later and I'm no less baffled by that realization than I was when I first heard it. So, I kept thinking about it as I dodged the not-so-rare idiots on hippobikes wandering near my lane with their naked, bald heads shining and their wide open eyeballs target fixating on the front of my pickup. I came to a conclusion as to what all this silliness is about, but you probably aren't going to like it.

For most of my life, I've viewed groups of men and boys as being at once homophobic and homoerotic. The badass biker crowd with its freaky gangbanging activities, and attraction to outfits the Village People would have thought were too poncy in the heyday of disco, are clearly dealing with some sexual identity issues. It's not that different from the "gay for the stay" pretence men in prison use to justify their confusion, but it is slightly scarier since these maladjusted characters are out in the general population; at least until the next time they get caught and end up back inside. None of that is any different than frat hazing behavior or the military or rappers and their posse pals or those militia freakshows: guys congregate in packs to keep from having to think about which side of the street they want to walk. 

Obviously, I don't care, one way or another, if people are hetero or homosexual, but packs of stray men are never a good thing. Packs of physically inept, overweight, peer-pressure intimidated men (and equally confused women) on oversized motorcycles are much worse things. There are no statistics that I can locate that account for motorcycle crashes in group rides, but it's hard to find a group ride story that doesn't include at least one nitwit who overshot a corner or ran into the back of another motorcyclist or ended up in the wrong lane. Watching these folks try to hold their place in the "formation" while negotiating curves at speeds picked by the group leader and desperately trying to look "cool" is just a little sad.

And it's all because motorcycle parades are the socially-acceptable way for men to travel in groups on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Several years ago, my brother came to visit and to go with me on a "ride" around Lake Superior. We don't get to see each other much, mostly since he lives in Arizona and I can't think of any good reason to visit that state. So, we travelled on my two motorcycles for almost 2,000 miles. The two bikes get about 50mpg each, so we averaged somewhat less than 25mpg for the trip. He got lost a couple of times because I tend to try to keep 2-3 miles between me and other vehicles, whenever possible, and he has the family tendency to wander off on the nearest interesting looking dirt road to see where it ends up. Overall, it was a mediocre trip and we probably got to spend about 8 waking hours actually hanging out over five days. It would have been cheaper, more fun, and at least as adventurous to have taken my 1999 Ford Escort wagon and I'd have known something about his life since the last time we hung out.

In the early 90s, I was renting a basement room from a friend in Denver and financially and mentally recovering from ten expensive years in southern California, raising two daughters, and starting a new career at age 41. During some holiday break, three friends decided they wanted to drive to California to see the sights while I hung out with my family for a weekend. Part of the motivation was that one of the guys had just restored a 1960's Buick convertible and he wanted to try it out on a road trip. We made it from Denver to Idaho Springs, about 50 miles, before the Buick died. He had AAA tow the Buick back and he picked up my Toyota van and drove it back to Idaho Springs to collect the rest of the group. With nothing but time to waste, we all decided we'd stick with the roadtrip plan, even though the van only had two front seats because I'd hollowed out the back to serve as a cheap camper. If we got stopped, it was a safe bet that we'd be looking at seatbelt violations, at the least. If we crashed in the mountains or at any reasonable speed, missing seatbelts were the least of our problems inside that Toyota tin can.

We drove straight through, taking turns at the wheel, holding down shotgun duties, and sleeping in the back. About 1,000 miles and 18 hours later, we rolled into Huntington Beach, rested, relaxed, fed, entertained, and ready to split up into two groups: me with my family and the other three guys exploring California. They headed for L.A. and Universal Studios and I enjoyed a few days with my wife and daughters. That was one of the best road trips of my adult life and the only actual group ride I've ever enjoyed. Like many families, mine didn't travel together much and when we did it was usually for something miserable like a funeral or wedding. That California roadtrip was the closest thing I'd ever experienced to an actual family vacation.

The next-closest tolerable-to-decent group rides were all of a similar sort. The same three guys and one other were the only motorcyclists I knew while I lived in Denver. One of them, my landlord, was an experienced, talented rider and the other three hadn't (and wouldn't) put 1,000 miles on their used motorcycles or on themselves in their motorcycling "careers." All four of those guys were committed pavement motorcyclists while I was still trying to decide how I felt about asphalt and concrete. We often took Parker Road toward Colorado Springs after work or on weekends. If we were going all the way to the Springs, sometimes I'd take CO67 to Rampart Range Road and the military training road along the the eastern ridge into the Springs. We'd pick a destination and a meeting time and I'd cut out early and head for the mountains while the other guys took the shorter, quicker but less scenic route. Since they rarely hit the road before noon, even though my route was twice as long as theirs, I'd still end up at the end point a little early.

