“Anybody Can Ride One”

My wife is a morning television addict. We live in a rural area with no over-the-air television available and I’m too cheap for cable, so she watches the late night talk shows in the morning. The irritating noises coming from our living room inspired a hunt for the best noise-cancelling, Bluetooth, in-ear monitors so that I could avoid the morning squawking noise of Seth Myers and Jimmy Kimmel’s dry sarcasm that makes the awful seem even worse. Sometimes she is so inspired by what she sees that she is compelled to “share” it with me. This morning that interruption was inspired by a Kimmel interview with David Letterman. Apparently, Letterman bought Regis Philbin a Vespa scooter under the assumption that “everybody knows how to ride a motor scooter.” Like so many folks on Harleys every summer weekend around the nation, it turns out that assumption is idiotic. Of course, Philbin crashed after traveling a few feet on the scooter. "He could have been killed. He actually could have been killed. The last night before he retires he comes over, and I kill him," Letterman said with a laugh. "... Nobody checked him out on it, because the assumption was, A, anybody can ride a scooter. And B, certainly Regis will ride a scooter."

Back when I was still teaching the Minnesota Motorcycle Safety classes, in 2011, I wrote a Geezer rant I titled “#101 It's Not A #&^%#@ Wheelchair.” I summed up my irritation in that essay with, “My generation seems to have created a lot of people who think the laws of physics can be influenced by money, the legal system, and by a heartfelt ‘I wanna.’ Velocity and acceleration (up or down) are ruthless. Gravity is insensitive to your brittle bones and inflexible joints. You don't get special consideration on the highway simply because traffic is moving ‘too fast’ or you can't muster up the courage to make the bike stop or turn (or keep up with the flow of traffic). Other highway users expect you to ‘drive it or park it.’ Being handicapped on a motorcycle is often fatal.” Almost always, in fact. I don’t know where “anybody can ride a scooter” comes from. Sure, they have small flat wheels that almost balance themselves, but that doesn’t help at all with turning, stopping, or being aware of traffic and hazards and figuring out what to do about those hazards in an emergency.

While my wife was taking a break from her morning television routine, she was reminded of my father and his “scooter experience,” which actually was an electric wheelchair. He’d been house-bound for several years by the symptoms of progressive myasthenia gravis, failing eyesight, and CHF. My step-sister thought it would be good for him to get out of the house and she, Medicare, and the VA bought him an electric wheelchair. For a couple of days, he was like a kid with a brand new motorcycle. He rode that thing around his neighborhood, to the local grocery store, and had a great time. My step-sister, on the other hand, almost had heart failure watching him blindly (literally) barrel through busy intersections and head-on into traffic without a clue that people were dodging him and freaking out at the sight of an overweight old man in an electric wheelchair in the middle of the road. Eventually, some technical issue came up with the wheelchair and he went back to watching his big screen television and 14-hours-a-day of Fox News propaganda. It could have been as simple as the battery being run down, my father was that technically inept, and nobody showed him how to use the charger. When he died, a couple of years later, the wheelchair looked brand new. He proved that it isn’t true that “anybody can ride a wheelchair.”

In the late 1970s, we were living in a small Nebraska town and a friend, the drummer in a band I’d been in, decided he wanted to buy a motorcycle so he could ride with his friends. I was a dirt-only motorcyclist at the time and had been for 15 years, but I helped him find a good buy on a barely-used Honda CX500 Deluxe, gave him a little instruction about how to ride the bike, convinced him to buy a helmet, a decent leather jacket, some boots, and gloves. And off he went. The friends he wanted to ride with were an assortment of cruiser wannabe-biker types with a couple of actual hardcore bikers—prison tats and criminal records and all. None of the be’s and wannabes wore any actual motorcycle gear and they quickly convinced him to dump the helmet, boots, gloves, but he could keep the jacket for cool days. They also “helped” him install ape-hangers and disable the front brake, partly because the stock brake line wasn’t long enough. Not even a whole month into this experience, he flew off of the road in a mild turn, plowed through a barbed-wire fence, and tumbled almost 100’ before he ended up in a tangled heap in a corn field.

His head injury left him with a speech impediment for the rest of his life and other neurological damage that left him pretty much a very young stroke victim. His legs were broken so badly that there was talk about amputating one or both, but they ended up reassembling him with pins and rods so that he could hobble around on his own. Of course, he was no longer a musician. You have to be able to flex everything in your legs and feet to operate a high hat and kick drum and the rest of his coordination and strength wasn’t up to handling the sticks. So, he’s mostly just been a barfly for the last 40 years, luckily he had a significant inheritance to cover his expenses and to provide him with shelter. Like Regis and my father, my friend (and several of his friends over the next few years) proved that it isn’t true that “anybody can ride a motorcycle.”

