VBR 5 and Me

A while back, Andy Goldfine invited me to be a guest storyteller at the 5th Very Boring Rally (Aerostich’s 40th anniversary). I have had a long, enlightening, and valuable friendship, first with Aerostich, and, after I moved to MN in 1996, with Andy. I bought my first ‘Stich gear in 1983, after moving to California from Minnesota. I wore that suit until I replaced it with a Darien in 2008, not long before I rode my V-Strom to Alaska. Mostly from when I moved to Minnesota, my collection of ‘Stich gear has grown steadily and every product I purchased from the company exceeded my expectations along with the company’s legendary customer service.

I was the first speaker in the VBR5 series and I didn’t have high expectations for a turnout. Andy and his marketing team must have over-hyped me substantially; or the draw of a free lunch overcame a fair number of motorcyclists’ better judgement. We had a nice crowd of about 15 rider/spectators and nobody threw tomatoes or other produce at me. Some disagreements, especially on the AGAT propaganda, but I’m used to that.

The industry has changed a lot since my first experience with a Roadcrafter and US motorcycling is either in serious decline or at a moment of serious change. In 2022, Honda sold 17M+ and a peak of 22M unit/motorcycles in 2018 worldwide, but on 32,000 of those in 2022 were US sales (0.19% of total motorcycle sales). When the US motorcycle market crashed in 2007, the worst year of the US recession only amounted to about a 0.05% drop in world motorcycle sales. The average age of a US motorcyclist has increased nearly one year each year for the past couple of decades. When the Hardly/chopper Boomer boom ends, which will be damned soon, something is going to pop. With the insane public costs of motorcycle crashes “the GAO further found that motorcycle crashes’ total direct measurable costs were approximately $16 billion.” The fact that the total USA motorcycle market had an estimated 2022 revenue of $6.24b USD out to be a total wakeup call for the public who foot the bulk of that $10B in totally unjustified taxpayer expense. If you add up the drunk riders, the unlicensed riders, the reckless riders, the unprotected riders, and the uninsured (medical and/or vehicle) riders, you are looking at a responsibility-free recreational vehicle that is ripe for recreational vehicle status and a public road banishment.

There is, finally, the beginnings of a couple of responsible motorcyclist organizations; since the AMA vacated that for the marketing riches of being nothing more than an industry spokesbabbler. Stupid crap like this Rick Gray side-stepping shuffle-dance (https://www.nonoise.org/resource/trans/highway/motorcycles/ama.htm) is typical of the AMA’s uselessness. However, both Andy’s Ride to Work Day campaign and SMARTER (Skilled Motorcyclist Association–Responsible, Trained, and Educated Riders) are trying to bring motorcycling as a reasonable transportation alternative, along with the responsibilities associated with that privilege, up front and personally. It might be too little, too late but it’s also better late than never time.

The Things We Get Used To

I am a lurker with a bunch of local motorcycle guys who pass on rumors and facts about motorcycles and motorcycling. The latest batch of bqack-and-forth was about Hardly’s LiveWire sales; or lack of sales (569 motorcycles last year). Yesterday’s conversation was punctuated with a quote, “At highway speeds, no real motorcycle gets more than 100 miles of range.”

I figured that the WebBikeWorld.com scribbler must have been talking about EV “real motorcycles?” Motorcycle repeaters just seem to become dumber and less literate every decade. I know at least one Zero owner who would disagree with that claim. He commutes 140 miles from the mountain desert to San Clemency several times a week on a 2020 Zero somethingorother. (Don’t know the model.) That rider was pretty jazzed about fuel savings, and bragged about it often, until his electric bills went through the ceiling in the last year. You’d think everyone in southern California would be powering their homes/vehicles with solar, but I guess not.

At least from my fixed-income and old fart vantage point, the price of EV vehicles is still an overwhelming obstacle for most everyone but the idle rich. But that is kind of true for motorcycles over 650cc in general. For example, the 80hp LiveWire S2 at $15k is their “cheap” EV bike, while $30k for the LiveWire One was priced for Jay Leno and his buddies.

As a reference bike that I might consider (if I were a decade younger), at about $12k Suzuki’s 2023 V-Strom 800DE is packed with features, 85hp, a 280 mile range, a Quickshifter, ABS (switchable), three riding performance modes, four traction-control settings, and low RPM assist. Comparing that to the LiveWire S2 still seems like a no-brainer. In every important category, except carbon emissions, the ICE bike wins.

But that is not the point of this rant. To me, $12,000 seems like a LOT of money for a motorcycle. $30,000 is an insane amount of money to spend on a freakin’ toy. And, for 99.99…% of motorcyclists, a motorcycle it’s used so rarely it barely qualifies as a toy.

I’m still stuck where any motorcycle costing more than $3k is “too expensive.” Since 1982, all 10 of my street bikes have cost less than $3,000 (most were under $2k) and, while they were all “used,” most of the were barely broken in after 2-10 years with their original owners. Granted, my current motorcycle is a 2012 250cc “beginner’s bike” that had 700 of climate-controlled-garage-stored miles on the odometer after 10 years with the original owner and the TU250X wasn’t expensive new ($4,100). Before my street bike period, all of my dirt bikes cost less than $1100, with a brand new Suzuki RL250 being the most expensive of the bunch (at $1100 in 1974) and the rest costing less than $500, including a new 1974 Rickman ISDT125 and my wife’s new 1975 Yamaha MX100. Those were my first and only new motorcycles and I’d been riding for a decade before that.

My most expensive car, so far, as been $9000 (a used 1988 Nissan Pathfinder in 1994 and our current 2012 Honda CRV). Most of my cars have been under-$2500 beaters and lots of them were under-$500 60’s and 70’s VW Beatles. The most I’ve ever paid for a freakin’ house was $104k in 1997 and our current home cost $88k in 2015 (a repo bank sale by the dumbest bank in recent US history, Wells Fargo). Any vehicle that costs a significant percentage of a house is nuts. But a motorcycle? Not even if I had Keanu Reeve’s money or Leno’s.

eBikes, Mopeds, and Motorcycles: Is There A Difference?

eBikes (“e-bikes”?) are becoming the most dangerous vehicle on the road, despite eBikers claim that bicycles and eBikes are not “vehicles.” Hint: if you are not walking and you are moving you are in or on a “vehicle.” "noun: vehicle; plural noun: vehicles 1. a thing used for transporting people or goods, especially on land, such as a car, truck, or cart." A bicycle/eBike is definitely “a thing” and even if you are just moving about recreationally you are being transported. This is, perhaps, the dumbest aspect of eBike promoters argument against regulating and licensing eBikes. If you like dumb arguments, you’ll love this doofus: Bolton Bikes.

If you’ve stuck with me for a while, you’ll know I think motorcycle licensing in the US is idiotic. And by that I mean any idiot with $13 and bare-minimal skills can get a motorcycle endorsement and, based on local traffic, I’d say every idiot in Minnesota has a motorcycle endorsement.

eBikes: Federal law in HB 727, a 2002 law enacted by Congress, defines an electric bicycle as “A two- or three-wheeled vehicle with fully operable pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts (1 h.p.), whose maximum speed on a paved level surface, when powered solely by such a motor while ridden by an operator who weighs 170 pounds, is less than 20 mph.” Most states adopted that definition of eBikes and most also adopted the federal park regulation that allowed eBikes fitting that description access to bicycle trails and bike lanes. In some states, eBikes are excluded from the legal definition of “motor vehicles.” That, mostly, is for the purpose of minimizing licensing requirements.

State bicycle/eBike helmet laws are inconsistent, irrational, and unequally enforced. If there are bike helmet requirements, most likely they will only be applied to whatever the state decides are “children.”