And that's what I'd call a decent "group ride."

However, when it comes to taking a trip on a motorcycle, it still makes more sense to me to do it solo. But then, I'm not worried about what anyone else's opinion of how I travel or who I am traveling with. 

Weirdest Myth Yet

I had a furnace maintenance this week and the young man who did the work turned out to be “bikecurious.” After talking about what he was thinking of buying, we took a look at my motorcycles. He was particularly interested in the WR250X, but said he’d been planning on saving up for a down payment on a Harley of some sort. I asked why someone under 60 would be looking at a Harley and his answer was, “I heard it was safer.” His uncle, apparently a pirate of some sort, had told him “90% of all crashes happen when you are riding alone” and the easiest way to find a group of people to ride with is to own a Harley.

I had to admit, that solo crashing thing has mostly been true for me; because I almost always ride alone. However, I also told him that I’d seen one group of Harley pirates crash in mass when they plowed into a bunch of bees. Every group ride I’ve ever been on has had at least one pretty serious crash, but that’s a poor sample because I’ve only been on a half-dozen or so group rides in my last million motorcycle miles. I wonder if racing is “group riding,” because I’ve sure seen a pile of motorcycles go down together in the first turn.

The whole idea that group riding is in some way safe, amazes me. On every level, the concept seems insane to me. When I taught the MSF classes, I got a constant taste of how true David Roth’s “Law of Crowd IQ” is more true than not (It’s math: the smartest guy in the crowd’s IQ divided by the number of people in the crowd.). People get stupid in crowds, just look at a Trump rally: the bigger his crowds got, the dumber they became. Hillary never had to worry about that because her crowds were always tiny. Motorcyclists are not only no different, we are naturally inclined to be hooligans and not that bright on our good days. So, put us in groups and it’s hard for the group IQ to beat 1.0. Probably the best illustration of this was when a Minnesota motorcycle instructor was on a group ride and dropped her bike trying to exit a light at an intersection and was killed when the nitwits following her ran over her repeatedly. If that event wasn’t a highlighted moment illuminating exactly how stupid groups of motorcyclists  are, we’re just too stupid as a nation to get irony.

Where do myths like this come from? How does shit like this get said out loud without being laughed into hiding from embarrassment?

#158 What Kind of Wolf Are You?

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

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

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

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Thomas W. Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly #188 October 2017

Wandering Down to Davenport

Back in early August, a friend wrote me, “Hey are you going to be back from Canada Labor Day weekend? I'm looking for a buddy to ride to Davenport Vintage Meet. Ride down Friday in time for the races, hang out Sat/swap meet, ride back Sunday with a ferry ride & a crazy Catholic church chicken dinner on the way.” Do not ask me why, but I said “Assuming no catastrophes or old age shit, I should be good for that.” And I put the ride on my calendar for the first weekend in September. I didn’t even look up the details about the “event” until a few days before we were set to go. I had delusions of seeing something like the old Steamboat Springs Vintage Motorcycle Week. Not a chance in hell.

After an auspicious beginning, “The Easy Way or My Way,” prep session, the actual trip was anticlimactic. The ride between Red Wing and Davenport was way cooler than I’d expected. I haven’t really explored much of southeast Minnesota, other than the ride back from Cincinnati when I bought my V-Strom in 2007. Cal did a masterful job as tour director. There were fewer than 75 boring miles (one-way) in the whole trip, most of which came at the end near Davenport. 

Davenport, on the other hand, is a typical Midwestern town with typically boring fairgrounds: home of the Mississippi Valley Fairgound also home of the Davenport Vintage thing. This would also be our “campground.” Over the years, I have camped in some really stupid places: ditches, corn and wheat fields, hanging from trees, shouldering my way on to rocks, on picnic tables and park benches, beside highways and freeways, and in KOAs and worse. This place was close to the worst. We ended up setting up camp in two places: 1) Cal and Tim in the middle of a parking lot where they both had sworn they would never camp again and 2) me next to a gazebo and some metal park benches where I could hang my hammock. Later, I discovered two things about my far more prime site than Cal and Tim’s, 1) I was surrounded by the loudest, scariest snoring sounds emitted by biological beings (assuming old men are biological beings) and 2) everywhere but where I entered the area my campsite was labeled “no campers here.” I decided, screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke and opted to pretend ignorance: forgiveness being easier to come by than permission. Besides, there were no other places in the damn fairgounds where my hammock could hang.