The industry, of course, has a vested interest in convincing as many people as possible that they belong on an expensive motorcycle that will enhance their lifestyle and self-image. Unfortunately, the so-called “motorcycle safety” industry is usually directly connected to the manufacturers (MIC/MSF, for example) and their vested interests are all about “putting butts on seats” with minimal interference from actual safety concerns. Thanks to them and their efforts, goofballs like David Letterman are deluded into believing the hype and imagining "that anybody can ride a scooter."

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.

#143 Outta My Cold, Dead Hands

The Geezer with a Grudge Columns
(Originally published in Minnesota Motorcycling Monthly Magazine.) 

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Thomas W. Day

There is a punk gangbanger group on Facebook called the Yamaha WR250X and WR250R Public Group. I joined this group about two years ago, because their intro FAQ is all about the useful (and not so useful) things that can be done to make the WR250X/R more fun and practical to ride. I left the group this week because the most outspoken members are consistently spoiled brats. Like a lot of bikers/gun nuts/spoiled children and the rest of the crowd who think their “right” to do any damn thing they please overrides public safety, an undisturbed peace, and their neighbor’s property rights, many of these kids consider themselves above the law and beyond reproach. They are classic examples of why motorcycles and motorcyclists are about as popular as used car salesmen in plaid suits or politicians from another state. Between the “I don’t need no stinkin’ endorsement” and the “why would I carry insurance, I’m just a motorcycle” and “why should I care if wheeling out of control freaks out cagers” attitudes, the group is a sad cartoon of why motorcycles are likely to be historical relics in a decade or less. There are some decent folks in the group, but their voices (like the voice of reasonable motorcyclists everywhere) are drowned out by the goons, brats, and gangbangers.

The last “conversation” I had on the group was about how gangbanging is going to be tough in an autonomous vehicle world. One of the kids claimed “they’ll have to pry my steering wheel away from my cold, dead hands” and a half-dozen or more chimed in accordingly. I asked what they were driving now and got a list of fairly new, mostly-Japanese sedans and mid-sized pickups. I suggested that since all of these vehicles had automatic transmissions and were controlled by transmission and engine computers they weren’t really driving now. Add power steering, backup cameras, parking sensors, ABS brakes, adaptive cruise control and proximity warning systems and you are about 1/2 way to the fully autonomous vehicle. The difference between being a total passenger and a terrible driver in a smarter-than-humans car is immeasurably small. I think it is safe to assume that, based on their motorcycling attitudes, that these kids are awful cagers too.

As macho as the American driver pretends to be, it ain’t gonna take much to remove most of us from the steering wheel. The first and logical step is to crank the shit out of the price of car insurance for those who insist on driving themselves. That will pretty much do the job alone. Cops will be watching the self-piloted vehicles closely, since their business will pretty much dry up on the autonomous side of transportation. They are absolutely not going to be issuing tickets to the corporations that provide the multi-user leases to autonomous vehicle passengers. Not only are corporations “people” but they are people with super-special privileges not to be fucked with. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a cop going after any sort of big business, regardless of how vicious the corporation’s crimes may have been. So, the only ticketing game in town will be the “cold, dead hands” crowd and they will be feeling pretty picked on by the time they hand over the reins to their own autonomous car. I know, you’re thinking “The Geezer is still just pissed off about his damn Volkswagen automatic transmission experience.” True, I’m pissed off at Volkswagen over that nightmare, but I have always disliked automatic transmission cars. They feel patronizing, sort of like having someone pat me on the head, when they put me in an electric wheel chair and say, “Now you’re in charge old dude. The hallway is all yours.”

I think the most insulting vehicle I’ve ever driven was a Toyota rental car with “Sport Shift Mode” thumb shifters.  I guess some kid who grew up playing video games might be able to fool himself into believing that he’s “really driving a car” when he can select the gear with a flick of the thumb, but I don’t play video games. The little Corolla had more than enough power to get out of its own way, but the Sport Shift Mode was clunky, intolerant of any high RPM operation, and it felt like an attempt by Toyota’s engineers to convince me to go back to letting the car do the driving. Which I did after a couple of unsatisfactory experiments with the thumb shifters.

