Noisy Kids Who Go Nowhere

I was sitting in my backyard, mostly enjoying the quiet country environment, but being intermittently blasted by various noise machines: motorcycles, jacked up pickups, sportscar-poser Honda Civics, totally illegal-for-street-use ATVs, and other noisy toys. After the umpteenth laughable Hardly yard implement passed by, I started thinking about the two motorcycles I've owned with aftermarket exhaust systems and the one with a hacked up stock pipe.

Back in 1993, I bought a like new 1992 Yamaha TDM from a doctor. I have no idea what he thought a TDM was, but he had spiffed it up with a custom Corbin seat, a Kerker pipe, and some nice luggage. By the time I got home, less than 20 miles later, I went to work replacing the Kerker with the stock pipe (which had been included in the sale). I found a victim for the Kerker with an ad at my local Yamaha shop and got $250 back from my sale price.

A few years later, I bought a barely used Suzuki SV650 from a kid in a Michigan suburb. A friend in Ohio picked up the bike and I took a train to his place to ride it home. The SV  had a Two Brothers pipe and by the time I had ridden the 800 miles back home I was ready to remove the Two Brothers pipe with a sledgehammer. Again, I found a dumbass in Minneapolis who sold me a stock SV pipe for $25 and another dumbass who paid me $250 for the Two Brothers.

My last loud pipe experience was with my Yamaha WR250X. That bike's original owner was a nitwit who took a hacksaw to the last 4 inches of the stock pipe. Having totally screwed up the fuel injection mapping, the bonehead also removed a chunk of the air box and the air filter in a failed attempt at regaining some kind of performance. Again, I found a dumbass on Craigslist who sold me a stock WR pipe for $25 and someone on Facebook who sold me the entire WR air intake system for another $25.

In all three of these instances—two carbureted motorcycles and one fuel injected—returning to stock not only quieted the motorcycle down it improved the performance. I'm not saying that an aftermarket pipe can't improve performance, but I'm saying most of the idiots who diddle with aftermarket pipes are too lame to do all of the dyno, rejetting, intake redesign, and fuel mapping work necessary to compensate for the reduced back pressure.

In the case of the WR250X, I even had the opportunity to drag race multiple times in multiple situations a substantially lighter Rider on a WR250X with an aftermarket pipe, a power commander, and a hacked up intake system. Mostly, we determined that the two bikes were not measurably different power-wise, but the noise difference convinced the other rider to start looking for stock parts. Even riding side-by-side near his bike made my ear-plugged-ears ring.

Now, back to today where I am listening to multiple mediocre-at-best motorcycles blubbering as loudly as a freight train, ridden (to use that word loosely) by total unskilled idiots disturbing the peace for no reason other than their obvious personal insecurities. This isn't a brand new thought, but it is one that has occurred to me repeatedly through this summer: I think it is a safe bet that damned few of the people with loud exhaust systems ever go anywhere on or in their vehicle.

I'd be willing to put some money on that, in fact.

From a bunch of years of accumulating odometer readings on motorcycles up for sale on Craigslist around the country, it's pretty obvious that the more crap someone piles onto a motorcycle the less likely they are to actually ride it. My late step-brother was an example. He poured more money into his Harley then I have invested in all of the cars and motorcycles I've owned in my life. Seriously. And for him, a trip from one end of Springfield, Missouri to the other was “a long ride.”

In the several hundred thousand miles I have ridden motorcycles in my life, I ran into all kinds of people on the road, riding all sorts of motorcycles, and almost universally the people who ride the most miles ride the quietest motorcycles. Even some of the big mile characters on vintage motorcycles, where a stock pipe is only available from salvage yards, do their damnedest to keep exhaust noise at a minimum.

There is nothing about the output from the exhaust pipe that tells you anything useful about the operation of the motor. In fact the less noise the exhaust makes, the more likely you are to be able to hear upcoming engine problems. More importantly, the pounding your ears take from excessive exhaust noise adds exponentially to the fatigue in a long day's ride. Obliterating what little information your ears can provide about hazards and traffic, doing permanent damage to your hearing, and adding to your distraction and fatigue is not conducive to putting in long (thousand mile) days.

And usually, when I've been forced to talk to these noisy pipe characters I hear that they think a hundred miles is an excessive day. And lots of them are really proud of themselves for riding 20 miles to a bar, spending the afternoon drinking and eating, and wobbling their way back home. So along with knowing that the loud pipe character is an asshole, it's pretty safe to assume he or she is a wimp.

“They Love Us!” turns into “Why Don’t They Like Us?”

If you are any kind of observer of the hilarious “human condition,” watching self-delusions dissolve into disappointment is particularly entertaining. The little tourist town where I live is a biker destination, mostly because the roads are straight and wide, traffic is moderate and generally at the local speed limits, there are lots of bars in Wisconsin and Minnesota small towns, and local cops on both sides of the state lines are terrified of bikers. It is a fact that pretty much the whole “economy” in these places are biker bars and filling stations. We get pirate parades from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Wisconsin, Iowa, and we’re on the parade path from all points east to the Sturgis gangbang. From May to September, the roar of poorly-tuned, oversized, and underpowered twins with straight-pipes completely obliterate the sound of Amtrak and freight trains that regularly pass through our village. It’s a “feature” our town’s tourist literature never mentions, but become immediately obvious to anyone foolish enough to visit Red Wing on a summer weekend. (During the Corona shutdown, the entire summer was filled with that pointless noise every day of the week, since Harley owners are, apparently, unlikely to be employed in essential occupations.)