Mostly, I managed to sleep about as well as usual, for a 70-year-old geezer in a hammock, after I plugged my ears to soften the snarl of snoring and choking and farting and old white man nightmares. Holy crap! I don’t think there was a guy near my part of the park who didn’t need a sleep apnea machine and an oxygen tank and a soundproof/vibration-proof booth to sleep in to prevent avalanches or earthquakes. A large pack of pissed-off lions would have been quieter. To top it all off, one end of my Lawson Hammock broke loose about 5AM and I gave up, packed up, and went looking for a place to eat breakfast in peace. For a farm town, Davenport is awfully urban. I couldn’t find a damn place for breakfast in the whole freakin’ town until 7AM. I didn’t come away with a positive impression of Davenport from that search.

However, breakfast was good if late and I wandered back to the fairgrounds to see what the guys had been up to. Mostly, it turned out, half of that group had an ok night and the other half was at least as miserable as me. They were walking the “display” booths, piles of junk with hilarious price tags, mostly. I walked with them, being an asshole and amazed at the same time. “Really? You guys have come back here for this for 20 years?” Stuff like that. I’d decided over breakfast that I wasn’t going to suffer another night among the shambling old guys and their giant kazoo noses and noises and I started bugging Cal about a half-way spot to meet on the way back home. I figured I could easily find a better campsite than the fairgrounds, a better breakfast place, and get some writing and reading time while Cal and Tim spent a day looking at piles of junk.

Turned out, Cal had a sudden personal reason to head for home on Saturday and Tim was more than ready to cut it short. My only requirement was that we get the hell out of Dodge quick enough to avoid much night riding. So, we made a quick loop of the junk piles, walked the restored vintage competition room, and headed out mid-morning Saturday.

The ride back wasn’t as scenic as the right down, because Cal was trying to cut off a few miles and minutes for the trip. I broke away just out of Rochester and took a deviated GPS-mapped route home up MN 42 through Millville to MN 11 to MN 60 to US61 and home. Sort of the scenic route and much of it was an incredibly fun road for the V-Strom. Would have been even more fun on the WR.
As you might know, I’m not much for group rides. This was about as good as they get for me, though. It probably would have been more fun to drive down and bullshit all the way, but it wasn’t bad. I’m NEVER “camping” in a fairground again, though.

Making A Dangerous Bed

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Thomas W. Day

(First Published in Rider’s Digest #189, June 2015)

Back in my Colorado days, I used to hang out with a trio of guys who had a variety of motorcycle skills. The leader of the pack was Brett, a guy who practically grew up on motorcycles and who is one of the nicest, most patient and loyal people I've ever known. I have considered Brett my best friend for two-thirds of my life, even though I haven't seen him more than a couple of times in the last ten years. David was a newbie to motorcycling, but he had taken an MSF course and had a pretty good grip on his skills and physical and mental limits. Richard was slightly less new to motorcycling than David, but had started off thinking motorcycling was going to come naturally to him and discovered it didn't. He'd crashed his bikes a couple of times, trying to keep up with Brett and me, and had moved from overly confident to massively paranoid. By that time, I'd been riding for twenty-five years and had way more confidence than skill. I'd moved to Colorado from California by myself and was wallowing in my independence and a relatively responsibility-free, semi-single-guy life. So, my moto-motto was "Shut up and ride." I even wore a t-shirt with that printed on the front and back.

One "feature" of this collection of diverse skills was an assortment of different start-up times for a ride to anywhere. If we were going to ride to downtown Denver for coffee, it would take anywhere from five minutes to an hour-and-a-half for the four of us to be ready to roll: five minutes for me and ninety minutes for Richard, for example.

One weekend, we decided Pikes Peak needed climbing one more time before the mountain riding season ended. Brett and I did most of the planning and we picked a filling station on the south end of Aurora for the rendezvous. Our start time was 7:00AM with some margin to accommodate the late risers and slow movers, but 8:00AM slipped by with one of the guys still "on the way." The first part of our route was going to be Parker Road (Colorado Highway 83) south to Colorado Springs. It's about 80 miles, via 83, to Colorado Springs and another 35 miles to Pikes Peak Park through some backroads around the Springs. Two-and-a-half hours on a slow day. Once you got into the park, the old road was 19 miles of beautifully unpaved twisty mining trail to the top. (This year, they finished widening and paving the whole thing and there is no more point in seeing the damage done than there is hoping that Newt Gingrich is married for life, this time. When the Peak was unpaved it was "America's Highway." Now, it's just a tourist path.) We had a breakfast plan for Colorado Springs, but with the late start Brett and I decided to move the meal to the café at the top of the peak. An hour after our start time, we had a mild disagreement about waiting or going.