Unlike the obtuse kids, I don’t care about driving and I’d just as soon lease a portion of an autonomous car as own a whole car that I have to finance, insure, and drive myself. Cars are boring and I’m a lot happier as a distracted passenger than driving. I can read, sleep, watch the scenery, or write as a passenger. As a driver, I spend most of my energy trying to stay awake. Unlike these kids, if I’m going be stuck behind the wheel I want as much control as I can have, including getting to decide my vehicle’s gear, engine RPM, and the point in the powerband for the situation at hand. I’ve yet to see an automatic transmission or all-wheel drive vehicle do a half decent job on ice or in deep sand and I’ve sure as hell seen those vehicles do a pitiful job in those conditions. So, until I can get at least 95% of an autonomous car, I’m hanging on to my 4WD, manual transmission pickup.

There is nothing cold-dead-handish about this, though. I just don't like doing things half-assed. If I can get a computer to drive for me, I'm in. If the computer is just there to make me a more distracted, less competent driver, I don't need that kind of help. But back to the original point of this rant, in an autonomous car world (Coming soon to your town!) motorcycles morbidity/mortality statistics will become unjustifiably over-represented majority in traffic crashes and the ugly face motorcycling has proudly presented to the public will be something we're going to wish we'd have done something about when it would have helped.

MMM April 2016 (and, oddly, again in the March 2017 issue, #154)

Motorcycle Jokes

An old friend of mine is at end-stage of a long bout with cancer. We both decided, years ago, that we weren’t going to join any pity parties and, if we were going to stay friends to the end we were going to carry on as usual. Some days, I don’t have much to say, but I’ve been making an attempt to write something to her every day or two. Sooner or later, she’ll stop writing back. If I’m lucky, her son will eventually tell me it’s time to stop writing. I’m not looking forward to getting that notice but I haven’t heard from her in a while and that’s not a good sign. She’s in California and I’m in Minnesota and we don’t have many friends in common. She’s cut herself off from most of the people she knows because they can’t talk to her like she’s not already dead or like her dying is the worst thing that could happen to them. I haven’t seen her son since he was a baby and, as far as I know, he might not even know I exist. So, on the days when I don’t have something worth talking about, I send her jokes. Usually politically incorrect jokes. If nothing else, someday the email address will bounce back on me.

. . .

It was only when I bought a motorbike that I found out that adrenaline is brown.

. . .

Yesterday I got stuck behind a young girl riding a horse. No matter what I did, I just couldn't get past her. I was tooting my horn, and hanging out the window yelling at her. She still wouldn't let me past. There was a guy on a motorcycle behind me and he was waving too. The road rage was building to the point of gun violence.

I was getting so wound up and frustrated. "It's people like you who cause accidents!" I shouted.

Eventually, I just couldn't take any more so I looked around to make sure the coast was clear . . . and I jumped off of the carousel.

. . .

This little old lady decides one day that she wants to join a biker club, so she goes down to her local club and knocks on the door. The door is opened by a big hairy biker with a beard, who's covered in tattoos.

"I'd like to join your club," says the little old lady.

The biker is amused by this and decides to play along, telling her, "Ok, but you've got to meet the requirements first. Do you have a bike?"

The little old lady points to a Harley and says, "Yeah, that's my bike there."

The biker is surprised but says, "And do you smoke?"

The little old lady says, "Yeah, I smoke 20 cigarettes a day and when I'm shooting pool I'll smoke a few cigars too."

The biker is impressed and says, "And have you ever been picked up by the Fuzz?"

The little old lady says, "No, but I've been swung around by the nipples a few times."

. . .

I kept telling my brother to be careful while he was out riding his motorcycle, but he wouldn't listen. And of course, one day he fell off.

I went to visit him in the hospital and he said to me, "I... di...

“Did....

“Did... n... wu....

“I... din... war... yu..."

I interrupted, "You can't say ‘I didn't warn you?’"

. . .

Like that.

Life sucks, then you die. Goddamn it.

When I Was Less Old

In 1999, when I first proposed that I write an essay to generate lots of hate mail for the then-flailing-fledgling motorcycle magazine, Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, I was convinced I was old enough to call myself the "Geezer with A Grudge." Men in my family don't, on average, live long. I was 51 at the time and had absolutely no expectations that I would live a lot of years past that mark. In fact, only two years later I decided to quit a high-paying engineering job in the medical devices industry and take a flyer on going back to my old music business life (recording studio maintenance and design) as a "retirement" gig in my last years. Worst case, I figured that I'd burn through my savings in five years and would be back at the door of some Misfortune 500 crap hole begging for something like my old job. Best case, I'd struggle on balancing freelance work, occasional short-term employment, and living like a semi-retired guy on a fixed income until I really was on a fixed income or I kicked the Big Bucket like the rest of my genetic predecessors. Living to 65 was not part of that plan.