On an eBike forum a while back, one of the odder characters who frequents that group was bragging about his Harley and how he’d “customized” it as insanely as he had mangled his eBike (installing at least $2,500 worth of “upgrades” on a $1,500 Rad Power eBike). Being a sucker for troll-bait, I foolishly replied with a comment on how much his neighbors must hate him (because of the Harley, not the eBike). Like the usual character of this sort who we all know and suffer, he came back with “No, they love me and everyone always comments on how great my Harley sounds.”

I know a lot of motorcyclists and non-motorcyclists. I have never heard any of them even mention exhaust noise when they are admiring a vehicle of any sort. I have, however, heard almost all of them curse a noisy vehicle when it interrupts their lives. Maybe that’s what the loud pipes folks call “love?” If so, that explains their typical bachelor in a swamp of beer cans lifestyle.

Late last fall, I was on my usual ebike run for groceries when I got passed on the uphill section of my ride by a couple of goobers on illegally loud hippobikes wobbling down a straight section of county road. I could hear them coming a mile away, so I had a hand over my left ear when they passed. I got a one-finger salute from the biker broad when she passed me. I suppose she imagined I would be upset at not being her friend.

This pair usually runs with a pack of four or five other noise makers. They blubber and roar through our neighborhood several times every warm day and you can hear them for miles in all directions. The local cops are terrified of bikers, but they are especially blind to gangs of bikers. So, as a neighborhood and town we’re pretty much torn about on-coming nice weather. At least when it’s raining or snowing, we don’t have to listen to goobers on Harleys.

When I got to the stoplight at Highway 61, they were waiting for the signal to change and yelling at each other about some menial bullshit when the old fat guy started to lose control of his bike and fell over, knocking the broad and her bike into a tangled heap of black leather, crappy mechanical engineering, and fat people. Of course, neither one of them knew how to shut off their bike, so there was some flesh tangled in the spinning rear wheels and lots of squalling and shouting before the blubbering (human and mechanical) stopped. I watched the Laugh-In tricycle action and did my best not to laugh out loud.

The goobers were in the left hand lane when they tipped over, so traffic had two lanes in which to pass up the mess and until the light changed three cars made a right turn without doing much more than gawking at the bikers. Two pickups pulled up to wait for the light to change to either make a left turn from the center lane or go straight. Nobody made any effort to help the bikers untangle themselves. I was on the sidewalk where the pedestrian crossing button lives, so the trucks provided me with a nice bit of insulation from the biker pile. The light changed and three of us went on our way while the bikers struggled to untangle and pick up their oversized hardware and do whatever those folks do when they aren’t falling down or occupying bar stools.

I did my grocery run and came back the same route, about 15 minutes later. The bikers were on their feet by then, but the bikes were still down and tangled up. Now, I’m on the opposite side of the road and there is no traffic coming my direction, so the light is going to run against me for a lot longer than it does when there is car traffic triggering the intersection controller. I thought it might be entertaining to see how a fat old Santa Claus biker and a bar bimbo pick up their 900 pound hippobikes, so I waited a while before I pressed the pedestrian call button. I was right.

Santa Gangbanger’s full dresser hippobike was on top of the pile and he clearly had never picked up his motorcycle, let alone from on top of another equally oversized, overweight pile of junk. The two of them were high side of his bike tugging helplessly at the handlebars or trying to drag the bike by the front or rear wheel and I really regretted not carrying something with which I could film the action. At least a half-dozen cars and pickups and a couple of delivery trucks rolled past them, but nobody stopped to help and the goobers did pretty much everything but step in front of traffic trying to enlist some assistance. Biker bimbo discovered, for the nteenth time in her life, that outside of biker bars she wasn’t attractive enough to draw flies let alone human assistance. Santa Gangbanger probably wondered why his biker glare didn’t intimidate anyone into helping. Finally, the two managed to drag Santa’s bike off of the bimbo’s ride, leaving paint and chrome and plastic on the road. The two of them together finally righted both bikes.

When the light changed, we all crossed 61 and went on our merry ways. Me with a cool story to tell anyone I know (since most everyone in Red Wing hates motorcycles) and them with a sob story of how nasty people are to old, fat, noisy, incompetent bikers. “I thought they loved us.” Whenever this dichotomy rears its head in small towns, the bikers threaten not to spend their money in our bars and we mostly wouldn’t mind seeing the damn bars go broke and the bikers gone. If it were possible to get small town cops to do their jobs, this problem wouldn’t exist.

Mufflers Are for Pussies?

A few weeks ago, I wondered why it was so hard for Minnesota city and state cops to figure out how to enforce Minnesota’s vehicle noise laws. Minnesota State Statute 169.69 states: "Every motor vehicle shall at all times be equipped with a muffler in good working order which blends the exhaust noise into the overall vehicle noise and is in constant operation to prevent excessive or unusual noise, and no person shall use a muffler cutout, bypass or similar device upon a motor vehicle on a street or highway. The exhaust system shall not emit or produce a sharp popping or crackling sound. Every motor vehicle shall at all times be equipped with such parts and equipment so arranged and kept in such state of repair as to prevent carbon monoxide gas from entering the interior of the vehicle. No person shall have for sale, sell or offer for sale or use on any motor vehicle any muffler that fails to comply with the specifications as required by the commissioner of public safety." This, of course, is a fairly stupid law that was clearly written to satisfy some federal minimum for noise pollution and clearly does nothing to protect residents from semi-grown children who just can’t get enough attention in any positive way. Minnesota is not alone in the “gutless noise laws intended to do nothing” category. Based on this map, I’d say there are 9 states with enforceable laws (which doesn’t mean they enforce them) and the rest are pretty much lawless by design in this regard. 