Since I hadn't planned on plodding along at the pace the two newbies would be setting, I decided to meet them at the park. We'd done this a dozen times in the past and Brett and I sorted out where we'd be about when and agreed that if the pack didn't catch up to me at the base of the park by 11:00AM, we'd meet at the top. That settled, I hit the road. I'd loaded camping gear and a change of clothes, in case I decided to take the long way home after the Pikes Peak trip. I took a few deviations from the short route to the park, hoping that the guys would catch up or pass me. Still, I arrived at the base of the park on time and waited a half-hour in the tourist center before I bought a pass and headed up the mountain. We had some late season rain that year and the road was pretty torn up from traffic and erosion, so it was in perfect condition and I pretty much had the Peak to myself. I got to the top pretty quickly, for me, and figured I had an hour or two to myself before the pack arrived.

My bike, a 1992 Yamaha 850 TDM, was coated from the wet road and my chain was bone dry and caked in clay. I found some rags in the tourist trap's dumpster and filled a milk bottle with water to get started on some maintenance. I scrubbed off the muck from the chain and gave it a WD40 rinse before applying fresh chain oil. It didn't need it, but I went through the chain freeplay adjustment routine. After cleaning up the frame and engine, I made the rounds of all the fasteners, making sure everyone was in place and tight. I was parked right on the edge of the old tourist center's parking lot, so the workshop view was spectacular. I pulled the air filter, which was clean, and reapplied some fresh filter oil for no reason other than that I had it out and I had the oil with me. Short of checking valve clearances, I'd done everything I could think of to the bike.

So, I went back into the tourist center and had breakfast; a couple of donuts and a large cup of coffee. I walked out back and got into a conversation with a cog railroad conductor about the first and last train trip of the year, which often involved pushing a lot of unexpected show up or down the track and a lot of scared passengers. He went back to work and I was bored.

As long as you don't exit the park, you can ride up and down the mountain all you want for your park pass. So, I decided to ride down the mountain and meet the guys on their way up. I did that, twice, and, still, they weren't anywhere to be found. In 1992, none of us had cell phones so calling wasn't an option. I wasn't really worried, but closing time was approaching and I didn't want to be stuck on the mountain in the dark. Finally, just a few minutes before the visitor center closed, the three guys rolled into the lot. Brett looked pissed. I couldn't figure out the other two guys' expressions.

It turned out that, in spite of the late start, Richard and David insisted on stopping for breakfast, which burned an hour-and-a-half. After eating, they plodded along at a barely faster than walking pace until they got to the park. To "celebrate" riding the mountain, before they'd ridden the mountain, they stopped at the park store and bought "I Rode the Peak" patches for their jackets. Once they started up the mountain, the pace slowed even more. The switchbacks, the wheel ruts, the deep drainage ditch on one side and the steep drop-offs on the other combined to make the last few mile sheer terror for Richard and David. Brett stuck with them, dedicated friend that he is, and had about as much fun riding the mountain as he would have had in a dentist's chair; although the chair might have been a faster ride.

As they rolled into the lot, a park ranger was herding the straggling tourists to their cars so he could close the lot's gate. The guys didn't even have time to take off their gear before they were being hustled off of the summit and back down the mountain. That might have been a good thing, since riding downhill scared is much worse than riding uphill and they didn't have time to work up a good batch of fear before they were on their way down the mountain. The first few miles were the roughest, especially with the road in end-of-season condition and some pretty energetic bursts of wind near the top. They paddled around the sharpest of the corners and I took up the rear so that Brett could at least go down the mountain without herding sheep all the way. After we left the parking lot, I shut off my motor and coasted behind the guys, stopping every mile or two to let them get a ways ahead of me so that I could collect enough momentum to roll through corners without having to push. It took a good bit more than an hour to get to the park entrance. The gate was closed, the park was abandoned, but it was easy enough to get the bikes around the barrier. Just before the park road merged into Manitou Avenue, I saw Brett parked just off of the road. He was in much better humor, since he'd had time to find an ice cream shop and had drained a large milk shake while waiting for us to crawl down the mountain.