Assuming I survive another few weeks, I will turn 65 this summer. Regardless of Social Security and the Repuglican 1%'er congresscritters' opinions, that is officially the age of a "geezer." I know, some of you passed that number decades ago and are still running marathons, leaping tall buildings, and just starting out on new careers as dotcom entrepreneurs and I'm just a boy in comparison. Fuck you. I'm old, tired, beat-up, surviving on artificial limbs and weird crap propping up my heart vessels. Maybe your family typically lives to 150, but the guys in my family usually top out at 40-55 and I'm living on "bonus time" (as my best friend once described it).

Henny Ray Abrams' recent sudden death in February was another reminder of how fast life changes to death. Henny Ray was 58 and died working on one more motorcycle story. He wrote for Cycle News, Cycle World, and anyone else who would buy his stories and pictures about MotoGP, motocross, or pretty much anything he might find interesting on two wheels. I didn't know Abrams from anything other than his writing, but I liked him and thought of him as a "good guy." By my current standards, he was not old enough to be a geezer. He was, literally, working on another motorcycle story when he died in his apartment at his desk.

If you didn't need stuff like this as a reminder that life is short and then you're dead, good for you. I'm inclined to get caught up on the daily grind of making a living, paying the bills, and worrying about other people's problems and time blows past my way too fast. The last decade has been one of the most pleasant of my life. Mostly, because I have taken work way less seriously, worried about making assholes richer almost not at all, and taken more time to appreciate my friends, family, and good fortune. Today, I'm going to take a ride and appreciate the fact that spring has finally arrived (at least for a few days) in Minnesota and I'm still able to enjoy it. I suggest you do something equally fun. It's Sunday, the day even some of the 99% get to fuck off.

Motorcycle Miles Traveled

One of my least favorite aspects of motorcycle safety statistics is the wildly optimistic "miles traveled" numbers that seem to be spouted by everyone from the dreaded AMA to the MSF to NTSA. I do not believe the average mileage traveled by motorcyclists is anywhere near 10,000 miles per year. But how do we get real numbers?

It struck me this morning that we have a ready source of data, CraigsList and eBay. So, I started paging through CraigsList ads this afternoon, copying down the bike year and miles advertised, tossed them into a spreadsheet, and did some calculations.

Observation and experiences are powerful tools. I realize that what appears to be isn't always what is, but I also realize that people making political claims are often motivated to tell less than the truth about . . . anything. One of my least favorite statistics is the "miles traveled" numbers that are used for motorcycle safety data. I simply do not believe that there are nearly as many motorcycles on the road as the industry, safety organizations, and, even, the government claims.

The Kelly Blue Book, for example, posts the following statement, "Obviously mileage will vary from year to year and model to model. A simple guide could be to consider the type of bike you are looking at: If the bike is a sportbike 600 c.c. to 999 c.c., and since these bikes are traditionally weekend only bikes, you can expect to see lower miles, about 3,000 miles per year. Tourers or Sport Tourers usually see a lot of miles, but these are generally freeway miles, between 5,000 to 6,000 miles per year." Those are silly numbers, based on fantasy. NHTA is considerably more conservative with an estimate of 1,943 miles per year for the average motorcycle. I'm not sure I buy that, either.

When people sell their motorcycles, they are pretty much forced to provide credible mileage numbers, so places like CraigsList, eBay, and local newspapers are pretty useful resources. In about a half-hour on two different days, I collected data on 60 motorcycles. So far, my data indicates the average mileage is about 1,425/year with a standard deviation of 863 miles. So far, there are some radically low-mileage outliers. The most annual mileage I've seen is 4,700/year over a 12 year lifetime. My own mileage tops that, but I'm trying to ignore anecdotal data and only collect "for sale" data to keep the information consistent and believable.