I made the mistake wondering this on a local “Ask the Chief” city webpage and got a totally bullshit answer from the Chief, “Yes, the State of Minnesota law covers muffler vehicle noise." But he made it clear that it was the job of local residents to, literally, identify and detain lawbreakers and, then, to prove the vehicle violated the law. So, no, there is no actual Minnesota vehicle noise law and please don’t ask again. 

A side-effect of asking this question was that that a bunch of local bikers got downright hysterical about the thought that someone might think their noise-making was illegal and should be fixed. One of those geniuses said, “mufflers are for pussies” as his justification for needing more attention than spoiled 13-year-old girls. 

Someone else replied, “I thought that’s what Harley’s were for?” And things went downhill from there. It is true that actual motorcyclists scoff at the macho posing of the boys and girls on Harleys. It’s hard to pull off macho when you can’t exit a stop sign competently. 

I do, however, think the second guy was right on the mark. Harley and the cruiser genre only have one defining “feature” to brag about: low seat height. In every other area important to actual motorcyclists, cruisers are deficient or defective. They are, to put it politically-incorrectly, “girls’ bikes.” Not women, but girls. Real women don’t ride Harleys and they don’t mess with handicapped motorcycles. 

The rapidly vanishing American motorcycle market seems to be clueless about where American buyers are today. And bikers are doing their best to drive away any likely new riders with IQs into the mid-double-digits and the kind of behavior that puts the lie to “You meet the nicest people on a Honda.” This is from the crowd whose purpose appears to be making as much noise as possible while looking like a sad collection of down-and-out Shriners who either lost their uniforms or couldn’t afford the Knights of Templar suit and the fez. No one with a spec of self-respect would want to join that gang and, apparently, hardly anyone does. 

Way back in 2011, when US motorcycle sales were still not recovering from the Great Recession anywhere near as fast as the rest of the economy, the AMA’s Rob Dingman and the M.I.C. spokesman Peter TerHorst said, “The three biggest problems facing motorcycling today is noise, noise and noise.” That was the last gasp of reality from the AMA. The gangster crowd, who probably don’t amount to a tiny fraction of the AMA membership, scared the AMA “leadership” into abandoning this issue and losing even more members over the next decade. Since disclosures about the organization’s bleeding money in the early part of the last decade, the AMA has been really aggressive about courting members and really reticent about telling members how the “organization” is doing. In this case, I think it’s safe to say that “no news is bad news” and I doubt that I know a single AMA member among the hundreds of motorcyclists I know. Of course, none of my friends ride so badly they need noisemakers to let the world know an incompetent is in the area.

A Funny Documentary

Some of this is blatantly schmaltzy. Some is slow. Much of it, I suspect, is right. Harley the corporate welfare queen may be one of the big losers from the pandemic and Trump’s Recession. It is really hard to feel sorry for them.

Self-Delusion at Its Finest

I don’t know much about “Business Insider,” but this article “The rise and fall of Harley-Davidson" is flat-out entertaining. Mostly, it is a collection of nonsense masquerading as economic, social, and business commentary. Some of the biker and commentator quotes are hilarious, though:

• Irene Kim: “You don't have to be a biker to know about Harley-Davidson. Harleys are big, loud, fast, and inherently American.”
• Jake Holth: “You get some of that instant respect just riding one alone.”

Of course, motorcyclists know that a Harley Davidson is the last bike you want if you want to go fast. Hardlys are so slow they have to have their own brand-specific racing class to be “competitive.” In other words, “That’s a pretty fast bike for a Harley” is the best compliment a Harley owner can hope for.

“Respect” means fear to this crowd. It’s true that cops, citizens, and the government are terrified of the domestic terrorism that Harley’s demographic represents. You wouldn’t be far from being right in saying “nobody respects these assholes” though. You earn respect and all that the gangbanger crowd have earned is the regular “faggot” epithet muttered and shouted as they blubber their way through our towns and countryside. Bikers are the ONLY people who waste two seconds of thought of the news that one to a dozen bikers were killed on the highway. That is how much “respect” bikers and Harley have earned.

• Matthew DeBord: “In decades, they could wind up just disappearing. We'll all still associate Harley-Davidson with being the greatest motorcycle brand in the world, but there won't be any motorcycles. You won't be able to buy one.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone clueless enough to consider “Harley-Davidson with being the greatest motorcycle brand in the world,” but if I remember there are people who don’t laugh when Trump claims to be the “greatest President in history” I guess it’s possible. It is also possible that someday in the not-so-distant future “there won’t be any motorcycles” on public roads; just like there aren’t any horses on those roads today. If that happens, Harley’s marketing and politics will deserve a large part of the blame. The company has defended rider incompetency, illegal motorcycle noise, hooliganism and gangsterism at the worst levels,

• DeBord: “America is a very conservative place at the time, and a lot of guys came back from that, and they said: ‘Uh-uh, I'm not interested in that. I'm gonna get me a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and I'm gonna go live on the road. I'm gonna live my life on my terms with freedom, mobility, attitude.’"

As The Rolling Stones discovered at Altamont, nobody is more “conservative,” racist, violent, mindless, lawless, or less committed to the concept of freedom than bikers. These characters line up like cows heading back to the barn behind every fascist asshole who has appeared in American history since the 1940s. They were Vietnam cheerleaders, Afghanistan and Irag Invasion cheerleaders, and they are Trump’s brownshirts. They are certainly fans of chaos and lawless disorder, but that’s because they are too lazy to be useful.