Mopeds: Mopeds are probably the most misleading named vehicle on the planet today. A moped is legally defined as "[a] vehicle that has two or three wheels, no external shifting device, and a motor that does not exceed 50 cubic centimeters piston displacement and cannot propel the vehicle at a speed greater than 30 miles per hour on a level surface." You’ll notice, I hope, that nothing is mentioned about pedals in the moped description. A zillion years ago, mopeds were mostly bicycles people had stuck un-muffled 2-stroke motors to, leaving the pedals to fool lazy cops (as if there is another kind?) and piss off as many pedestrians, neighbors, and property owners as possible. State laws about mopeds are all over the place. Some states require a license plate and motorcycle endorsement for any vehicle that meets the definition of moped and above (anything not legally a bicycle or eBike) and some states only require a license for under-16 or under-18-year-old riders. Most “mopeds” are just small (50cc/under-30mph) scooters. Moped horsepower definitions vary by state from anything over 1 h.p. to 5 h.p. Some states (Colorado, for example) have a weird undefined area between 750W and “4,476 watts for electric motors” (6 h.p.) where the vehicle is neither an eBike or a moped. I can’t imagine what kind of nutjobs wrote those laws, but I’ve pretty much given up on at least half of the fools in this country so I’m not inconvenienced.

Likewise, helmet requirements are all over the place for mopeds. Like motorcycles, there is no rationale behind moped helmet laws. Most states require helmets for 18-and-under, but states like Minnesota rarely bother to enforce those laws (or any other laws that don’t get cops into non-white people business).

Motorcycles: Motorcycles are pretty much everything else, including some 3-wheeled vehicles, like the Polaris Slingshot and Can-Am Spyder, that are “motorcycles” because that is how the manufacturers slithered past car safety regulations. The lesson there is “If you don’t care how many of your customers you kill, call your vehicle a 'motorcycle.’” The Bolton goober claims there “are no horsepower limits on motorcycles.” Of course, he’s about as useful a source as I am on particle physics. In 2010, the EU limited production motorcycles to 100 h.p. for a while, then changed its little mind in 2015 and reversed that ruling. France didn’t follow the EU in going back to unlimited horsepower and maximum road hazard until late 2016. US DOT restrictions indirectly limit production bike horsepower with emissions, noise, and safety restrictions. Of course our lazy local policing allows bikers to circumvent federal and state regulations because so many of the so-called “law enforcement” gangsters are also biker gangbangers. The one thing cops really hate are laws that apply to themselves.

It is fair to say that anything that isn’t either a bicycle (or legal eBike) or a moped is a motorcycle; regardless of if it is a scooter, an electric two-or-three-wheel vehicle, has or doesn’t have pedals, or is a custom one-off or production vehicle. The definitions of these three vehicles are solely determined by powered speed limits and horsepower/watts. Any attempt to cloud those definitions are nothing more that blown smoke and any policing fooled by that smoke isn’t worth the price of a badge or public support.

Motorcycle helmet laws have been under siege by the very people they are designed to protect, in practically every country. As I speculated a while back, the only real argument for not wearing a helmet is a childish desire to be recognized as a biker. In 1966, the federal government offered highway funding incentives for states to enact helmet laws. (Eeek! Social engineering!) Regardless of the look-at-me! crowd delusions, the evidence for reduced serious motorcycle injury and death with helmet use is overwhelming. However, helmet laws have been under attack by the AMA and ABATE and other biker disorganizations from the start and, somehow, the AMA convinced our congresscritters to repeal the federal incentives in 1975. At that time, California (believe it or not) was the only state not to have a mandatory helmet law. Today, only 19 states have mandatory universal helmet laws. Oddly, California is one of ‘em.

Some stats about motorcycle riders, helmet use, and motorcycle crash data are . . . interesting. The average age of motorcyclists is somewhere between 51 and 56, depending on who’s data you’re believing this week. In 1980, the average age was 27. 19% of riders are women, compared to 6% in 1980. 3% of motorcycle deaths “are attributed to women” and 93% of motorcycle passenger deaths are women. (No surprises there.) “Mothers don’t let your baby girls grow up to be biker chicks?”

The point of this essay was to try and clarify the very clear lines between eBikes and the rest of motorized two-wheeled transportation. A surprise, to me, was that the line between mopeds and motorcycles is so sloppy.

Are You A Risk Taker or Just a Moron?

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Thomas W. Day

During an Experienced Rider class late in 2014, my group of smarter-than-typical riders seriously discussed motorcycle gear, riding fast on public streets, and taking risks. The only barely-competent guy in this normal group commented, "If you're not going fast you're not riding." His bike of choice was a classically overweight, underpowered, unmaneuverable hippobike, so I had to assume that his version of "going fast" would be less-than-impressive, outside of his noise output. Still his comment inspired one of the other riders to say, "Watching my kids bang around the house reminded me that I was no longer made out of magic and rubber and I gave up serious off-road racing when I turned 30." The "magic and rubber" comment really stuck with me. 
 
As my wife and I were near the end zone of getting our house in Little Canada emptied out and ready for sale, I took a walk around our old neighborhood. On the way back home, I flashed back to a decade ago when my grandson was in the early stages of learning how to ride a bicycle. One afternoon after riding to our neighborhood playground he was "racing" me back home when he target-fixated on a group of mailboxes and plowed into them pretty close to full speed. He was, of course, helmeted, gloved, and wearing a little protective padding. I wasn't far behind him and after I'd checked him over, determining that he had nothing more than a big scare and a few scratches, we rode the rest of the way home fairly subdued. While we were putting up the bikes and gear, we had another talk about where you look when you're riding a bicycle: "look where you want to go, not where you don't want to go." In what seemed to me like a few minutes, he'd gone from scared and crying to having forgotten about the crash altogether. The next time we rode to the park, he was back to racing me and every trip after that was uneventful. If I had that same crash I'd probably still be in a wheelchair and scarred for life; helmet or not.
 
Thinking about that crash reminded me of the series of horrific crashes Garry McCoy demonstrated for the movie "Faster." 

McCoy did not get away harmlessly when he crashed. Between 1998 and 2010, when McCoy finally retired from racing, Garry broke an ankle and a wrist and spent more time than any sane person flying through the air with pieces of his motorcycles scattering in the winds. When McCoy crashed, he crashed spectacularly. But he raced at a world championship level for 18 years and even when he didn't run with the fastest guys he was always fast and fun to watch. Racers know that old saying about motorcycling, "there are riders who have crashed and riders who will crash" is a fact. If they've been riding near their limits for any time at all, they've already joined the "riders who have crashed" group, more than once. 
 
Once you've done the "flying through the air" thing, you will become far more familiar with the risk involved in riding a motorcycle. Even if you're properly geared up, AGAT from head-to-toe, you'll most likely still be sore the next day and more aware of how slight the margin between seriously broken and almost broken can be. When my grandson crashed his bicycle all I could think about for a few hours was how easily his crash could have been something awful for him and our family. Some of that was due to my own familiarity with crash consequences. In various off-road racing incidents I've broken all of the toes on my left foot, all of my left side and several of the right side ribs, a couple of fingers, and both clavicles (one on a bicycle). Not one of the crashes that resulted in busted body parts was even close to being one of my most spectacular endos. Just a little bit of bad luck and/or poor timing turned what could have been nothing but a good story into a few months of painful recovery. 
 
When I see riders wobbling down public roads in their "biker underwear" (any outfit that doesn't qualify as AGAT), oblivious to the risk they are taking and the possible consequences of that risk, I'm reminded of my wife's observation, "They're having fun now." It's not difficult to imagine how quickly that fun can turn into disaster. I've seen what happens when skin meets asphalt at speed. It's ugly, painful, and a little disgusting. I've seen a skull turned into something more like a poorly shaped pillow that sagged weirdly into the road. I've crashed my bicycles at 2-25mph, wearing the usual bicycle "gear" and left a whole lot of myself on the road or trail. Even when the road rash barely breaks the skin, if there is enough of it it still hurts a lot and for a surprisingly long time. 
 
