My Motorcycles: Suzuki TU250X

All Rights Reserved © 2009/2015/2021 Thomas W. Day

This started off as a "review" and a really brief one (see [Initial Review August 2009] below). In May of 2021, I stumbled into decent buy on a TU250X and bought it, after assuming that my motorcycling days were long gone. So far, I'm still here and I'm still occasionally riding. I had BIG touring plans for this summer after buying the bike in the spring but cataract surgery on both eyes ate up all of July and half of August and the upper body strength I lost during that long period when I was supposed to avoid lifting more than 10-25 pounds, keep my head above my waist as much as possible, and a whole other list of strenuous activities pretty much diluted my initiative and courage out of commission. I suspect I may regret missing out on that trip for the rest of my life. Of course, at my age that is not a long-term bet.

I have taken a few 100-250 mile rides on the TU250X and the bike performed wonderfully, so far averaging 87mpg mostly running at near full throttle anytime I'm outside of city limits. This is the first motorcycle I've owned since the 70's that allows me to be flat footed when I'm stopped. I haven't cared much about that for the previous 50-some years of motorcycling, long suspensions being more important to me than stopped stability, but I'm old, not particularly limber or strong, and considerable less stable than in the past and it is a nice feature/function at this point in my life. Vibration is minimal at the bars, foot pegs, and seat; at least it is reasonable and minimal to me. Engine noise is also minimal, I've been "complimented" a few times with "Wow! That bike is really quiet." Of course, most people just assume a motorcycle will be asshole-loud and that motorcyclists are obnoxious hooligans.

The speedometer, with stock tires, is "optimistic" at best. I ride with a GPS, so I know what my actual speed is and the speedo is about 7% faster than reality: 62mph indicated is about 55mph, for example. That said, cruising speed on the 250 on flat land without wind hindrance or assistance is about 55-65mph (max and in mild temps conditions). At that speed, the bike is incredibly easy to ride for long distances, with rest stops every hour or so. The passing "experience" is a throwback to my old VW Beetle days; plan on lots of space and no noticeable acceleration above 65mph. Even getting around farm implements is exciting and the only place I can ever pass a semi is on straight uphill sections.

Off pavement, the new handlebars made all the difference. I went from being tentative about turns, deep road sand and gravel, and wet sections to being irrationally confident that my old dirt skills would get me through most anything the road tossed at me. So far, so good. 

Maintaining the TU is almost an old school experience. Valve adjustments are the old-fashioned screw adjustment system, which means it needs to be checked every 3,000 miles, but the components are fairly easily accessed and it only takes about 30 minutes once you've gone through the routine once or twice. The air filter is just a coin-screwdriver away and the oil change routine is nothing complicated or odd, except for the oil screen which is hidden behind the filter frame (some TU owners don't know it is there). 

I added a USB charge port to the handlebars to power my Garmin and charge my phone. Bar vibration is lower enough that I can read the little Garmin maps on the fly. The GPS has Bluetooth, but I don't need it or want it talking to me while I ride. I read maps through the plastic case on my Darien's thigh for 30 years. I can deal with a handlebar GPS just fine.

May 2021 POSTSCRIPT:  As of May, this review turns into a "Bikes I've Owned and Loved (a lot or a little)" review. I bought a barely-used 2012 TU250X and now, I hope, this will turn into a long-term review of that motorcycle. Even after whining that I'd owned my last "customized motorcycle," I immediately started personalizing my TU. 

#1 Best Farkle: The T-Rex Racing "2009 - 2020 Suzuki TU250X Center Stand." Installing this thing is a 3-handed job, but well worth the effort. Suddenly, many difficult maintenance and touring operations are much easier. Lubing the chain, for example is possible a half-dozen different ways. 

#2: The Acerbis Dual Road  Handguards. For me, handguards are a must, but there isn't a lot of handlebar real estate on the TU. These guards solve that problem as well as it can be solved. They are a bar-end only attachment and with that limitation they robust and good protection for my hands and the bike controls. 