• Billy: “All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.”
• George: “Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.”

No, all you represent is old men with ponytails and bald domes pretending to be something you’ll never be: decent Americans. Yeah, this half-witted shit pisses me off.

How Stupid Do You Think I Am?

When a young man I know learned that I’m selling my motorcycle, he immediately said, “I’ll buy it. You’d have to finance it, but I’m good for it.” 

I immediately thought, “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” 

This kid is a 20-something, wanna-be motorcyclist, who had an 80cc dirt bike when he was a pre-teenager, making him (in his mind) an “experienced motorcyclist.” To make up for his lack of a motorcycle license and riding skill/experience, he even asked me to give him a free MSF course; since I’m a retired Minnesota MSF instructor. 

I’m selling a $4000 motorcycle. I’m 71 and at the point in life where if I see a light at the end of the tunnel I’m pretty sure it’s the Grim Reaper’s train. What part of this transaction sounds intelligent from my side? Or even his side, for that matter? The risk in that loan is insane. When he crashes it and his wife tells him to get rid of it or hit the road, I’ll be stuck with a mangled motorcycle, little-to-no-money for my long-shot self-financing bet, and the scary possibility of assuming some liability in his crash(es). I would have to be stupid to take that bet. 

I’m not brilliant, but I’m not stupid. (As I often do, after writing that statement I check the heels of my boots to see if there is straw sticking out; since I obviously look like someone who just jumped out of a farm truck.)

From that conversation, I started to think about a bank or anyone else financing a motorcycle. It wasn’t that long ago that Harley-Davidson had to be bailed out by taxpayers for its own inability to manage loan money; to the tune of $2.3B. If Harley, a company that rarely wastes precious cash on frivolous things like engineering and competent product development, can’t find safe buyers for its hippo bikes, who am I to gamble in that market? Pretty much anything a bank would get involved in would be a $6,000 to $40,000 loan to a person who is probably 15,000 times more likely get killed than, for instance, someone asking for a car loan. A company insuring a motorcycle and loan is about as dumb as the bank making the loan, too.
Bankers are not a group widely known for their brilliance, outside of their own closed and in-bred circles. If you’ve read All the Devils Are Here or The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, you know that what passes for financial skills in these declining years of the United States empire is pretty dismal. Bankers are notoriously financially foolish with even their own money. In fact, the people most of us trust to hang on to our cash are not that smart or good at their jobs. Bankers and other financial gamblers will pay $100 and more to “win” a twenty-dollar-bill in an auction, in a crowd of other supposedly money-wise nitwits. These are the people who will loan you money to buy a brand new $40,000 Harley Davidson; even knowing that the odds are good that you won’t live long enough to pay off the debt. Just as dumb, the insurance industry is betting that you won’t actually ride the damn thing (which is, actually, very likely) which will self-limit their risk to your death and the destruction of the item they are insuring. 

If you have any money squirreled away with a bank, the fact that institution would gamble on a loan for a motorcycle and that someone else (maybe in the same bank) is dumb enough to insure that motorcycle for comp and collision ought to scare the crap out of you. Seriously. How does that not bother anyone with cash in a bank? 

Back to my own situation, I have never loaned money to anyone in my life. If a friend or relative is hard up enough to ask me for money and I have it, I consider it a gift. If I get paid back, I consider that amazing. If not, I never expected repayment and won’t be surprised when it doesn’t happen. That old Shakespeare rule, "neither a borrower nor a lender be" has always made sense to me because of the line that follows, “for loan oft loses both itself and friend.”  As for loaning money for a motorcycle purchase, do not count on me to even be willing to make a gift toward that dumb idea.

Hardly Riders and Laugh In

More Hardly riders doing the Laugh In tricycle bit. “I hit that [invisible] hole in the road,” sort of like “I had to put ‘er down.” It always means, “I screwed up and fell over totally out of incompetence.” These guys always remind me of the Laugh-In tricycle gag. How can you ride this badly and still take your badass biker posing seriously?

Motorcycle Delusions

The video is funny, the comments on the YouTube page are even funnier.

Running from the Noise Makers

There are tourist towns and there are tourist towns. Red Wing, MN, (my hometown) seems to really want to spend a lot of taxpayer cash attracting out-of-town money, but only a particular type of money. Like Lost Wages in the 90's, Red Wing is pretty much a town full of geezers (mostly retired) who are terrified of change, young people, and bikers. Our cops, especially, follow the national mode of knowing these assholes are gangbangers and domestic terrorists and they keep a long distance. If there is such a thing as a biker who could pass a DWI test on a typical summer weekend, our cops have no idea what that would look like.

We had some friends visit for a weekend recently and when we went looking for an restaurant on one evening we ratcheted from Smokin’ Oak to Kelly’s to Bayside to downtown, finally settling on one of the downtown restaurants that wasn’t surrounded by bikers and loud drunks (not that the two are a different crowd) and their poorly maintained and highly-illegal cruisers. The fact is, you can’t have it both ways; you are either a family-friendly tourist town or a biker-friendly bar stop. The difference between most cruiser exhaust noise and year-round fireworks is usually that the fireworks are quieter and more entertaining. Concentrating on the biker money means that family entertainment money will go elsewhere.