I created my own data gathering tool, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, that allowed me to enter data that I found in various locations and make some statistical assumptions from that information. Because I'm lazy, old, half-blind, and don't feel some kind of compulsion to do all of this on my own, I' originally posted the spreadsheet on my website for others to play with. A much smarter guy, William Wahby, transferred my Excel sheet to a Google Docs format:(Geezer with a Grudge: Average Mileage) where any of us can add data. If you want to add some bikes from your region, you'll see we've included the following data entry fields for you to work with:

State

Date Sampled

Make/Model or Description

Year

Miles

These are all data entry fields. The rest of the data fields -- Miles/Year, Miles Driven, and the statistical analysis fields -- calculate mileage automatically when you enter data into the Year and Miles fields. Please just enter the traditional two-letter State designation into that field. The date format is automatic: DD/MM/YYYY. I'll take pretty much anything for Make/Model. 

This is the kind of data collection that you'd think/hope NHTSA and the states would be collecting and using for analysis proposes. From what I've been told, they don't bother.  To the right is a charty of what our data looks like, so far. Pretty disgusting, don't you think? One thing this absolutely points out is that the overwhelming majority of riders don't need a bike bigger than 150-250cc. Any damn bike will hold up for less than 2,000 miles a year and how fast do you need to go if you're only going to be on the bike for less than twenty hours a year?

Easy Fix, Never Happen

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Thomas W. Day

The news report read, "Hennepin County attorneys say that on the morning of Oct. 7, 2010, 20-year-old Amanda Elizabeth Manzanares was driving without insurance and under a restricted instructional permit when she drove her car across the centerline of Excelsior Boulevard in Minnetonka and struck a man riding a motorcycle. The man suffered severe injuries that have, to-date, required $500,000 in surgeries and other medical care. . .

"After retrieving Manzanares' cell phone at the scene, Minnetonka police investigators found a series of text message exchanges and calls on Manzanares' phone that were made and received in the minutes surrounding the collision.

"But, according to court documents, Manzanares denied using her phone at the time of the accident, telling Minnetonka police she had “blacked-out,” was tired, that she hadn't taken prescribed medication and that she was still getting comfortable as a driver."

This is what passes for "news" in modern America. Tainted, slanted "information" intended to inflame the unwashed, illiterate masses without providing any solutions, context, or depth. Back when he was funny, Dennis Miller defined television news as a series of unimportant but bad things we could all be glad didn't happen to us.

Don't get me wrong, Manzanares ought to prosecuted for nearly killing an innocent bystander with her miserable, incompetent (for whatever reason) driving. But by shining a bright light on this pitiful excuse for a human being, the law and the media are doing their damndest to distract the blame from the real criminals in this all-too-common sort of incident; cell phone providers. On one hand, television reminds us at every cop-show opportunity that any cell phone can be tracked if it is on. If it can be tracked, its trajectory and velocity can be determined. If all that is true, any communications attempted while the phone is in motion can be terminated. End of problem.

Driving while yapping on a cell phone use is clearly an example of driving while incapacitated. Every study that has examined the relationship between driving drunk and driving while asking "whut r u doin?" has found that cell phones are linked to driving mental retardation. One study (published in Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society) found in simulated driving conditions that drunks (at least those with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level) are better drivers than cell phone yappers. None of the drunks crashed in that study, while three cell phone morons did.

Why it took a study to identify this character of cell phone abuse says more about academia, society, and capitalism than it tells us about the actual problem. Any half-conscious motorcyclist knows that you stay as far from a cell phone user as the road permits. They are erratic, marginally conscious, and as dangerous as gangbangers. I'm no less worried about riding near a cell phone user than I am about trying to get by someone who is tossing out the occasional empty beer can or has an Easy Rider rifle rack loaded with automatic weapons.

If you're brand new to this planet and these United States, you might ask, "Why is this tolerated if the solution is so simple?" The reason, dear alien life-form, is money. The slim splinter that remains of our democracy is dedicated to the idea that the profits of a few override the security, health, safety, and quality of life of the nation and its not-rich citizens. Those trust-funded, grossly overpaid and under-skilled corporate executives who are the only real beneficiaries of the death and destruction their products cause (not the cigarette executives, this time) are more important than the lives of every other person on public roads. Why that argument doesn't hold true for alcohol-pushing corporate executives is a little inconsistent, but I'd bet it's because the cell phone execs are richer.

Of course, my electronic trigger isn't the solution I'd recommend in an ideal world; too passive and forgiving. Personally, I'd rather see cell phone manufacturers forced to install a spring-loaded 4" spike in every cell phone that would be triggered by cell phone use at any velocity exceeding 10mph. At worst, the cell phone user would have some part of his/her anatomy skewered for violating rational cell phone laws. At best, one more idiot would be spiked from the gene pool.