Motorcycling is risky. So, it's fair to say that every time we gear up and swing a leg over a motorcycle, we're assuming risk. With that assumption, it's also fair to say that every time we swing an unprotected leg over a motorcycle we're acting stupidly and pretending the road isn't hard and unforgiving, that mechanical parts don't fail unexpectedly, and that we're unlikely to make a stupid mistake that could result in a crash. There is also the less likely possibility that someone else will do something stupid and crash into us. So, motorcycling without taking the barely-reasonable precautions of going AGAT and being sure our skills are sufficient for the machine we've picked is clearly stupid. So, before you open the garage door and roll your machine into the driveway, I'd recommend asking yourself, "Am I a risk taker or just a moron?"

What We Don't Get

This winter, my wife and I took a cruise to Central America. While we were exploring Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, I found this flyer on a park bench. Practically every place we went I saw motorcycles that I've never seen before. All of those cool sub-500cc bikes that I've lusted after when I read British or Euro motorcycle magazines and stuff I didn't know existed. My wife got more than a little tired waiting for me to take pictures, ask questions, and ogle motorcycles.

I guess Katana is a ROW Suzuki label? There are so many models on this sheet that I'd like to test ride that I'm thinking a winter in Costa Rica writing about local motorcycles might be next year's plan.

For me, the CR-1, CRM, SMX-200, SM-200, CR5 250, SX2-250, CR6 300, and EN-125 all look aimed right at my target zone.

Costa Rica has great roads, paved and unpaved, amazing destinations, wonderful food, and incredibly friendly people and NO WINTER. I might have played out my interest in living through winters that get colder than 30-40F. I could see taking a couple of winters to explore the places we visited on our cruise.

We've never done anything like the cruise before. Hell, other than Mexico and Canada we've never traveled together outside of the US; most west of the Mississippi. The upside is that all forms of travel could be experienced on a cruise: from ocean liners to mini-taxis to trains and ziplines. The downside is the ship never stops at a port for more than a day, usually 8 hours of less. You don't get to know a place much in that little time, but we did learn that we love those islands, Aruba and Carsou, and the highlands of Panama and Costa Rica.

My Weird Audience

It has become discouragingly obvious that my life goal of having 1,000,000 views on this blog is going to take longer than I'm likely to live. A friend recently asked me, "How do you attract readers to a blog?"

My answer was obviously, "How the hell would I know? I've been writing three blogs since the beginning of this century. Cat videos on YouTube get more hits in a day or two than I've managed in almost two decades." Whine, whine, wimper, wimper, and so on.

Looking at the stats here, there are some surprises. I am amazed that my most visited review was the one of the Yamaha XT350 and #2 was the TU250X review. The XT350 hasn't been in production for years and Suzuki's TU250X was pretty much a bust, sales-wise. I'm really happy to have drawn almost 20,000 people to the Aerostich Darien review, because that is a product that I will always be glad I've owned and recommend the suit and the company to anyone who asks. The friendships that developed from my MMM and Aerostich experience are some of the best things that has come from living in Minnesota and 20 years of writing about motorcycles and the people involved in motorcycling.

61,402 Russian pageviews is either confusing or disturbing; mostly the 2nd. Am I getting hacked? Are there secret messages slipped into my blog convincing you to vote for Trump/Putin and buy a Harley? Everyone else, I'm glad you're here and thanks for reading my words. I am really grateful for the half-million views from my US friends.

About three years ago, I could see the handwriting on Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly's diminishing page count and wrote a piece that I thought sounded the end for the Geezer with A Grudge. Looking back at what I've written between then and now, I'm sort of amazed that I've kept on keeping on. The feedback I've had from you, the fearless readers and riders, keeps me in subject matter and I really appreciate that. I have essays scheduled out to, at least, early 2020 without me having to write another word. Three years ago, I figured that would be enough. "Surprise, surprise," as a goofy American TV character used to say (you're old if you know who).

Motorcycle Economics

If you are a Minnesota motorcyclist, this is a heartbreaking, eye-opening wake-up call. When I moved to Minnesota, in 1996, the Hitching Post stores were the place for practically every motorcycle brand I am likely to own. The Hitching Post offered group rides for the Big Four Japanese brands every year where a rider could actually put a few miles on a bike Their service department was, at one time, pretty good (that’s the best I can say for any dealer service department). Some of their sales people were motorcyclists. Mostly, the HP stores were distributed all over the Cities and represented the motorcycle economy in our area. Now, they are gone.

Lots of that sort of thing is going on all over the country. Early this year, Polaris decided “to focus on Indian and the Slingshot” and closed down the Victory brand. Personally, I suspect Polaris is just quickly downsizing their motorcycle operation by getting rid of the largest part first. Triumph is downsizing its dealership position all over the country. Apparently, that country overestimated the demand for Triumph products. Eric Buell (EBR) gave it up one more time early this year. In the midst of the Great Recession recovery, Suzuki took the slow down opportunity to pare its dealerships by 20%. More than a few groups that had acquired facilities and brands from smaller dealer organizations gave up recently, such as Ohio’s American Heritage Motorcycles. Yamaha’s fans seem to have a better inside picture of the industry’s struggles than I get from the industry promo rags. They don’t paint a pretty picture, though. A Google search on “motorcycle dealers closing” gets you about a half-million hits with pages and pages of stories about motorcycle dealers giving up the economic ghost.

Somewhere, I read a guesstimate that if motorcycle dealers are going to survive into the next decade, they’ll have to be picked up by big pocket car dealers. Since one of my own favorite dealers used to be associated with a local car dealership, I doubt that is going to be much of a solution.

Why I Don’t Do Reviews

You might have noticed, both in the blog and in MMM, I don’t do many reviews these days. When it comes to bike reviews, MMM got tired of defending my “right” not to be impressed with everything I swung a leg over. So did I. I don’t get the opportunity, on my own, to ride many motorcycles long enough to form an opinion. Mostly, the bikes I get offered are not interesting enough for me to write about and I’m pretty satisfied with the equipment I own. So, my motivation to risk life and limb to experience something different is vanishingly small. There are, in fact, about a half-dozen new motorcycles that I’m interested in riding and the rest just don’t hold much attraction.

For example, at the last (for 2017) MN MSF instructor bike night our host brought four bikes: a KTM, the Kawasaki 300 Ninja, the Honda CB300f, and a CB500f. I sorta wanted to test ride the CB500f, but couldn’t generate enough motivation to gear up and take it out. The other three are cool bikes, but not something I’m fired up about anymore. Ten years ago, absolutely. Today, not so much. I’m old, remember? The Versys 300? Now that’s a whole different ball of string. I’d love to test that bike. I might even trade in my WR250X on the right day.

As for gear, I’ll probably still find a thing or two to try out in the next couple of years, but I have a garage full of stuff I don’t use at all or rarely use. I don’t need anything more and I’m in the process of getting rid of a lot of unused gear. Interestingly, I get a lot more inquiries about doing product reviews with sales incentives. I’m really glad I don’t need the money (I can use it, I just done need it.), because some of these characters don’t even care if I’ve ever seen their products. They just want sales links and will pay for hits and sales.

So, bike and product reviews are mostly (or entirely) in my rearview mirror. I had fun with some of those motorcycle experiences and was flatout miserable on a couple. (Remember the Hyosung GV650 or the Honda VT1300CT?) I’m glad I had the experiences and I’m satisfied with having done as much of it as I wanted to do.

Foolish Motorcycle Stuff

The stock market gurus, the Motley Fool, had some foolish motorcycle statistics on their website in March. The title is a typically Wall Street puffed-up piece pretending to be a big surprise and delivering a little wisp of new information. It’s interesting to see some of what outsiders consider to be surprising, though.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/05/7-motorcycle-statistics-thatll-floor-you.aspx

12 Motorcycle Statistics That'll Floor You

The facts that explain the changing face of the motorcycle industry and those who support it. Motorcycles have come a long way since 1885, when Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the first one in Germany. Called the reitwagen, or riding car, its engine had 0.5 horsepower and a top speed of 11 kilometers per hour. Fourteen years later, the first production bike was made by Hildebrand and Wolfmuller featuring a two-cylinder engine that produced 2.5 horsepower and topped out at 45 kph.