Back in 2007 and, again, in 2013, Stillwater, MN made some political noise about cracking down on illegal motorcycle and 4-wheel exhaust noise and the biker gangbangers made some seriously threatening noise back. About the same time, Hudson, WI’s City Council, reacting to residents’ complaints, had a similar discussion, attracting a collection of Outlaw bikers to a city council meeting, which scared the local cops into hiding for the evening. That effectively caused Hudson to back down from their resident-friendly position. There is a group, Citizens for a Quieter Stillwater, that has tried to keep this issue upfront in Stillwater, but Stillwater police seem to have been terrorized into pretending this isn’t a policing problem. I get that, biker gangs are high on the FBI’s list of domestic terror groups. There are many good reasons to be afraid of them, but that is supposed to be why police get to carry guns and can (and should) arrest dangerous law-breaking people. (I know, if I am dumb enough believe that the characters who mostly want to wear badges and carry guns are willing to risk their 20-years-and-out retirement plan putting themselves at risk to protect and serve the public, you have a bridge and Thomas Jefferson's airplane you want to sell me.)

A few months back, in answering a question about vehicle noise and disturbing the peace, Red Wing’s Chief of Police made it clear that he is familiar with the state noise laws (https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/p-gen6-01.pdf) and how they should be enforced. The reasons those laws are not enforced are both economic and pragmatic. Local bars catering to bikers carry a disproportionate amount of political weight and they don’t care much who brings in money as long as there is lots of it. In Minnesota, motorcycle advocacy groups like ABATE (Always Beer at the Event) advocate against helmet laws, motorcycle safety and pollution inspections, mandatory rider training and licensing, and to whine about increasing penalties for right-of-way violators (unless they are bikers). The state legislator was coerced (or terrified) into passing the “Motorcycle Road Guard” law where a mildly-"trained" doofus is allowed to “stop and control traffic for motorcycle group riders”: one of the dumber ideas from our not-too-bright state legislature. Obviously, a smarter approach would have been to enforce rational pirate parades with police examining all of the vehicles in the parade for legal exhausts and fuel systems and breaking up the parade into normaler, traffic-manageable groups. ABATE does an “Annual Bikerday at the Capitol,” where all the group’s pirates dress up in gangsta outfits intended to scare the crap out of the pseudo-conservative lightweights in the capitol and to keep motorcycle legislation off-discussion. It, so far, has worked. 

The average age of US motorcyclists has been going up 2-3 years every year (>50 as of 2018) and the median income is considerably above the US average: $62,500 in 2018. Safety training programs across the country are reducing the number of classes they offer, for example by more than half in Minnesota from the peak 2003-07 period. Motorcycle dealerships are closing or diversifying into ATVs and boats. The number of licensed motorcyclists drastically exceeds the number of motorcycles with valid license tags, indicating that actual ridership is down substantially (and that a regular demonstration of competence should be part of motorcycle license renewal). That last fact is even more dramatic than it seems when you take into account the fact that many/most active motorcyclists own and ride more than one motorcycle. So, this noise and safety issue could be self-solving as bikers age out of the country’s demographic and motorcycle manufacturers price themselves out of existence.

As for the “loud pipes save lives” hype, as a life-long motorcyclist who taught Minnesota motorcycle safety classes for 17 years, I recommend learning how to ride your motorcycle over passive noise makers. 30-to-40-something-percent of Minnesota fatal motorcycle crashes are single-vehicle incidents and common sense would indicate that at least that number of motorcycle crashes are at least in large part the fault of the motorcyclists. The state doesn’t keep any sort of statistics on loud pipes involved in crashes, but there are a LOT of Harley’s and other cruiser models involved in fatal crashes and the most “custom” Harley is one with no pointless modifications done to the exhaust system. So, the evidence appears to be pretty conclusive that the only reason for loud exhaust systems to flaunt disrespect for laws and authority and common decency and peace and quiet.

Seven Dead in New Hampshire

A motorcycle group called "Jarheads MC" ended up in a group crash that killed seven members and injured several others. A friend called to ask for my take on the crash. I don't watch much news these days, the news is always depressing and increasingly stupid, so I just wander through the tail end of my life singing a Steely Dan song, "Any World I'm Welcome To." While we talked, I checked out the news on the web. I know I was supposed to be feeling compassion for "fellow motorcyclists," but the news report didn't generate much of that from me. I have phased from ambivalence-to-numb regarding the dumb stuff that happens to bikers decades ago. (Motorcyclists are different and I do still care about stuff that happens to them.)

One of my least favorite gigs when I was teaching "motorcycle safety" classes (which especially deserves the quote hint in this situation) was trying to run an Experienced Rider Course with a pack of bikers. There would typically be 11 bikers on 11 totally illegal hippobikes with, at best, one or two competent riders in the group and four or five totally incompetent bikers and the rest in-between but closer to incompetent than competent. And every one of those hippobikes made as much noise as a 1940's farm tractor without a muffler of any sort. The worse the rider, the louder the pipes. The level of entitlement and foolishness from the group would just reek, "I am a member of a gang and we're scary. I need loud pipes on my bike to warn you that an incompetent fool is sharing the road with you. Take care of me because I can't take care of myself." The worst-of-the-worst for this kind of course would be a gang of "law enforcement officers," who would not only be lousy riders on illegal bikes but the most arrogant, entitled folks on the planet. Nothing tops a cop who is also a military veteran for someone who believes the world owes him fear disguised as "respect." Regardless of the make-up of the group, they too often all brought their required helmets strapped to the bike seat or in a saddlebag, just to make sure the instructors knew they didn't believe in that shit. So, when I hear one of the many stories of biker gangs getting involved in one more multi-vehicle pile-up, I'm not surprised, shocked, outraged, or even particularly interested. These are the people who overwhelmingly make up the 30-40% of all motorcycle fatalities that are single vehicle crashes.