Honestly, I don't expect either idea to take hold in my lifetime or before the next comet blasts an idiot wind across the planet and restarts the evolutionary cycle. The rapid degeneration of our species depends on the right of the dumbest and most corrupt evil spawn's access to every damn toy their idiot heart desires. So, my favorite solution is dead in its tracks. Second, the attention deficit disordered have grown to depend on knowing what their friends and family are doing at this very second and they are perfectly happy to kill anyone in their path to have that knowledge. What's the worst thing that can happen, being prosecuted for "felony texting and driving?" That sounds slightly more serious than unpaid parking tickets.

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.

Highway IQ

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benchmarks and Standards and Mortality

I'm lucky. Mostly, my friends have managed to stay alive. Most of my family has been pretty healthy, outside of a few car crashes and the usual infirmities that go with passing 50 without collecting anything more than $200. I made it to 62 when I always assumed I'd die in some fiery rock & roll death or something equally painful before 30. I'm not broke. I live where I want to be living. My wife has stuck with me for 42 years and she still tolerates me. My kids don't say awful things about me to my face and they let me hang out with their kids. I can still swing a leg over a real motorcycle (although not a real dirt bike) and ride to work every half-decent day. I can even think about taking yet another idiot two-wheeled trip across some part of the country that I've never seen or want to see again.

There is nothing about any part of the above paragraph that was under my control. It's just luck that I ended up here from where I started off. Where my trip started was Dodge City, Kansas. I was born in eastern Kansas, but made it to Dodge when I was 2 and left when I was 17. Some of my family, including my parents, lived most of their lives in Dodge. "Get out of Dodge" has always had a special meaning for me. I am a bit of a connoisseur of Dodge City history, but I'm not much of a fan of the place, itself. The place has too many feedlots, packing plants, and corporate farms and too little respect for what makes a town a community. Dodge, like most of small town Midwest, is an example of what happens when lazy rich people convince hard-working middle-class and poor people to vote against their own interests.

A bit of my string of good luck came to an end this week. Sunday, my father died and my step-mother died almost a year ago, making my father a widower twice. Dad was almost 90 and had been pretty miserable for almost a decade. He'd survived a heart attack when he was 60-something and cancer around the same time, but surviving wasn't the same as thriving. He was incredibly active until his mid-60's and by the time he was 80 he was tied to an oxygen tank and more-or-less housebound.

Only the fact that he wasn't able to play tennis, first, and golf, finally, bother him about being stuck in Dodge. WWII was all the traveling and adventure Dad wanted to suffer. He was an LST pilot for the invasion of Italy, Normandy, and ended up venturing across the South Pacific on aircraft carriers for the end of the war. Most notably, in his mind, he and his gun crew were "famously" pictured watching a Kamikaze pilot miss their ship, the U.S.S. Petrof Bay, by a dozen feet or so and crash into the ocean. If you find that picture, zoom in and look for the dark haired young guy in officer's uniform with his mouth open. That's my father. Dad said they shot everything they had at that plane and didn't put a scratch on it. The pilot just missed a ship the size of a half-dozen football fields and missed landing on my father by a whole lot less distance.

Until he was in his 70's, Dad didn't talk about that war at all, ever. He had a chest full of Navy mementos, a few patches and medals, but it wasn't part of the world he shared with us. In fact, he didn't share all that much except his income, discipline, and humor. He loved teaching and, especially, coaching high school and he worked steady 80-90 hour work weeks doing that. He was very much the quiet, damaged war veteran that gets a bit more attention today and was expected to man-up and rejoin society without a hitch or complaint in 1946.

In 1966, I became a Vietnam War protester and we found ourselves permanently on opposite sides of politics. He could not understand my opposition to all-things-Johnson-and-Nixon and I was mystified by his disinterest in the foundations of that invasion. When he began to talk about his WWII experience, his loyalty to chicken-hawks became even more mystical when I learned that he was a dedicated non-combatant and only volunteered for Navy service with the personal and declared condition that he would never shoot at another man. The men who ran the guns under his "command" were completely in charge of what they shot at because he never ordered anyone to "fire." He just tried to keep them safe and supplied.