Today's motorcycles are obviously more powerful iron horses. Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG) recently unveiled its new Milwaukee-Eight engine that, on the 114 cubic inch high-end model model, has four valves per head and produces over 100 horsepower.

The industry has grown over the past 132 years serving a much more diverse crowd of riding enthusiasts. Although bike makers have struggled to recover from the financial-market meltdown a decade ago, here are 13 additional facts from the Motorcycle Industry Council that will blow you away.

1. Sales gains are fleeting. There were 573,000 new motorcycles sold in 2015, up slightly from the prior year, but sales are expected to have declined around 2.1% in 2016.

2. Harley is still hogging sales. Harley-Davidson accounted for 29.3% of all new motorcycle sales in the U.S. in 2015, followed by Honda Motors at 14%, and Yamaha at 13%. Polaris Industries (NYSE:PII) represented just 4.4% of total sales that year with its Indian and Victory brands. Yet Harley reported at the end of January, and 2016 U.S. sales fell 3.9% and were down globally 1.6%. Polaris, on the other hand, said its sales were up 1%, with Indian Motorcycle enjoying mid-20% growth.

3. Gang of eight. Eight manufacturers represented 81% of all U.S sales in 2015. In addition to the four manufacturers above, Kawasaki, KTM, Suzuki, and BMW round out the list.

4. Going back to Cali. California had the most new motorcycle sales, at 78,610, or 13.7% of the total. The next closest state was Florida, at 41,720, followed by Texas, with 41,420 new bikes sold. Despite being home to the annual motorcycle pilgrimage of Sturgis, South Dakota sold only 2,620 new bikes in 2015. Two motorcycle riders on wide open road IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

5. Wide open spaces. Even though California topped all states in new bike sales, because it is also the most populous state, its sales work out to just 2.9 bikes per 100, below the national average of 3.2 bikes per 100 people. Wyoming, with 7.0 motorcycles per 100 people, has the most. As a result, there are fewer bikes in the east, with 2.9 per 100, and most in the midwest, with 3.4.

6. Changing makeup of riders. Women represented 14% of all motorcycle owners in 2014, up from 6% in 1990 and 10% in 2009. It may be one of the most telling figures in why Harley is struggling; its core customer of middle-aged males has fallen from 94% of the motorcycle-owning population in 2009 to 86% in 2014. It's also part of the reason Harley introduced its Street 500 and 750 models, and Polaris came out with its Scout and Scout Sixty models to appeal to these riders newer to the market. However, IHS Automotive data says Harley-Davidson still has a 60.2% share of women riders.

7. A graying market. The median age of the typical motorcycle owner is 47, up from 32 in 1990 and 40 in 2009. And although its sales are slipping, Harley maintains a 55.1% share of the 35 and older male rider demographic. However, more troubling for the industry is the decline in riders under 18, which has fallen from 8% in 1990 to 2%, and those between 18 and 24 from 16% of the total down to 6%. Where will the new bike buyers come from if the industry is not attracting these younger people?

8. The great escape. Married riders comprise 61% of motorcycle owners, up from 57% in 1990.

9. Becoming a wealthy pursuit. Some 24% of motorcycle owner households earned between $50,000 and $74,999 in 2014, and as much as 65% earned $50,000 or more. The the median household income was $62,200.

10. And well-educated. 72% of motorcycle owners have received at least some college or post-graduate education, and almost as many (71%) were employed. Some 15% were retired.

11. Most weren't off-roading. Of all the new motorcycles sold in the U.S. in 2015, 74% were on-highway bikes, and the 8.4 million motorcycles that were registered in U.S. the year before was more than double the number in 1990. Motorcycles, in fact, represented 3% of total vehicle registrations.

12. Motorcycles do their part. The motorcycle industry contributed $24.1 billion in economic value in 2015 via sales, services, state taxes paid, and licensing fees, and it employed 81,567 people.

AUTHOR Rich Duprey Rich Duprey (TMFCop) Rich has been a Fool since 1998 and writing for the site since 2004. After 20 years of patrolling the mean streets of suburbia, he hung up his badge and gun to take up a pen full time.

Miles and Miles to Travel (1994)

[Long before there was a GWAG and a Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, I wrote all sorts of articles on spec for a variety of magazines and industry rags. This was an 1994 article I wrote for Rider Magazine.  I had it sold to the magazine, before I ever bought a trip map, I thought.  After it was all whipped together, I discovered my editor was gone and the magazine wasn't accepting any more trip articles. Bummer. Still, I made the trip, got paid an advance, and had an adventure. The article was published in a TDM Owners Magazine that year and stayed at the top of the web hit list for a decade.]
 
Introduction
Three years ago I met the bike of my dreams. I figure that a few years before then, some Yamaha engineers got together in some muddy stream and said, "We need to do something for Tom Day. We have built a bike for almost everyone in America, but we haven’t done anything for Tom since the mid-1970’s. We took dirt bikes away from him when we jacked the seat heights to six feet. We even built the Virago for Elvis and he’s been dead for 20 years! Let’s make a Thomas William Day bike, OK?" They did, but they screwed it up and called it the TDM, instead of the TWD. Jingoish, I guess. 

I can live with that. It took me two years to break down and buy a TDM and by then dealers were practically giving them away; especially the really cool--and red--1992 version. I’m sorry I wasted those first two years. I’m getting old and losing two years of fun wouldn’t have been worth the $3,000 I saved. I lost that much on my IRA’s in the stock market during those years. 

This year’s vacation could have been a lazy plane ride to Seattle and a week hanging out with friends, but I own a TDM! I planned a trip that would prove to the world what a terrific bike Yamaha had made for me. I would do a 1,600 mile freeway blitz to Seattle and a meandering return trip that would take me over freeway, two lane asphalt, dirt roads and dirt trails. I hoped to travel every kind of road surface in the U.S. of A. I was convinced that the TDM was a cross country dirt bike disguised as a mid-life crisis crotch rocket. 

I added a few personal touches that I wanted to test on a long trip. Because of a hand freezing problem a few months earlier, I attached Acerbis’ Rally Hand Guards to my bars. Clearview Shields (Golden, CO) built me a prototype of the TDM shield he is planning to market. Kerker pipes came with the bike when I bought it and I left them on, since they saved me about 30 pounds over the stock pipes. They added 30dBSPL to the road noise. I hoped that ear plugs would neutralize that disadvantage. After 15 years of dirt biking, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything to add weight to the bike; even something that would save my hearing and keep my enemies list low. The bike also came with a Corbin seat. Because I hoped they would add to the bike’s handling, durability, and mileage, I put Michelin A89X and M89X radial’s on the bike. A Chase Harper tank bag and saddle bags and a Tour Master tail bag did the luggage duties. Unlike big-deal magazine editors, I had to buy most of this stuff, so I made sure it fit the tour and the bike. The added weight and wind resistance from the luggage altered the bike’s handling, but I brought enough stuff to change residence. In fact, I ended up with too much mild weather clothing and too little roasting weather stuff. 


8/10/94 Wednesday
Broke the corporate rules and only wore the top half of the dress code uniform. I came in my riding jeans and only had to dump the tie, dress shirt, dress shoes, and bad attitude to hit the road. Before I was released, I listened to every conversation, even ones that didn’t include me, for the phrase, "I guess you don’t need to hang around here anymore." I got the word at 3:00PM and was out the door 5 minutes later. My bags were packed, the bike was gassed and prepped, and I strapped on my helmet as I drove away from Hell . . . I mean "work."