In one report of the crash, a relative of one of the dead bikers said of the truck driver, "As long as he pays a price. He has caused lot of harm to a lot of families. If has a problem, he shouldn't be on the road. If he is a bad actor, he doesn't belong on the street. He caused enough of a tragedy. Enough is enough." I wish that rule were applied to motorcyclists. "Enough is enough." It's time motorcyclists were required to take responsibility for their lousy driving habits and the total criminal irresponsibility of pirate parades.

As usual, the cops are confused and irrational. “The pickup driver, Volodoymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, an employee of a Springfield, Massachusetts, trucking company, was not seriously hurt. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating, said he was interviewed at the scene by police and allowed to return to Massachusetts.” First they sent the truck driver home after taking his information, then they drove to his home and arrested him on a "fugitive from justice" charge, then released him again. Nothing like muddying the waters of an already dumbed-down American media machine and the Marching Moron public. Bikers are riled up and the tiny portion of the American public who can think are wondering what really happened and if anyone will ever know.

I think it's safe to assume the eye witness reports from the bikers will be useless. Most likely, they didn't have a view of what happened, due to their concentration on riding within reach of each other, so anything that happens seems like an unavoidable hole opening in the earth. A surviving rider said, “It was just an explosion . . . with parts and Al and everything flying through the air. He turned hard left into us and took out pretty much everyone behind me. The truck and trailer stayed attached and that is why it was so devastating . . . because the trailer was attached and it was such a big trailer, it was like a whip. It just cleaned us out.” If that’s true, it sounds like 1) the truck driver was passing after the first bike or two went by and plowed into the middle of the group or 2) turning at an intersection not realizing the oncoming traffic was moving so fast or 3) fooling with his cell phone or some other distraction and wandered into the opposite lane and panicked. In the picture above, the road is pretty clearly marked as a no-passing zone.

An uncle of one of the riders said, ‘‘The truck was coming in the opposite direction. It’s hard to figure how he could hit 10 motorcycles without getting out of the way.” Obviously, the bikers were following way too close for safety. What else would they be doing. That rolling bowling pin crap is one of many reasons to stay away from group rides, especially pirate parades. I hate to think the uncle was wondering how a truck pulling a trailer could have avoided 7 bikers. The real question is how did 7 motorcycles end up tangled together by one truck? Motorcycles only have one practical defense in all traffic situations; maneuverability. Hippobikes, of course, are not real motorcycles and are really just suicide machines looking for a place to happen. So, it's not hard to figure how 7+ motorcycles couldn't find a way to get out of the way. Their typical reaction is to scream, panic, and fall over (that's "I had to lay 'er down" translated to plain English).

There are some curious aspects to the biker group, though. Only one of the fatalities was over 60. That's depressing. I keep hoping that younger people will learn from my braindead generation's many mistakes and stay away from Hardlys and the incompetent biker crowd. There is nothing that I like about motorcycle packs, peaceful or otherwise. They are “rolling bowling pins” and this truck driver almost got a ten pin strike. I have had a strong opinion about lines and biker parades for all of my life. I want to feel more compassion for these folks, but it mostly affects me like reading about a group of climbers getting killed free-climbing Yosemite's El Capitan; except without the admiration for the climbers' courage and physical skills. I guess this is more like hearing a bunch of young fat people  whine about their diabetes, physical disabilities, and likely premature death while gorging themselves on McDonalds Fatty Meals: what did you think was going to happen?

Are Motorcycles History?

Scanning my old employer’s website, I noticed that Century College's Basic Rider Course schedule for 2019 includes fewer classes, in total, than I used to teach almost at that school in a single season: down from more than 100 courses on 3 ranges to 26 courses on one range. Dakota Tech is down by similar numbers: from more than 80 courses on 4 ranges to 41 on two ranges this season. According to friends who still teach, last year DCTC cancelled a lot of it's classes, often the day before the class was scheduled to run. St Paul College is scheduling 26 courses. I retired last year, after all of my classes in Red Wing and all but one at DCTC cancelled in 2017 and I had my first bout with double-vision. Staying certified was going to be more of a hassle and expense than it would be worth. (That turned out to be an understatement as my double-vision root-cause has been diagnosed as myasthenia gravis.)

At least in Euro-ville, 60% of all new bicycle sales are eBikes. I can't find a solid figure for the US, but based on the growth of a few name companies that can't keep up with the orders I suspect that's a shift here, too. The industry word is that ebike growth is exponential and motorcycle sales are in decline. If you do a Google search on "motorcycle dealers closing" limited to the last year only, you get a depressing number of hits; including insider stories about how motorcycle imports and exports are slowing up practically everywhere. These are interesting times. That “change” thing is proving itself to still be a constant.

Lots of dealers, like River Valley in Red Wing, didn't see much of a recovery in motorcycle sales after 2007-12 and moved on put more effort into boats and ATVs. A bunch of dealers (especially on the coasts) are adding eBikes to their sales floors. Yamaha, Ducati, and KTM either have eBikes to sell or are in serious development. Hardly just bought a kids' ebike company. Of course, HD could just be recognizing how lame their customers are and acting accordingly. Yamaha's eBikes are grossly overpriced: $4-6k, but they might figure it out before they totally lose their place in consumers' sights. KTM's offerings will probably need a mortgage refi, but their victims always seem to have spare cash or credit.