 #3: An old standby (for me), Oury Road/Street grips. These things have been on my street and dirt bikes for longer than I can remember. They soften the vibration and impact, add grip, add some diameter to the bars (easing arthritis pain and blood constriction), and stay where they belong until you cut them off. My comfort level on the TU dramatically improved by replacing the grips. The TU's throttle is inconveniently specifically designed for Suzuki's mediocre grips, who some Dremel carving is necessary where the handguard meets the throttle body.

#4: The stock cafe racer style bars are ok, on pavement, but I'm just not comfortable with narrow pullback bars. So, I replaced mine with Fly Racing Carbon Steel Honda CR bars, about 2" wider, straighter, and marginally lower. What a difference! The first time I was on gravel, the bike felt squirrely and a little unstable in 2-4" loose gravel and sand and I didn't feel like steering responded particularly well. Nothing else has changed, except the bars, and the bike is almost as solid off-pavement as my V-Strom or WR250X.

Stay tuned. If my eyesight and health holds up, me and this little 250 are going to go a few places.

[July 2015 POSTSCRIPT] 

 Last month, I added a little track time to my TU250X riding experience. What I learned from that is that the TU250X is a fully capable urban commuting bike. I still don't know what the top speed is, but it's got to be above 70mph because I hit that a couple of times on the Dakota Community Technical College straight-away and I had some top end yet to go before I bailed out and started braking before the chicane and carousel. A better rider would have gone faster and deeper into the corner before hitting the brakes. Regardless, the TU wasn't straining at 70mph and I had a good time on the bike and the course; meeting and exceeding all of my expectations.

Last summer, my brother bought a TU on my recommendation and, as of May 2015, he had 17,000 miles on the bike and has ridden it all over Arizona deserts, mountains, and back country. He still likes the bike and doesn't seem to feel the need for more power or status, since he's knocking down 70-90mpg regularly and saving a bucket of retirement cash in the process. His big complaint about the TU, after taking a Lake Superior Loop ride with me in 2011 and seeing how much insane fun I was having on my WR250X, was that his TU wasn't very good on gravel roads and, especially, steep gravel road hills around the lakes near his house in Arizona. So, I recommended a collection of tire options and he upped the "aggressiveness" of his tires and I haven't heard a word of dissatisfaction from him since. I remain jealous of his mileage, youth, and common sense.

[Initial Review August 2009] 

This will be a very limited review, since I've only "test ridden" the Suzuki on an MSF range. But it is a work in progress. I will find one of these bikes in licensed condition and I'll add that to the report. If I have to, I'll even buy the damn bike myself.

Suzuki's newest entry for 2009 was the TU250X; a 330 pound, air-cooled, fuel-injected, catalytic-converted, electric-starting, 82mpg, retro-looking, standard bike that is the kind of machine that riders have been wanting in every major motorcycle market in the world; except the US. This $3,800 bike has everything that an urban commuter could want. Most especially, the fuel-injection makes it friendly to new riders and those of us who are tired of the hold-your-mouth-just-right starting routines carbureted bikes require from us in cold weather. The 3.17-gallon fuel tank should provide close to a 250 mile range for most commuters.

Cosmetically, Suzuki went straight after the vintage-Brit-bike-lovers' market. Suzuki's marketing department describes the TU250X as a bike with "classic styling – including spoked wheels, a round headlight and low-slung tapered muffler." With its pin-striped red paint job, it reminds me so much of old small-bore BSA and Triumphs that it gives me flashbacks. The only obvious nod to the 21st Century is the front disk brake, but the rear brake is a competently functioning drum, just like the old days. 18" wheels, front and back, add something to the vintage appearance and help give the bike a neutral handling character. Turning or going straight, the TU250X doesn't resist change and it doesn't do anything unexpected. The Cheng-Shin tires suck, but the 90/90 and 110/90-18 tire sizes are available in Metzeler Lasertecs, Dunlop GTs, Conti Go! and Ultra TKV11/12 among other tire options.