Since today was our 20th anniversary, my wife and I met in Boulder for lunch. The traffic was miserable between Denver and Boulder. Bumper-to-bumper, 5mph, smog sniffing hell. My bike that can fly and I’m crawling. Almost two hours later, I arrive at the restaurant an hour late. My wife only got here 20 minutes earlier, so I’m not in trouble with a capital "T." We ate, talked, and said good-bye; anniversaries don’t get any better. 

Finally, I’m off. Sort of. I hoped to travel northwest to Montana by two lane U.S. Highway 285. Bad decision. More bumper-to-bumper slow motion. Colorado’s Front Range is as bad as southern California. People with bad hair and bad driving skills everywhere. Another hour wasted and no miles traveled. I give up just before Longmont and head for I25, which was also packed, but moving at a reasonable speed. About 10 miles from the Wyoming border, the crowd began to disperse. By Cheyenne I was on open, empty road. 

I gas up at Cheyenne and continued northwest on I25. Cheyenne is the beginning of a wonderful relationship with Montana. Good road. Fast traffic. No cops. Great scenery. People are passing me and I’m doing 95! So I go faster. Every other vehicle is a bike. Most of them are going east, the opposite direction, to Sturgis. Those guys weren't going fast, but there were a lot of them. I spent the afternoon waving so often my sleeve wore out. Most of that bunch were in trucks and pulling trailers, so no need to wave at them. Some of the non-Harley riders were traveling faster than greased Ninjas. 

Past Cheyenne, still on I25, I can see for miles. Soft rolling hills that are only fenced near the freeway. Sheep and cattle graze together. Cars and bikes smoke up the road without a black-&-white in sight. I get a miserable 37mpg for this stretch, but I make good time. For a good bit of that section, I was wrapped up in a pack of fast moving cars riding well over 110mph. I'm assuming there was at least one radar detector in the bunch, since they are all very expensive looking cars. In the rear view mirror I spotted blue and white flashing lights and, apparently, so did everyone else. In a brilliant demonstration of how perspective is everything, we all slowed down. The cop was coming on us, fast, so that was comforting, too. I didn't think to look at my speedo until he blew past us; flashing the tail lights in thanks for getting out of his way. Yep, we had "slowed down" to 95mph. Honest, it felt slow. And we ramped back up and never got close to seeing the cop again.

Thirty miles from Cheyenne the terrain turns spectacular. Nothing seems close, though. You can hang on to the throttle and still have all the time you need to enjoy the view. Huge piles of rock have heaved themselves on top of each other, to get a look at the Harley’s and the rest of us. Every Western movie I’ve ever seen must have been filmed here. I keep an eye out for smoke signals and stage bandits. 

About seventy miles southeast of Casper I pass a "Converse County" sign and 1/2 mile later a "Game Crossing" sign. I had Nike’s in my bag and wondered if they would let me play anyway? 

A few miles north of Cheyenne, the plains swell into rocky ledges that Festus and Mester Dillun would get sniped at by Native Americans (Whoa! I can be PC.) The weather is perfect, I have a full tank, and the scenery is terrific. You can smoke it here and still have time to enjoy the view. Everything is bigger and further than I’m used to, even by Colorado standards. I traveled 325 miles in my first half day of this trip and I’m beat. The TDM has been comfortable and nothing hurts, but a half work day plus the miles has done me in. 

Douglas, the home of the Wyoming state fair, is a great place with motels, hot showers, a McDonalds, and good old high school boys smoking cigarettes and sitting on pickup truck hoods. And soul music blasting out of every radio I heard ("Just Gimme Some Kind of Sign, Girl"). You probably think the Kerker’s took out my hearing and I was having an aural flashback, but I swear I heard political commercials too. I would never imagine a county treasurer ad. Nope, it was soul music, even for breakfast at the local’s downtown restaurant. Can’t beat that. 


8/11/94 Thursday
Douglas doesn’t have a grocery store that stays open late or opens before the banks. I had breakfast, hoping I could find one before I let go of my motel room, but no luck. Just one small tube of hair shampoo, that’s all I wanted. But do you think I could buy one? 

Driving across this beautiful, nearly unscarred plain, you could almost forget what a disaster humans have been to this world. The Dave Johnston Power Plant, just east of Glenrock, WY, will keep you within reality. This monster spews enough steam and smoke that you can see it for 10 miles. I though I was coming onto Long Beach, CA. I stopped to write this and a hawk screeched its way past me. Even old Dave couldn’t completely spoil this spot of Wyoming. 

At Casper, I had to decide whether to stick with my planned route or get off of the freeway. I decided for chaos. I aimed at Yellowstone by way of US Highway 2026. After blasting along with no traffic in sight for more than 100 miles, I hit the reserve tank 22 miles from Shoshoni. Nothing but desert for 22 miles and I paid $1.29 for 4.3 gallons of the most precious fluid I’ve ever bought. 

If you’re planning your urban wild life vacation, have I got the place for you. Montana has 10 people to part with and Morton has 5. Kick up your heels in Wyoming! I can’t believe AAA puts these places on the map. Dubois, on the other hand, has 985 and most of them are rich, judging by the huge log mansions, BMW’s, and Toyota 4-wheelers.
Wyoming must have half of the state employed at tearing up the highways. I sat in line waiting for them to change the guy leaning on the shovel for a total of 45 minutes in a 200 mile section of highway. Maybe that’s where all the rich folks in Dubois come from; the highway department. Our tax dollars attempting to be a work. 

The Acerbis Rally Handguards and Clearshield custom wind screen paid for themselves between Yellowstone and Bozeman. I drove through a heavy mist which progressed to a driving rain and climaxed with bullet-sized hail. I changed gloves on the move, attempting to stay out of a pack of semis following me. When I lifted my hands out of the protective cover of the handguards, my hands were pelted blue and soaked in seconds. I made the change in the Clearshield’s air pocket and was able to ignore the storm till it played out a few miles south of Bozeman. My gloves were only a little damp at the edge of the gauntlets. The windshield kept my chest and below out of the rain and I was as comfortable as possible through the storm. When I stopped at a filling station, I joined a pack of riders (mostly Harleys) who had been hiding out for the past hour. They thought I was crazy to go back out into the storm, but I was comfortable and wanted to find a motel before they filled up. 

Bozeman was a disappointment. In honor of Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), I really wanted to stay there. I suppose, equally in honor of him, Bozeman didn’t want me. Every hotel was full, except for a casino/motel that had a $200 bridal suite available. I didn’t feel that desperate. Just before giving up and finding a tree to curl up under, I found a motel at Whitehall, 60 miles west of Bozeman. I found two motels, actually, both were hidden a few miles south of I90 on state highway 2. I spent $18 and slept like a baby. 


8/12/94 Friday
The next morning I cruised though the Idaho pan handle's canyons and enjoyed the perfect, cool biking weather. I stopped at one of the "Sturgis Coffee Shops" for a free (minus donations) breakfast and got the straight stuff on the local scenic roads. I sped up when I passed a sign bragging about the Rock Falls’ "Bull Testicle Festival" ("Have a ball!"). You never know when there might be a shortage and the locals are hunting for substitutes. 

In Missoula, Montana, I met a guy on a full dress BMW K1100. He gave me some road condition advise and told me about a Flathead girlfriend who had the "perfect place to hold a martini, while she was giving him a blow job." He was visiting Misoula to see her again. Once again, I had to face the deprivation of my own life. I have never known any Flatheads and I’m never going to be rich. This guy said he always buys bikes in pairs so he can guarantee himself someone to ride with. He started riding on a pair of Kawasaki Big Horn 350’s and has progressed to a pair of BMW K1100’s. I own a pair of socks, but I don’t share them. 

At this point, I want to mention one of the high points of this trip. Since I left Colorado, I have seen one highway patrol car in nine hundred miles. That guy passed me and the pack I was trailing like we were parked; and we were doing 90mph! What a country! Who needs the Autobahn? We have 650+ miles of I25 in Wyoming.. 