One of the funniest things I've read about this business and customer shift has been from traditional bicycle shops who imagine that repairing eBikes is "different" or more complicated than fixing a motorcycle. Current breed bike shops often charge as much as $50-80 to swap out an ebike tire, especially a back tire on rear-hub driven models. eBike repairs are different than motorcycle repairs, for sure; about 1Mx easier. Anyone who can troubleshoot fuel injection or electronic ignition could do anything necessary on an eBike without any training at all.

Levels of Stupid

This snazzy advertisement from J&P Cycles appeared in my inbox this morning. One one level, I wanted to write something about how incredibly inappropriate it is to be loading up your hippobike with alcohol advertisements. On another level, I sort of hit the limits on my patience for human, especially American, stupidity. If you follow the link, you'll find all sorts of cheap chrome crap with which you can decorate your cheap chrome crap Harley or yourself.

Why decorating yourself with stuff like this wouldn't be justification for pulling over a rider for a blood alcohol test, any time of the day, beats me. I would even be good with "putting a couple of warning shots into the head, as a warning," as my father used to say.

Lots of Laughter from Me

A friend sent me a link to this article, “Why is Harley-Davidson not popular with Millennials?” The article, itself, is just ok. Mostly a lot of twenty-something whining and pontificating about stuff that has been said and written zillions of times before. The cool part of the link I almost missed (Because I am vacationing in the Caribbean and the cruise boat’s wifi is terrible and expensive, so fuck you very much record-cold-setting Minnesota winter.) For a change, the comments section is where the gold is. From Hardly defenders to realists and rational people, the comments are often funny, fun, occasionally enlightening, mind-bogglingly stupid, and entertaining as hell. Occasionally, they are even well-written. Here is a sample, but I recommend you read a few and entertain yourself:

“Harleys rarely are disposable, you’ll find old Harleys still being ridden that are over a half century old. Now that longevity.” My all-time favorite bullshit Harley argument. Put 3,000 miles on a bike in 20 years and act amazed that it still gets ridden 5 miles to the local bar twice a year. Or actually ride it and put a half-dozen engines and a zillion dollars in factory-authorized-repairs into the hulk and pretend that is in some way similar to how real motorcycles work and real motorcyclists live.

“I customize bikes on a part time basis, and while I do not focus on repairs, a lot of my calls ARE repairs, and most of those repairs ARE Harleys. And the things that go wrong just plain don't go wrong on other bikes; throttle cables snapping in random places, ignition switches burning out while driving, kickstands getting stuck or falling off, a myriad of electrical issues…”

“Harley owners HATE blacks, hispanics, and middle-eastern ragheads. Harley owners HATE fags, queers, homos, bisexuals, and transgendered. Harley owners HATE Muslims. Want to see a Harley owner completely lose his shit? Just put on your innocent face and ask: ‘No, really, why can’t somebody use the restroom they want to use?’ Then stand back.”

“Harley-Davidson’s brand is defined by racism, xenophobia and sexism and its riders are older, white and male. Not doing that well so far.”

“I keep seeing posts on this question that say Harley is ‘Toxic’ to millenials, or that the brand represents ‘Misogyny.’ those are total bullshit arguments. We all see tons of diversity on the road. We see Black men on tricked out Harley’s as often as we see white men. We have several female riding groups that predominantly ride Harleys. We even have mixed race black/white and White/Hispanic 1% MC’s here. So no, we don’t think the brand itself is ‘Hostile’. Sure, a few old white pricks ride them around, but we don’t associate the bikes with the people who ride them.” Look in the mirror much, kiddo? All you have proven with your micro-analysis of the rare non-white, non-male Harley rarity is that you can always fool some of the people all of the time; no matter what you are selling, regardless of race, sex, creed, or even amount of education.

“. . . the bikes themselves. They are terrible in every way, and I mean that in an objective way. Power, speed, handling, comfort, reliability, price… it is really hard to come up with any category in which Harleys excel. The only thing they excel at is ‘Being American’ which really doesn’t mean anything at all. If the best thing you can say about a brand is where it is based, you are grasping at straws.”

“If the commenters would pull themselves away from Sons of Anarchy reruns long enough to view reality they would see that very few who ride motorcycles belong to a gang, want to look like they belong to a gang, or have any interest whatsoever in that group. Instead, they would likely see the numerous toy runs and other charity and community betterment events that motorcycle riders participate in - and the fact that the vast majority of the participants are riding Harleys. Yes, there are 3–4% riding Japanese and European bikes, but the motorcycles with the most or biggest toys strapped to them are usually Harleys.” Yep, that’s all it takes to tell yourself that you aren’t an asshole; big toys strapped to a motorcycle while you terrorize and disturb the peace of every town your pack of gangbangers “visit.”

You should read ‘em all. It’s pretty funny stuff and I didn’t even have to think about writing any of it.

HD Still Struggling with the Next Generation

The Journal Sentinal wrote this wide-eyed “analysis” of HD’s struggles with people who aren’t one foot in the grave, “Harley-Davidson unveils its largest-ever product development project.” As usual, there were bits I particularly liked (as in laughed at). For starters, “Harley-Davidson Inc. has unveiled its largest product development project ever: eight redesigned cruiser motorcycles for 2018, including bikes that have been a mainstay of the Milwaukee-based company for decades.” New paint? Sillier fenders? Easier to remove stock muffler, so the louder replacement can be snapped on?

“As part of the research, Harley-Davidson says it interviewed more than 3,000 riders for their views on cruisers — a versatile style of bike with a relaxed riding position, suitable for long-distance riding but more nimble than a big touring motorcycle.” Sounds like the same old crap in a new crappier package. “We were literally in people’s homes and garages, talking with them about their motorcycles,” said the guy with the goofiest job title yet, Paul James, product portfolio manager. WTF? Where else would you talk to motorcyclists about their bikes, in airports? Jones acts like he really discovered the marketing holy grail by chasing down actual customers. Of course, he should have been talking to people who bought the competitions’ bikes. Too hard? Sure, keep talking to grey hairs until they’re all dead.