The frame is silver-painted steel and is pretty rigid, if a little heavy feeling. The engine is a stressed-member of the frame and the square-tubed backbone adds to the frame strength. The rear suspension (3.7") is a traditional dual-shock rig, slightly canted. The moderately long (54.1") wheelbase of the bike makes it stable for all sorts of street use without being difficult to maneuver. The TU has a low (30") seat height, so it's accessible to riders of all heights. The twin-section seat puts the rider in sort of a neutral-cafe-racer posture. The independent passenger seat is reasonably large and comfortable, for a 250. Your feet are mildly bent, but the 27" wide straight bars put most riders in a slightly aggressive riding position. It works for a variety of riders, from 6' and a little over (see photo on right) to the rest of us (a 5'8" rider is pictured at left). A bar-mounted windshield would be a useful addition to the bike's aerodynamics and comfort.

The 249cc, 4-stroke, single-cylinder, air-cooled, SOHC, wet-sump engine is mostly straightforward. The cylinder is SCEM-plated (nickel-silicon-phosphorous) to reduce weight and increase heat transfer, just like most of Suzuki's competition off-road bikes. The motor is tied to a wide-ratio 5-speed transmission linked to the rear wheel by chain drive. The air filter is washable foam and is easily removed for service. The plug, oil filter, screw-and-locknut valve adjustments, and battery access are readily available and straightforward. The bike has a 3,000 mile service interval, including valves, so it's a good thing that it is reasonably easy to service. Well cared for, it ought to last tens-of-thousands miles. Suzuki puts a "12 month unlimited warranty" on the TU250X, to give buyers a bit of confidence in the model.

The bad news is that the TU250X is hard to find. My local dealer was given one for the season. One. More than 80 buyers signed up for first shot at the bike, but it vanished as it hit the floor when a walk-in customer snagged it. That's it for 2009's stock from that substantial Suzuki dealer. I know of one buyer who drove from Minnesota to Georgia to buy one.

The TU250X is, obviously, fitting a niche. In the rest of the world, it has been such a hit that Suzuki has been overwhelmed by the demand, which means the paltry small-bike US market is going to be even more starved for attention and inventory. The good news is, if you are really a vintage Brit bike fan, you'll miss the puddle of oil in your garage. Take that as a consolation for not being able to see, ride, or buy this cool little bike.

Product Review: Roadgear Toolbag

All Rights Reserved © 2007 Thomas W. Day

The highly attractive Roadgear Toolbag before I loaded it with gear and spoiled it with grease.

I'm a paranoid type, always assuming the worst will happen and that it will happen to me. My V-Strom came sans-toolkit, which gave me the opportunity to put together my own kit of good quality tools. First, I needed a place to put all the tools I'd want to carry. The Roadgear Toolbag is one of those things I spied at the Cycle World Motorcycle Show in 2007. t that time, I hadn't figured out what I needed for the Alaska trip, so I stored the information in my computer and, early this spring, I contacted the Roadgear folks (http://www.roadgear.com/) to get my hands on their toolbag.

The toolbag was a pretty little thing, when it arrived in the mail. The bag is made of heavy duty nylon that comes in a variety of colors. I picked gray, to match my 'stitch and my personality. The bag incorporates a pair of straps closed with nylon buckles into a logo-bearing carrying handle. That feature is more practical than you might think. There are nine assorted-sized compartments for tools, a large partition behind the tool holders, and three small Velcro-secured partitions to store sockets and small parts/tools in front.

Some of the stuff I stored in my Roadgear Toolbag, also after 10,000 miles of Alaska abuse.

I immediately began to stuff tools into the bag until I had most of the things I expected to need in a mechanical crisis and a package that would fit into the storage container I'd added to my luggage rack. The bag would have held a lot more stuff, but then it wouldn't have fit into my available space (the inside of a 4" PVC pipe). As it is, I had almost everything I wanted to carry wrapped into a neat and convenient package.

For a lot of reasons, this was the perfect setup. It forced me to assign places for each tool, making it difficult for me to misplace a tool during a field repair. If I put everything back the way I'd originally organized the bag, it would roll up into exactly the right size package for my storage container. The combination of custom container and the Toolbag gave me fast and easy access to my tools and that meant that I would do maintenance a lot more often.