For the first 800 miles of the trip, I had picked up the habit of dashing between filling stations for the first 120-140 miles at whatever speed seemed appropriate and, after I hit reserve, I mellowed out to 60-70mph; praying for a filling station. This was a dumb tactic from Casper to Yellowstone, since that cut my range to a margin that made praying a constant responsibility. But, mostly, it was the most fun way to travel. My worst mileage was 35.6mpg and my best was 44.6mpg. The worst mileage came between Coeur d'Alene and Moses Lake, Idaho, a section of flat, hot, desert where the traffic was flat out, non-stop. The best was driving down the peninsula between Hoquaim, Washington and Portland, Oregon. The scenery was so incredible there that I stopped to take pictures and wallow in the ocean every few miles, but I still smoked the territory between clear cut forest sections. Mild mannered driving and chest-on-the-tank blasting got nearly the same results, so I let nature have its way with my right hand. 

Between Coeur d'Alene and the Cascades, I didn’t stop for picture taking. You wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between that area and lots of Kansas. I liked Coeur d'Alene, but west of the lake to about ten miles of Spokane is one long, traffic congested city. It reminded me too much of L.A. and that made my head hurt. Then the desert, which also reminded me of L.A. I gotta go. I cooked in the 100+ degree desert. I stopped at every rest stop and watered myself down. I stood in the sprinkler system of one of those places and I swear I heard bacon sizzling before the water finally lowered my body temperature. The air wavered all around me and the asphalt was soft as putty. Good thing there are no corners in that 240 mile oven. 

I stopped at the Rainbow Motel in Ellensburg, Washington. Nice good motel and an experienced bike owner whom to to BS; he’s been on trips across Canada and gave me some good ideas for next year’s trip. I ate some greasy fast food before I fell asleep. 


8/13/94 Saturday
Again, I woke up later than I wanted and hit the road hungry. I’m starting to get into the habit of putting in a few miles before breakfast. It feels good to ride right out of bed and it feels even better to work up an appetite before breakfast. I stopped at North Bend, Washington, just before heading up the Cascades. I wandered around, taking in North Bend Days and listened to a killer country guitar picker for a while. Then, I hit the road with both barrels firing (You can say that when you ride a twin.). 

The 125 mile trip from North Bend to Seattle is pretty amazing. I swear, there is a spot where the freeway has desert on one side and 75 foot firs and forest on the other. The mountains leap out of nowhere and this part of the freeway is a royal blast on a bike. 

Just before I passed over a bridge and started heading up the east side of the Cascades for the last section of desert mountains, I had my one and only "incident" of the trip. I’d stopped at a "scenic viewpoint" to admire a man-made reservoir and had just enjoyed the fact that, at near sea level, my TDM could do wheelies in three gears exiting the parking lot. A few hundred feet from the exit a large dog or coyote ran onto the highway and stopped right in my path. Grabbing more than my usual two fingers full of TDM brakes, I decelerated from fast to stopped in well under a zillionth of a second. The mutt looked at me, barked, and picked another lane to scratch his ass. I crossed the bridge a little more slowly than the rest of the traffic while I shook out the dampness in my jeans. 

I rolled into Bellevue, Washington about noon and parked myself on a friend’s couch for a few hours. That night, we took in a pier-side concert, War and Tower of Power, and a lot of Seattle’s downtown sights, by car. I still loved my TDM, but I was beat. I think the desert did it. For two more days, I goofed off, played basketball, and enjoyed being away from the road. I visited the Microsoft "campus" and was depressed at the "information highway" working conditions. Very prison-like. I was hanging in my friend's office when Bill Gates and a collection of application executives came wandering through one evening close to midnight. I got to hear Bill reprimand a few millionaires for their sloppy code; line by line. In retrospect, it’s difficult to remember which parts in my memories came from Microsoft’s offices and which parts were from the "Underground Seattle" tour. By Tuesday I was ready to roll again. 


8/16/94 Tuesday
After saying goodbye and tending to a little business, I headed out of Seattle a little after noon. I planned to take the scenic route down the peninsula, after getting there by the Kingston Ferry. Bikes, as they should, get priority on the ferry. Pass the line of cars and head for the front parking slots. It’s about time someone recognized our superiority. I could ride these boats for the rest of my life. What a great boat ride and I get to take my bike! The day was clear and cloudy, at the same time. I could see Canada and the U.S. clearly. 

It’s good to be on the road again. I have no idea where I’m going or when I will get there, now. The directed part of the trip is over now and I’m on my own with only the wind and handlebars to follow. I guess I’m expected back in five more days, but I can’t think about that. I can only follow my front wheel. 

This is my first chance to see a rain forest. I could go to Canada, by ferry, or to Oregon, by road. Those are my choices, because I won’t backtrack. I’m through with freeways for a while. The tallest mountains are shrouded in clouds and rain. I can’t see detail, only hazy forms. It looks like I’m going to get wet. I should have patched the hole in my rainsuit’s crotch. 

I found some other bikers to talk to about Washington’s highway 101 and the places I should watch for. Mostly, I played tourist and enjoyed the boat ride. As the boat lined up for docking, I walked back to my bike and stuffed my gear into the bags. Since there were no pedestrians on the boat, bikes went out first. I stopped at the first station in Kingston to fill up and walked across the street to an auto parts store to buy a can of tire seal. I’d been meaning to buy that stuff for 1,6000 miles and I don’t know why I was inspired to do it then. 

It’s amazing how fast you can learn to resent the "amenities" of culture. Things like fume catchers on gas pumps, pre-paying for gas at self-service stations, cops on every corner start to eat at you till you are ready to go somewhere isolated. Kingston had that affect on me. I checked the bike over and headed for the western Washington beaches. 

Fifteen miles later, I was stuck at the Port Gamble toll bridge waiting for the "men leaning on shovels" to let me pass. There was some noise about construction in the area, but all I saw was two people with stop/slow signs and some parked trucks with shovel-leaners nearby. Twenty minutes later, we were moving again. I made it about ten miles past the bridge before I noticed an instability in the rear end of my bike. I stopped and found the rear tire was low. I rotated the wheel on the kickstand and found a leak, but no sign of a nail or anything in the hole. I pumped the tire up and took off, slowly, for a phone. 

I made it into Port Ludlow and called AAA for help. After an hour of debating with Washington’s AAA and Colorado’s AAA phone reps, I learned that Washington isn’t in the United States. They have "a different series of policies" for motorcycle coverage and I would have to pay for the tow and Colorado would reimburse me. (I’m still waiting for the reimbursement.) A really well equipped and professional driver carefully picked up the TDM and drove me to Port Townsend, where I paid $85 for a motel room on the beach. I could have picked a lot worse places to be stuck. Nice town, great view, great restaurants. 


8/17/94 Wednesday
I got to Port Townsend after the local Honda dealer had closed, but I was there before they opened in the morning. I could tell you that Port Townsend Honda & Marine was one of the high points of the trip and, if I hadn’t been forced to visit them, it could almost be true. They were professional, cool, and fun to talk to. Tom Noyes, star mechanic, let me use the opportunity to look at my bike from the bottom side to best use. I tightened bolts, checked for leaks, and fiddled around while he struggled to fix the collapsed Michelin. And struggle he did. Michelin radials are not built to fix. The inside surface is so convoluted that he had to grind at the inside of the tire for a long while. He still wasn’t happy with the smoothness of the surface and the patch didn’t seem to be sticking well. We added suspenders to the belt and put in a tube. My kickstand bolt had tossed its nut and worked its way almost off of the bike. He ground out a custom locknut and re-threaded the bolt. I bought another can of air and tire goop and hit the road about lunch time. 