With that background, you might have some idea why he always asked, "What did I do to raise such an idiot son?" Whenever I took off on some harebrained motorcycle adventure, he was convinced that I had lost what few marbles he'd managed to pass to my collection of genes. He wasn't any more in favor of--or understanding of--my backpacking, ocean kayaking, bicycle racing, or the places I chose to live (especially California). He wanted to be as far from "excitement" as he could get and Dodge was definitely a place like that; outside of occasional tornadoes and flooding.

When he was hospitalized for cancer, Dad lost enough of his eyesight that he was unable to read normal and oversized print. I bought him books on tape from one of my favorite authors, David Halberstam, about one of Dad's favorite subjects, baseball; Summer of '49 and October 1964. Dad loved the Yankees his whole life, especially the Mantle/Maris Yankees. He barely listened to either books because he was so upset that Halberstam chose to print the uncensored language of the players. He was especially disappointed with Mickey Mantle.

Being the Midwestern-guilt ridden son that I am, I've always had my father and his morals and his personal standards in the front and back of my mind. Hard to believe, I know. My writing laptop's desktop picture has a collection of my whacked hobbies and the motto, "Write as though everyone you know is dead." It's an attempt to free myself from the constraints of disappointing those who love me; mostly my father. All of my favorite writers have, most likely, disappointed their parents with their subjects and language. It's almost a requirement for anyone who makes any kind of attempt to accurately reproduce or create believable characters.

Dad's reaction to Halberstam and Mantle made a mark on me. I have at least 3 books almost to the easy-to-finish stage that I've abandoned because I couldn't write them with Midwest Methodist censorship standards and couldn't stand the idea of re-writing them with that constraint. So, consider this fair warning. While everyone I love is far from dead, the one who influenced what self-censorship I obeyed is gone. It could get pretty honest from here on.

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 Not?

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

"I have attention deficit disorder. Can I ride a motorcycle?"

Sure, why not.

"Will I be safe in freeway traffic?"

Probably not. I expect you'll get killed or maimed in your first week in traffic.

"That's not fair"

You have attention deficit disorder. Motorcycling is a high concentration activity. Get used to it. Life is like that. In fact, nature intended life to be only for the fit.

"I have dyslexia, can I ride a motorcycle?"

"I weigh 400 pounds and can barely lift a coffee cup with out experiencing chest pains, can I ride a motorcycle?"

"I am blind in one eye and can't see out of the other, can I ride a motorcycle?"

"My little (22 year old) boy is dumb as a post, irresponsible, and couldn't find his own nose with a 1x12, should I buy him a motorcycle?"

Sure, why not? All of you should take out a second mortgage and buy the biggest, ugliest hippobike you can find. Slap some loud pipes on it, for safety's sake, and slip that big monster into heavy traffic. Do your bit to solve overpopulation. Why not?

We live in a victim-based, entitlement-sheltered, litigious culture where everyone is not only "created equal" but where many believe the legal system can overrule the laws of physics and common sense. My home state once attempted to legislate pi to 3.00 (actually, 3 without decimal places to keep the concept simple), for convenience and orderly-ness sake. Pi, however, remained its unruly self and the universe remained inconveniently hostile to simple minds. The universe is a really big place and, in the overall scheme of it, we're insignificant as a planet, of no notable consequence as a species, and totally non-existent as motorcyclists. We can make all the dumbass laws we want without making the slightest dent in the effects of gravity, velocity, mass, acceleration and deceleration, centripetal forces, entropy, or mortality.

Outside of being a tiny part of a really big picture, the problem with a motorcycle is that, regardless of our distaste for the inconvenience, a motorcycle will remain a two-wheeled vehicle with minimal safety features and a high skill requirement. You can be dyslexic, ADD-afflicted, uncoordinated, physically incapacitated, and a total moron and public transportation can, probably, still help you to your intended destination. At the least, a cage will surround you in a shock-absorbent, crash enclosure that will probably shield you from your inabilities and indiscretions. A motorcycle will spit you off, fling you into fast moving traffic, and--if you time it carefully--add insult to injury by landing on top of you after other obstacles have had their way with your mangled body.

Even if you are in the prime of life, at the peak of human capacity and a nuclear-physicist-brain-surgery-performing-rocket-scientist, a motorcycle, Murphy, and Mother Nature can still find a way to maim or annihilate you. If astronaut John Glenn can practically kill himself stepping out of a shower, zipping down the highway on two wheels at 100 feet-per-second has to be pushing the limits of reasonable activities. Of course, that also applies to flying an airplane, hang gliding, sky and scuba diving, bicycling, playing most sports, running, climbing or descending stairs, jumping rope, and talking about religion, love, or politics in public.