It was dark and riding back home via I25 was the only practical option, since Parker Road would be filled with deer and antelope for the next few hours and none of us was up for picking antlers out of our teeth. The guys settled for finding a cabin in Manitou Springs for the night. I was all for snagging a campsite in Garden of the Gods or just heading out Colorado 24 for Buena Vista and finding a campsite where ever one turned up. David and Richard convinced me that I wanted to hang with them for the night by insisting that they would cover the cost difference between a campsite (free, if I camped between Manitou and Buena Vista) and the cabin. Like an idiot, I became a follower.

They had a cabin site in mind and found it quickly. It was a two bedroom cabin with two fold-out beds in the huge living room. I took one of the living room beds. Our plan was to get the room sorted out and walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner. So, I was going about that when I dropped the damn bed on my left foot. I was pulling out the frame, expecting it to swing up before it lowered to the floor. Instead, the bed shot out about two feet and dropped like a spring-loaded anvil; right on my big toe. I'd pulled off my boots at the door, so there was nothing between my foot and that assassin's weapon and it almost amputated my toe.

In moments, the toe turned black. It was bleeding like a stuck pig, so I used up all of the stuff in my medical kit to medicate and bandage the bit toe to it's nearby partner. We went to dinner, me shoeless on my hobbled foot. I drained a bottle of some kind of painkiller to try to sleep that night and woke up to find that the toe nail had lifted off of the toe, in spite of my having drilled a neat pressure-letting hole in the nail and taped it tight before I went to bed. I could not get my left boot on, so I had to cut the boot and gaff-tape it together; once my foot was in it. Walking was miserable and awkward. Shifting was painful and had to be done with my whole foot or heel. Buena Vista was out of the question. Getting back home would be an achievement.

We had breakfast in Manitou Springs. I set out ahead of the guys under the assumption that they'd probably catch me and, if I ended up stuck on the side of the road unable to ride, we'd work out a plan to get my bike and me home. Once I hit the interstate, I was pretty sure I'd make it home and that didn't turn out to be a problem. The next day, my doc pulled the toe nail, stitched a patch over the exposed toe, and put my toe in a brace that would be my hobbling partner for about two weeks. The bone at the end of the toe (distal phalanges) was crushed.

For the next several months, I took a lot of crap about being the "big bad bike racer who was crippled by a hide-a-bed." Obviously, the real reason I ended up crippled was that I stayed back to be a nice guy and escort the slow guys down Pikes Peak. Not only do "nice guys finish last," but they might even get hurt for the effort. Screw being nice. "Shut up and ride."

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.

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.

Long, Good Day

Today ripped! Started off with one of the strongest Basic Rider Classes I've ever taught. If "teaching" is what I'm doing here. The worst rider in this class would be the strongest rider in some past classes. The average age of this group is probably about half of the current rider average for the US, which always accounts for a quicker class. Even the older students are listening and working hard at learning the skills. Nobody scared me at all anytime this morning.

I'm battling one of the many fine adventures of aging, arthritis, these days. My hips and low back have been grinding away bone-to-bone for a few years and about two years ago I think my lubrication system ran dry. I wasted a lot of time and a few thousand dollars on a doctor who didn't seem to know anything that hadn't been fed to him by his HMO directors or the drug distributors and after a year of assuming I was just going to grind to a halt, I changed doctors and lucked into a guy who pinpointed my problem immediately, talked me out of using my home surgery kit (an X-ACTO knife set and a bunch of dental and surgical tools I picked up at Axeman) to fix my back myself, and shipped me grumbling all the way to a physical therapist. Four weeks ago, I couldn't move quickly without feeling like I'd freshly broken a rib. Today, I'm getting better every day and almost feel human again. An old human, for sure, but at least not like I'm heading for the crematorium willingly and fully awake. Physical therapy rocks.

After my therapist appointment, I hung out at Barnes and Noble sucking down coffee and scanning the latest in western novels (a contradiction in terms, if there ever was one) until it was time to head south to Dakota Country Tech College for the rider-coach get together. First time to work out the new WR on a closed track. What a great bike. The usually boring ride down 52 to the school was at least slightly more interesting because of the bike's maneuverability. The first few laps around the course were the easiest I've ever taken on that course, including a KTM outing a few years back where I got to play with all of KTM's supermotos. Honesty, if I had to pick one bike to own for the rest of my life, the WR250X is damn close to perfect.