I expected the trip down Highway 101 to be beautiful, unusual, and inspiring. I’ve stared at pictures of the rain forest in National Geographic's for years and was expecting the experience to be something I’d remember for the rest of my life. Sometimes it was that kind of experience, sometimes it was really depressing. So much of the forest has been clear cut that it hurt to look at the ruins. I enjoyed the remains of the forest and the beaches, but my memory of that portion of the trip is damaged by the thousands of acres of stripped clean mountains and beaches piled high with the discarded carcasses of huge fir trees. Those images pushed me to rush through a section of my trip that I had hoped would be special. 

On the other hand, the stretch of 101 to Hoquiam along the bay is incredible stuff. I passed house boats, skiers, a huge Hitachi barge, and rotting historic structures, while I swept along the edge of the ocean on a great twisting road. I didn’t stop much, but it was hard to keep my eyes on the road for the great view on both sides of the road. Since there was almost no traffic, that wasn’t a major disadvantage. 

I didn’t slow down as I passed Portland and kept running until I exhausted myself. By then, I was on the east side of the Cascades and I spent the night in Hood River, Oregon. Considering that I hadn’t started until after noon, a 500 mile day meant pretty hard traveling. At least my patched rear tire held up solidly. The other advantage to staying on the move was that I missed out on the long lines of people waiting for whatever the men-leaning-on-shovels make people wait for. There was nearly 100 miles of cobbled-up highway between the eastern edge of Portland and Hood River and, since I passed through that at night, I didn’t have to park in the heat with the other tourists. I don’t feel that I missed anything valuable in Portland. 


8/18/94
The next 150 miles toward Boise, still on I84, were fun but hot. From Hood River to Boardman, the freeway parallels the Columbia River and I hopped from one side to the other—I84 to US Highway 14—whenever the whim struck me. I wasn’t in a hurry and both roads were fun to travel and free of men-leaning-on-shovels. 

I took a side road, county highway 142, away from the river at Lyle, Oregon. The road was nothing special and the temperature shot up fast away from the river. Thinking that I could navigate my way back to highway 14, cross-country, I headed south on the first dirt road that looked like it had been traveled in the last decade. It whittled down from a wide two lane to a narrow single in a few miles. In another five miles, the single lane turned into a pair of worn ruts. The TDM’s suspension handled the ruts and holes, but the bike’s weight was convincing me that it was no dirt bike. The Michelins were even further from off-road usable. They allowed the bike to slip in every possible direction and got no bite at all on the sand. So I went faster to compensate. I figured that if I was going to crash, I might as well crash solidly. When my arms and legs were burning and barely after I’d switched to reserve, the road changed back to a decent single lane. The trail-to-farm road route repeated itself until I was back on highway 14. I have no idea what that road was used for, it went nowhere other than the route I took. I watched my back to see if Rod Sterling was announcing "The Twilight Zone" the whole way. Weird. 

I made it to Boardman, Oregon and headed southeast, away from the river. Thirty miles of hot, flat plains and I’m back in high desert. This is beautiful country. I checked out the Oregon Trail tourist spots and had a great time looking on all directions until a little south of Baker City. It gets hot and Kansas-like quick here and I wicked it up to get where I was going as fast as possible. I made it to the Idaho boarder about noon. Gotta love an early start, but I’m seriously hungry. 

Idaho was burning. The whole state was either cooking something or on fire itself. Just before the border city of Ontario, I began to smell French fries. By the time I could see the city, my helmet was filled with drool. There is a huge Ore-Ida potato chip factory in Ontario and the whole valley smells like a monstrous McDonalds. By the time I was free of the actual source of that odor, my helmet lining was saturated with potato grease and I lived with hunger for another fifty miles. Which carried me into the next burnt and burning territory where fields on both sides of the freeway were flaming and billowing smoke. That cured the hunger pains, in a few miles my eyes were burning and my tongue felt like I’d been eating lit cigarettes. At Boise, I was downwind of of the Sawtooth and Boise National Forest fires. Sometimes the smoke cloud was as thick as fog. The smoke cloud was as thick as fog from slightly east of Boise and that cloud stayed with me, in some form, to the Utah border. 

I made it to Boise mid-afternoon. I was out of the burning fields and into the burning forests. Boise was cloudy with smoke from the national forest fires. The heat was especially oppressive, combined with the smell of burning trees. 

I stayed with an old friend that night and we planned on an early morning and a trip to Sun Valley for the next day. To prepare ourselves for that, we stayed out sampling Boise’s nightlife until way-too-late-o’clock. 


8/19/94
Dave and I left early and the sun was shrouded by smoke for most of the trip. I followed his car for a few miles and got bored. When we left the freeway, I left him. Highway 20 out of Mountain Home is a fun ride over some good road and great scenery. I waited at the highway 75 intersection for Dave to catch up and we meandered into town together. 

Sun Valley, the place that drove Hemmingway to suicide. Now I can say I’ve been there and understood that. The rich and slippery come here to shop. The wannabes come here to shop, too. In their spandex uniforms, the women who wannabe "trophy wives" parade up and down the sidewalks, hustling their stuff. I was constantly reminded of the joke about the priest asking the babe if she would do it for a million dollars, then a penny, as he tried to determine her price; having already determined her morals. 

No, I didn’t like Sun Valley. This is not a fun place to ride a motorcycle. There are cops on every corner and they are collecting "road taxes" like the roads are about to go out of style. My bet is that if Hemmingway had lived only a few miles south, in Ketchum where the working class lives, he’d have lived to a natural death. Ketchum has a much better class of people, fewer cops, and serves better breakfast. 


8/20/94
I started the day off with breakfast in Hailey, said goodbye to Dave, and cut across a county road east on state highway 20 toward Craters of the Moon National Park. If it hadn’t been for Dave’s suggestion, I wouldn’t have gone this route. A few miles east on 20, I stalled at another group of men-leaning-on-shovels! There is no escape from these people It doesn’t matter how remote the road is, they are there; holding up traffic, leaning on shovels, and smoking cigarettes. Where do they find all the shovels? I’m pretty sure that, if you could disappear all the shovels belonging to public works departments, there wouldn’t be an employee left standing. Or they’d actually be forced to do some work to keep from falling. 

Craters of the Moon is about the weirdest excuse for a national park in the park system. What it sounds like is what it is. Black, volcanic rock piled everywhere. As you approach the park, the desert begins to be more regularly dotted with this stuff until you are finally completely surrounded by heaps of stuff that looks like it was dumped here by the Intergalactic Department of Sanitation. No kidding! I did the look around the park, looked into the oven-hot caves, burned my arm on one of the handrails, and headed for the air-conditioned, clean-bathroomed Visitor’s Center. I came, I saw, I TDM’d my way eastward. 

I linked up with I15 at Blackfoot, Idaho and turned south, toward Utah. More shovel-leaners. I tried to fool them by cutting off on Highway 30 at McCammon, but they were waiting. Twenty minutes later, I’m blasting past cars and semis on almost totally open road. Another nice highway, as long as the shovel-lovers stay away. 

I popped out on I80, from US 30, and rode it fifty miles east to the Flaming Gorge, Utah, exit, state highway 530S. The first 30 miles into the park are nothing special. You can see the bare edge of the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, on the distant west horizon, but the terrain around the highway is flat, dry desert with high and hot winds. 530S travels over a plateau past the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the winds are steady and strong. The sky looked like rain, but the air didn’t feel like it. 

I quickly got bored enough to haul out my detailed map and make a shot at some dirt roading. The "detailed map" was far from detailed enough. The road I picked, turned into a barely rutted trail, which vanished altogether on a slab of rock. I took a chance and went straight across the rock and, 1/2 mile later, I was on a trail again. But was it the same trail I started with? The map didn’t seem to follow the same pattern as the road. I was still going west when I was sure I should have turned south and east, heading back toward the highway. I flipped the map around a while. I drank some water. I took a nap. I decided to keep following the ruts and fifteen miles later I found paved road. The experience with the Michelin’s made me nervous while I was away from traffic. I decided to curtail those experiments until another trip with different tires and more tools. 