After 14,000 very messy miles, I am almost tempted to pull the tools and send the Toolbag through the laundry. Almost. The Toolbag has proved to be tough, well-made, and functional. It was a terrific addition to my touring kit and I recommend it without reservation.

The FBI and the Outlaws

A couple of days ago, the FBI and ATF unsealed an indictment against 27 members of the Outlaws motorcycle gang. The gang's "National Boss," Jack Rosga, "Milwaukee Jack," and several officers of the gang were included in the indictment and arrests that were distributed across several states: Wisconsin, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia.

From the FBI's website, "Those charged in the indictment include:

• Jack Rosga, aka “Milwaukee Jack,” 53, serves as the National Boss of the Outlaws organization and is also a member of the Gold Region, Milwaukee Wisconsin Chapter.
• Joseph Allman, 46, is an Outlaws member in the Red region and holds a position in the Maine Chapter, previously serving as President and Enforcer.
• John Banthem, aka “Bull,” 46, is an Outlaws member in Montana and is the president of a new prospect chapter in Montana.
• Thomas Benvie, aka “Taz,” 41, is an Outlaws member in the Red region and currently serves as President of the Maine Chapter.
• William Davey, aka “Rebel,” 46, is an Outlaws member in the Copper Region and was formerly the Chapter Enforcer in the Ashville, North Carolina.
• Mark Jason Fiel, aka “Jason,” 37, is a former Outlaws member in the Copper Region and a former leader in the Manassas/Shenandoah Valley Chapter.
• Mark Steven Fiel, aka “Snuff,” 59, is an Outlaws member in the Copper Region and serves as President of the Manassas/Shenandoah Valley Chapter.
• Chris Gagner, 37, is an Outlaws member in the Copper Region and serves as the President and Treasurer of the Asheville, North Carolina Chapter
• Harold Herndon, aka “Lil’ Dave,” 48, is an Outlaws member and is currently the Copper Region Vice President and member of the Lexington, North Carolina Chapter.
• Mark Lester, aka “Ivan,” 55, is an Outlaws member in the Knoxville, Tennessee Chapter and is served as the Boss of the Grey Region until early 2010.
• Brett Longendyke, 32, is an Outlaws member in the Copper Region and serves as the Manassas/Shenandoah Valley Chapter Enforcer.
• David Lowry, aka “Little David,” 49, is an Outlaws member and currently the Copper Region Boss and member of the Charlotte Chapter.
• Michael Mariaca, aka “M & M,” 50, is an Outlaws member and serves as the President of the Rock Hill, South Carolina Chapter and Copper Region Enforcer.
• Thomas Mayne, aka “Tomcat,” 59, is an Outlaws member in the Red Region and serves as the regional treasurer. Mayne formerly served as the Red Region Enforcer.
• Harry Rhyne McCall, 53, is an Outlaws member in the Copper Region, Lexington, North Carolina Chapter.
• Michael Pedini, aka “Madman,” 39, is an Outlaws member in the Red Region and a former Enforcer in the Northern Maine Chapter.
• Thomas Petrini, aka “Jo Jo,” 48, is a former Outlaws member in the Copper Region, Manassas/Shenandoah Valley Chapter.
• Michael Smith, 51, is an Outlaws member in the Copper Region and serves as the President of the Hickory, North Carolina Chapter.
• Mark Spradling, aka “Lytnin,” 52, is an Outlaws member and serves as Treasurer of the Copper Region.
• Christopher Timbers, aka “Alibi,” 37, is an Outlaws member in the Manassas/Shenandoah Valley Chapter of the Copper Region.
• James Townsend, aka “Vern,” 44, is an Outlaws member and President of the Lexington, North Carolina Chapter.
• Leslie Werth, aka “Les,” 47, is an Outlaws member and currently is the Vice President of the Rock Hill, South Carolina Chapter. Werth served as the Copper Region Boss until October 17, 2009.
• Brian McDermott, 50, is an Outlaws member of the Copper Region’s Hickory, North Carolina chapter.
• Charles Love, aka “Chuck” and Rebar,” 49, is a member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club from Amelia, Virginia.
• William Powell, aka “Torch,” 49, is a member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club from Lynchburg, Virginia.
• Charles Barlow, aka “Chuck,” 43, is a member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club from Chesterfield, Virginia.
• Dennis Haldermann, aka “Chew Chew,” 45, is a member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club from Chesterfield, Virginia.