To top it all off, one of my favorite people from my years in Minnesota, Pat Hahn, showed up on break from his new job with Team Oregon. Honestly, I'd have ridden the 50 miles just to get to hang with Pat for a while, but getting to play on a twisty closed course and catch up with Pat was the topping on a beautiful day.

Today almost made me forget I'm old.

A Bad Place for a High Side

Finally, a group-riding video that actually looks like fun. Where are all the 1%-ers on Harley's here? I guess there are 1%'ers and there are .00001%'ers.

Somewhere between these trails and a decent farm road is what I'd call perfect highway maintenance. Anything more than that is extravagant and a waste of good terrain.

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.

Team Riding

I have, officially, changed my mind about group riding. If I could find a crew like this to ride with, count me in. You'll notice they are all wearing helmets, so it's a safe-riding bunch of folks. I particularly like the PA system that allows for giving cagers notice that they need to move out of the path of travel before blowing the hell out of them.

I'm a little disappointed that this practical vehicle wasn't "Made in the USA." Oh well, if it worked for the Germans in 1941, it's probably good enough for me.

The 15th Annual Swan Ride

I did a weird thing this weekend. A friend invited me to a group ride (thanks Michael) and I accepted. If you've followed my column or this blog, you know that I'm notoriously uncivilized, antisocial, and a motorcycle hermit. I don't know why I decided to check out this ride, but I did.

As a backup plan, I invited a friend who planned to catch the group 20 miles or so after the start. Also, my wife decided to tag along, in our family cage, since the destination of the ride was a bird refuge in Wisconsin where Arctic Swans stop on their way from Alaska to the east coast winter feeding grounds. She's a birder. I'm a rider. It seemed like a reasonable plan.

As soon as I arrived at Fury Motorcycles, I felt out of place. There were dozens of bikes parked in the lot and more arrived every minute. Many of the bikes were my "favorite" kind of vehicle, bikes with defective exhaust systems that sounded like repeated shotgun blasts or a badly maintained farm implement. Fury Motorcycles specializes in high-buck poser bikes, all sporting price tags that would amount to a good sized house down-payment.

To be fair, the majority of riders were on real motorcycles; lots of BMWs, Goldwings, and an assortment of cruisers and touring bikes with a sprinkling of sport bikers. I knew many of the folks going on the ride and I had a good time talking to folks who teach MSF classes or have read my column in MMM. Still, the idea of being in some kind of mile-long 100-mile motorcycle parade rubbed several nerves and made me want to get on the road as soon as possible. Since we didn't know where the Arctic Swans were, my wife and I waited for a route sheet so we could get going. The route wasn't the thing, the destination was. I should have just asked someone who'd been on the ride before.

When the sheets finally appeared, I tried to find the destination on my GPS; "Reik's Lake Park." No luck. The best I could do was to program in Washaba, MN as a possible destination. With that target in our sights, we set out to escape before the crowd. I called my friend, gave him a spot where we might meet up (using a borrowed cell phone). Getting my wife in motion is an exercise in frustration and, add the dog to that, I was thwarted before I even got started. She hadn't even begun to look for her keys before half of the group was on the road. Adding to the fun, my friend convinced me that the planned route would be more "scenic" than my escape route. I turned sheeple and followed the glowing tail lights the "scenic route."

It wasn't; scenic, that is. Lots of farm land, too many plodding bikes in front of me, too many pissed off cagers behind. We either missed our friend, or he wisely decided to skip the event. About 30 miles into the route, my wife's knee really started bothering her. I looked at the route sheet, decided to make a direct run for Alma, WI, and off we went on our own toward the bird sanctuary. Ten minutes later, we were there.

It was worth the trip. My wife even thought it was worth the pain. The sanctuary was packed with ducks, geese, egrets, coots (not just me), and we saw a half-dozen or more Arctic Swans. We were there about two hours before the rest of the pack arrived, pipes blasting, engines rev-ing, and birds scattering. We snuck out as the middle of the pack were pulling into the park. The birders were getting testy and the birds were evacuating for the far end of the park.

We crossed the Mississippi and turned north toward home, stopping in Pepin for some incredible apples. The ride home was uneventful and scenic. I gave my GPS the instruction to get us home the shortest way, preferably by dirt road, and it found an incredible route from Red Wing to the Cities. In all, a pretty amazing day for November in Minnesota.

Turns out, "Rieck's Lake Park" is the real name of the park. Once we found it, I made it a waypoint in my GPS and it's there for real, now. Next year, we're going to ride there alone and camp out for an evening in the park.