About 40 miles south of I25, 530S turns southeast and the view improves immediately. The next 90 miles is littered with switch-backs through cliffs and the reservoir constantly in the background. Highway 44 and 191 are some of the most incredible stretches of the Rockies. This is a combination of nearly forested terrain and desert. The sky is cloudy and the temperature is perfect for riding. I blast and stop, blast and stop, all the way into the forested area south of the park, where I hit...more men and shovels. Another twenty minute wait. But this time a really cute girl was hanging onto the stop sign, so it wasn’t a total waste. I’m finally in a forest that isn’t burning. I hope my Kerkers’ spark arrestor is working. I don’t want to be responsible for torching the last tree in the west. 

Because I want the last day of my trip to be easy, I decided to blast out the miles between this edge of Utah and western Colorado. Once I turned east at Vernal, Utah, this wasn’t a hard decision to stick with. I’m not much of a desert fan and this is desert. It stayed hot until about 7:00PM and then it was really warm. I had a full moon and no cloud cover, so the land was well lit even after dark. I drove all the way to Craig, Colorado, before stopping. I think Craig has a lively nightlife. I heard sirens off and on all night. It didn’t mean anything to me though. I had traveled 680 miles, all desert. Parts of my body may never move the right way again. I can’t feel my butt, even with the Corbin’s protection. 


8/21/94 Sunday
I stuck with my drive-a-while-before-breakfast routine. I drove the 90 miles to Steamboat and arrived in time for sidewalk sales and what looked like a motorcycle festival. I saw bikes I had only seen before in magazines, European magazines. Brand new Motoguzies, BMWs, Ducati's, Paris-to-Dakar replica Hondas and Yamahas, Buells, Triumphs, and zillions of Harleys and Harley-clones. It was a lot like my buddy from the westward portion of the trip had been cloned, there was a pair of everything! I was out of film and my picture taking motivation was drained, so you’ll have to take my word for it. But I’m really looking forward to Steamboat’s "Motorcycle Weekend" now. 

Looking at the map, it’s pretty obvious that I didn’t need to make up as much time as I thought I did. That happens every vacation. At least one day out of every trip, I get a burr in my butt and go "mileage berserk." Drop the hammer and ignore every worthwhile sight in my way, because I "have to make up for lost time." Some of those times are lost forever now. I have smoked past moments that could have been precious for all of my life. All I have to show for those times are miles traveled. I did that a little less this trip than usual. Maybe I’m learning. 

The rest of the ride back to Denver was nice and uneventful. I stopped at Winterpark and rode the ski lift up and the Alpine Slide down. I bought this vacation’s last tank of gas and relaxed for the final two-lane miles before I hit interstate. That was a good decision, because I70 was bumper-to-bumper, crawl-and-stall traffic almost all the way to Denver. The road was littered with highway patrol, steaming engines, and angry cagers. I cut off at the Red Rocks Park exit and took side roads to avoid the traffic for most of the way back home. Back to work on Monday and daydreams of 3,700 miles on a TDM will have to keep me sane till next year . . .

Fighting Over Small Stuff

When I first started teaching MSF classes, I tried to take every opportunity to ride the state's motorcycles in the course demonstrations. I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of the program's text and post-exercise analysis, but I was still doubting the concept of "traction" and some of the other core principles we were teaching. When I became an instructor, the qualification process "proved" that I could ride well enough to teach the course but I wasn't yet completely convinced. After my first year, that was no longer an issue and I found plenty of opportunity to ingrain the ideas and practices into my normal riding routine.

Like most of the state's instructors, I would still rather "ride than talk." For the next six or seven years, anytime I was given a choice between talking or riding I always chose riding. There is an aspect of showing off in doing the demos that is probably unhealthy and less-than-useful for our students. I have yet to work with an instructor who doesn't do some of that and I sure do. However, the compulsion to ride over standing around yakking and hanging out seems a little out-of-place with a group as diverse as our instructors. About five years ago, I began to ride my KL250 to class and most everywhere. When I moved to the small bike from my V-Strom my interest in demo'ing on the state's bikes began to decay. When I bought the WR250X, riding over talking took a big hit. Most of the time I pick whatever option will move the class along the most efficiently. If the other instructor talks too much about stuff not in the program or "enhancing" the same material until eyes glaze over and brains shut off, I'll take more turns talking. If it's taking too long to setup the range and do the demos, I'll ride. Otherwise, I don't care which I'm doing.

The fact is, my WR is so much more fun to ride -- everywhere -- than anything MNDOT owns that I don't get much out of riding the state's bikes. Figuring this out made me realize something about my co-instructors: they don't have anything as cool as the state's bikes to play with!

This all reminds me of a couple of neighbors and friends who own large, noisy motorcycles that require rearranging of the garage before the motorcycle can peek out of it's winter hibernation hole. Both of these guys are terrified of riding on the freeway and neither put more than a thousand miles a year on their bike. I am clueless as to their motivation for owning a motorcycle, other than the obvious fact that they have tied some of their self-identity to the idea of being "a biker" and owning a motorcycle is a prerequisite for that fantasy. That is a lot of stuff to mess with for a delusional self-image, isn't it? Insurance, maintenance, giving up useful garage space to a useless toy, frustration, and the continual disappointment that must come with looking at the tarp-covered hunk of hippobike every time you strap into the old family cage.

Knowing that most of my co-instructors drive a cage to their classes and all of the few who ride are one liter-or-better gigantatrons, I suddenly have something slightly like sympathy for their desire to ride something fun. Now, if I could only convince a few of them that small bikes are more practical than large.

Liars, Damned Liars, and Statistics

One of the things that I'm enjoying the most about The Geezer with a Grudge: Average Mileage spreadsheet is the arguments about how invalid the data is. NHTSA, the states, the AMA, and insurance companies simply make up the data they use for motorcycle fatalities per mile traveled because they are too lazy to get real data. If they wanted real data, all they have to do is use the information we're all forced to provide every time a motorcycle is sold: the manufacturer, VIN number (which can easily be linked to model, engine size, year of manufacturer, etc.), and mileage at the time of the sale.

The fact is, what the database is showing so far is about what I expected to see; the average motorcyclist could get by with a 100cc scooter. With the big mileage riders skewing the data to the high-side, average miles/year is moving towards 1500/year. Still, it's hard to justify more than 250cc if that's all you're going to do with a motorcycle. This is what statisticians call a "fat-tail curve," though. There are going to be a few bikes on the right side of the curve and a crap-load of bikes on the low side. I'm not even a little surprised.

All of my life, I've bought my motorcycles by cherry-picking the 80% of motorcycle buyers (Note: I did not call them "motorcyclists."). Using good old Pareto Principles, 80% of the people who buy a motorcycle are unlikely to use it for much. Apparently, based on our current data, the more the bike costs the less likely it is to be ridden. More importantly, for me, the trendier the bike the more likely it will be found super-cheap a year after the trendiness wears off.

For example, my 1999 Suzuki SV650. I bought that bike in mid-2000, after the press had raved this bike into unobtainium for two years. My local dealers had no SV's in stock and were asking a slight premium for next year's 2001 production. However, I kept an eye on Craigslist around the Midwest and found about a half-dozen for sale for about 1/2 list price with less than 100 miles on the odometer. A young "motorcycle buyer" fell for the hype, bought a new SV for full list-plus, put the recommended farkles on the bike, dropped it in his driveway, and decided motorcycles were too dangerous. Five years and about 30k miles later, I sold the SV for slightly more than I'd paid for it and bought a year-old 2004 V-Strom (the "next big thing") for the same amount with less than 1,400 miles of local use (owned by an old guy who dropped the bike once and gave up). Well-used V-Stroms were going for serious money in 2005, but I waited for the usual suspects to show up and was not disappointed. I expect to unload my 2004 V-Strom for close to what I paid for it 50-some-k-miles later.

As our data is demonstrating, most motorcycle owners are not motorcyclists.