“Four of the new Softails — Fat Bob, Fat Boy, Breakout and Heritage Classic — are available with a more powerful 114 cubic inch Milwaukee Eight.” Cubic inch? What is this, 1945?

“Up to 35 pounds lighter than 2017 models, Harley says all eight bikes have an improved power-to-weight ratio for quicker acceleration, better braking and handling.” Yep, “up to 35 pounds” will make a huge difference on an 800 pound hippobike.

Finally, “The company gave the bikes a healthy dose of classic cruiser looks — some of it vintage 1950s — while incorporating modern features such as anti-lock brakes, LED lighting, a digital instrument screen, keyless ignition, a USB charge port, mono-shock rear suspension and lockable saddlebags.” So, nothing changes except some badly implemented 1990’s ABS and a cobbled 1970’s suspension and a bunch of tacked-on Chinese electronics. Sounds really biggly to me.

Licensed Non-Riders

One of the many ridiculous facts pertaining to our idiotic motorcycle licensing system in the “freedumb” USA is that once you obtain a motorcycle endorsement you can keep the damn thing forever without even riding a motorcycle once you receive the endorsement. Apparently, 8 million non-riders in the USA are in that category. 8 million bozos are ready and barely-able to swing a leg over a 110 cubic-inch Hardly simply because they once passed (even if they barely managed that on a 125cc training bike). Holy crap.

Even worse, Hardly wants to capitalize on that by convincing that marginally-abled crowd of “sleeping license-holders” to jump in front of a moving train after getting a second mortgage on their homes to buy a chrome-laden suicide machine. According to an article titled, "Millions of people have a motorcycle license but don't own a bike," ”Harley has a goal of attracting 2 million new U.S. riders over the next 10 years, a tall order considering it would represent a 25% increase in the total number of motorcycles registered in the nation.” You know me, I’m all for population reduction any way it can happen (as long as no innocent cats, dogs, hawks, eagles, crocodiles, or elephants are harmed in the filming of this catastrophe), but this is downright hilarious.

Stuff like this is why I believe motorcycle training is totally back-asswards. It’s pretty obvious that training beginning riders is a pointless, stupid idea from the perspective of a society trying to reduce the $22.6B in medical costs due to motorcycle crashes. Society has absolutely no reason to want to train beginning motorcyclists, with the obvious idea that the more butts put on motorcycle seats the more money it will cost society. However, once someone has decided to get licensed and buy a donor-cycle, society has every motivation to be sure that person is as unlikely as possible to contribute to that $22.6B. Which means that every time a motorcycle license comes due it should NOT be renewed without some evidence of recent (3-6 months, for example) advanced rider training. Not that silly MSF Intermediate Rider bullshit, either. I mean some kind of skill-demanding, road-speed advanced training like the MMSC/MSF “advanced” or “expert” rider courses.

Couple that training with a serious helmet law (no DOT head-pot bullshit, but full face, Snell-approved or nothing) and we’re beginning to talk about an actual attempt to drag US motorcycling into the 20th Century. Once we’ve made it that far, we might even head toward an actual 21st Century system of tiered licensing and a real inital rider’s test.

Sound Familiar?

Bloomberg just published an essay titled, “The Motorcycle Industry Is Dying.” Not a new concept and much of their analysis has been seen here first, but it’s slightly comforting to see some one else get it. The article puts a lot of weight on the new Honda Rebel 500 and I have to admit that is entertaining. I rode the Rebel 250 for the first time in a MSF class a couple of weeks ago and it is awful. There is nothing about that motorcycle that would have enticed me to get into motorcycling.

“Honda’s Rebel is the latest entry in a parade of new bikes designed for first-time riders; almost every company in the motorcycle industry has scrambled to make one. They are smaller, lighter, and more affordable than most everything else at a dealership and probably wouldn’t look out of place in the 1960s—back when motorcycling was about the ride, not necessarily the bike. They are also bait for millennials, meant to lure them  into the easy-rider lifestyle. If all goes as planned, these little rigs will help companies like Harley-Davidson coast for another 50 years.” Good luck with that daydream.

I personally can’t imagine anything other than a hoard of electric bikes in the $5,000-territory that will turn the motorcycle economy around, but power to them for finally waking up and discovering Boomers are dying off. “A motorcycle is a picture of discretionary spending, and they can be tricky to finance even in a healthy credit market. Even now, with the stock market on a historic bull run and after the U.S. auto industry posted its best year on record, traffic in motorcycle stores has stayed slow. In 2016, U.S. customers rolled off with 371,403 new bikes, roughly half as many as a decade ago.”

Too little, too late has been my analysis for the last decade. This author sort of agrees, “The problem, however, with this sudden industry pivot to younger customers is that it may be coming too late. For years, it was too easy to just keep building bigger, more powerful bikes.“ It was easier and Boomers were dumb enough to buy into pretending that 60 was the age of midlife crisis. Ride down WI35 and look at all the Harleys out on the front lawns for sale. It’s over boys, now what are you going to do? One problem with a lot of these little motorcycles is that they aren’t as energy efficient as many cars. If anything makes motorcycles a purely recreational toy it is lousy fuel economy.

It could be a bigger trend than motorcycles, though. Driving, in general, has lost a lot of appeal to practically everyone.