Many high risk activities have restrictive entry requirements. To rent or fill scuba tanks, for example, you have to successfully complete accredited scuba diving training. Before you're allowed to jump out of an airplane, you have to suffer through hours of closely monitored instruction. Motorcycling is less carefully controlled. Like getting a driver's license, the state's licensing program is designed to hand out certifications in Cracker Jack boxes. If you can't meet the current requirements for getting a motorcycle license, you might not be safe outside of a padded room.

Regardless of the state's low standards of acceptance, we humans ought to exercise a little uncommon sense. If your legs are broken, don't run marathons. If you're blind, don't waste your money on computer aided design college classes. If you can't sing, don't expect Simon Whatshisface to say nice things about your voice. If you aren't physically and mentally able to deal with the demands of managing a motorcycle in heavy traffic, if you can't control your panic reactions, if you don't have the self-discipline to constantly work on your riding skills, stay away from motorcycles. Yes, you can "ride" all of the motorcycle video games you like, but don't touch real iron. You'll create even more enemies for an otherwise perfectly useful mode of transportation. You'll add to our already miserable statistics. You'll get killed. We'll end up with more moronic laws, more employment for useless lawyers, and you'll still be dead.

I've changed my mind. No, you can't ride a motorcycle.

Doin' the Right Thing

My step-mother died last week, on a cold Saturday afternoon, in western Kansas, at age 78, after a long illness which she nearly wore out (She managed to survive almost 20 years with a vicious respiratory bacteria that was supposed to take her down in five.). Her death has affected me in ways I would not have anticipated.

You can't be near death without thinking about mortality; your own and that of your friends and family. When you are thinking about mortality and the meaning of life, others notice and you end up in conversations that are a ways outside of the usual small talk. For instance, after offering condolences, two of the guys I work with began talking about the death and deterioration of their own family members. After a bit, the topic landed on Alzheimer's and the effects they had witnessed.

A grandfather who went slowly into dementia: at first, he had trouble recognizing his grandson when he would visit. Later, he didn't recognize him at all. He'd try to hide it by quickly entering into casual conversation, "What kinda car are you driving now?" He'd go on about cars, the weather, and such until, finally, his curiosity got the better of him and he'd ask, "So who are you, sonny?"

"I'm your grandson. I'm Scotty, Bill's kid."

"Oh. Hmmm. So what kinda car are you driving now."

And back around the loop he would go until, he'd ask for the identification of his visitor, followed by another car inquiry.

An aunt went into dementia angrily. When she first began to lose her memory and current status consciousness, she thought people were playing tricks on her. She'd accuse whoever was closest of moving her things, of turning on or off lights behind her, and, later, of putting drugs in her food so that she'd pass out and lose track of days and weeks. Eventually, she settled into a sullen, constant scowl and barely snarled at old friends and family who would visit. In the end, she was a catatonic who looked out at the world with an expression that was pure hate.

The three of us decided we don't want to go like that. To lighten up the conversation, we each picked a final exit strategy. The guy with the forgetful grandfather wants to die in his sleep. The guy with the cranky aunt decided he'd rather die awake, but in bed with someone half his age. I've had a favorite Colorado mountain hairpin turn, edged by a several thousand foot drop, picked out for my final missed corner since sometime in the mid-1990s.

Sinking into our individual foul moods, we jabbered on for a while about how disappointing it is to be getting old and creaky. Someone made a crack about aging drivers and their vanishing skills and how that solves a lot of "how do I want to die" questions. One of us mentioned the notion that a lot of wrinkling Baby Boomers seem to be finding ways to end up on a slab after trying out some X-games style sport or machinery.

I sort of bailed out of the conversation at that point and started meditating on my own experience with aging characters in my MSF classes. I remembered seeing some recent weird statistics that indicated that twenty-five and under males have almost exactly the same disdain for safety equipment as do the sixty-and-over geezer crowd. Both groups "rarely wear" helmets or upper or lower body armored riding gear and have some strong opinions about those who do.

It suddenly struck me that I've been bashing a fine old American company for doing a public service. They cater to a specialized crowd of aging folks who have an image to project and self-image to preserve, right up the final moment of life. Like my friends, they don't want to die drooling on themselves in a wheelchair. They want to go out in a bang! With their marketing and their products, Harley Davidson has been trying to serve the most precious interests of their special market and I've been knocking them for their effort.

I officially apologize for the misunderstanding.