Thomas Mayne, a regional treasurer for the Outlaws, was killed in a gunfight with ATF agents, when the agents attempted to arrest him. Kenneth Chretien , Mayne's brother-in-law, was subdued and arrested at the same location. Yesterday, a judge set Chretien free on $10,000 bond. Mayne was a suspected in an assassination attempt at a Hell's Angel clubhouse in Maine last October. He wore a "Nazi-style SS patch" that indicated he had performed a hit for the Outlaw gang.
Local and state police are notoriously impotent when it comes to confronting these violent characters and prosecuting them for crimes. All I can say is "Way to go Feds." I'm all for hauling back the military from Iraq and Afganistan and sending the whole US Army after these criminals.

Taking the Cat by the Horns

British Petroleum should take a lesson from Agip, the manufacturer of Hello Kitty synthetic oil. Agip's corporate logo, that six-legged cat at the bottom right of the can, is a brilliant advertisment for renaming problems as solutions. Microsoft and Apple have been telling us that software bugs are "features" for 30 years, it's not much of a leap to move air and water pollution into the same category.

"Yeah, our oil causes birth defects and a million other environmental problems, but look at the cute six-legged cat. Gotta love that, don't 'cha?"

And we probably do.

Not Much Fun?

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

"That can't have been much fun."

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the News that Didn't Fit

More Biker Brawling
Residents of Minneiska, Minnesota watched while the Hells Angels and Outlaws motorcycle gangs fought it out on April 17th as one more episode of the Spring Flood Run soap opera played out. At least one biker was "cut and bloodied," but he claimed he "fell down." As the Trib asked, "If dozens of bikers from rival gangs scuffle in a parking lot in a small Mississippi River town and don't admit to it afterward, did it really happen?" One biker was legally carrying a concealed weapon and a pair (Nathan K. Houser, 29, of Burlington and Loren Francis Aikan, 63, of Madison, WI) were cited for possessing brass knuckles. No one was arrested. Highway 61, north of Winona, was closed for two hours as police questioned about 100 members of the Outlaws.

Rourke as Barger?
Just in time to correct any positive impressions the public may be forming about motorcyclists, Mickey Rourke is hoping to be part of a Tony Scott production of The studio was quoted claiming the part is "so perfectly tailored for Rourke that it is hard to imagine another actor who could more convincingly play a character who wears the hard miles and brawn of a grizzled biker gang veteran." Sonny Barger's life story in a new film tentatively titled Hell's Angels. Fox bought the rights to Barger's life story a decade ago, but is just now beginning to go into the development phase. Screenwriter Scott Frank has begun working on the project, with heavy rewriting of the original script, as a “Donnie Brasco-like drama.” A second major character will be a young cop infiltrating the gang. In 1983, before turning his face to pulp, Rourke played "The Motorcycle Boy" in Rumble Fish and "Harley Davidson" in the financial bust Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, so this could be yet another flashback moment for him.

Spanish Scrappage Plan
Spain is heading down the bankruptcy path that Greece has paved so thoroughly. However, Spanish motorcycles seem to have found the cash to take advantage of their country's Moto-E scrappage subsidy. In April, motorcycle sales increased 18% over the previous year. The Spanish AMA, ANESDOR, is urging the government to extend the Moto-E deadline to prop up the motorcycle industry.

Motorcycle Awareness Month in California
May was Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month by NHTSA proclamation (and National Digestive Disease Awareness Month, by Presidential decree), but the LAPD took a different tack in celebrating the month: by cracking down on motorcycle traffic violations. As announced on the LAPD's blog, "In support of Motorcycle Safety Awareness, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) will deploy extra officers throughout the month to patrol areas frequented by motorcyclists. Officers will also crack down on motorcyclist traffic violations and other vehicle drivers that lead to fatal or injurious motorcycle traffic collisions." The site stated that California motorcycle fatalities have increased 175% from 1997 to 2008 and at fault for that "dramatic increase were speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs by motorcyclists and other drivers."

Canadian Motorcyclists Join the Parking Protest
In protest of Vancouver's "zero-emission" parking spaces for electric scooters and motorcycles that exclude traditional motorcycles, 75 to 100 motorcyclists staged a parking protest that took up all of the spaces in a two block area of the popular Robson Street shopping district. The motorcyclists want more dedicated free spaces for motorcycles. The city has proposed special motorcycle spaces that would cost 1/2 the regular space rate. The entire city of Vancouver has only 42 motorcycle parking spaces. (More than downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis combined.)

Swedish vs. British vs. USA Motorcycle Safety Ads
Leave it up to the Swedes to produce an incomprehensible motorcycle safety ad. The Brits are a lot less subtle and infinitely more effective. Monty Python would be proud. I think. However, Michigan did us (the US) all proud.

RIP: Danny "Magoo" Chandler
Danny Chandler has died, at 50, from complications related to his paralysis. The AMA Hall of Famer, the winner of the U.S. 500cc Motocross Grand Prix, the first racer to win both the Motocross des Nations and the Trophee des Nations in the same year (1982), was a positive influence for everyone who knew him after the 1985 Paris Supercross crash that left him paralyzed. After several tough years (including a divorce and the death of both of his parents), Danny went back to work volunteering with DARE, organizing visits by top motorcycle racers to children’s hospitals through his International Riders Helping People organization, conducting his motocross safety program, and promoting mountain-bike races.

“In the long run the accident has left me a richer and fuller person. Had it not been for that I would just be another guy walking around. Now I have an interesting and compelling story to tell to the kids.”

Fingernail Painting Driver Is Convicted
Lora Hunt, the fingernail painting nurse, who ran a stoplight and killed motorcyclist Anita Zaffke in May of 2009, has been convicted of reckless homicide in a Lake County, Illinois courthouse. Her attorney, her attorney, Jeff Tomczak, argued that Hunt was a victim of sexual discrimination. He claimed she should have been on trial negligent homicide as she would have been for eating a sandwich or dialing her cell phone. "I do believe it is the underlying act of painting the nails that was the impetus for the charge," Tomczak said. "I haven't seen a reckless homicide charge for dialing a cell phone." (I didn't realize "two wrongs makes a right" was a valid legal defense.)

Prosecutor Mike Mermel argued, "It is not the same as biting a sandwich … it's a voluntary disablement. She might as well have been in the back seat making a sandwich."

Hunt will face as much as 5 years in jail or as little as a brief probation. She could be sentenced on June 15th.

Evel on Display
In an exhibit that will run from July 10 through September 6, the Harley-Davidson Museum will celebrate the life of "America’s favorite daredevil"; Evel Knievel. In the largest temporary exhibit the museum has ever attempted, Knievel’s life and legend will be featured in a 10,000 foot2 exhibit that will include "his signature leathers and cane, personal photographs and letters, collectors’ toys and memorabilia, and the rocket-inspired Skycycle X-2 used in Knievel’s infamous 1974 attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon" and his favorite motorcycle, the Harley-Davidson XR-750.

Kawasaki Returns for the Police Dollar
After abandoning the police motorcycle market five years ago when the company dropped the KZ1000P, Kawasaki has returned with the 2010 Concours 14 ABS Police motorcycle. "All units are delivered with a tighter turning radius and custom law enforcement equipment, including: adjustable speedometer, a second wiring harness with 12 fused circuits and a separate battery dedicated to the add-on electronics installed by Beaudry Motors, Inc. An extensive selection of emergency equipment is available to satisfy agency requirements." Even with a $16-22k price tag, the 1352cc Concours is about $2,000 cheaper than the BMW or Harley competition.

Triumph Wants to 'Thank A Hero'
Triumph Motorcycles North America is offering up to a $750 discount to active U.S. Military service members. The company's "Thank A Hero" program is an attempt to "show our support for the sacrifices they make for all of us,” according to Jim Callahan, Triumph's North American Marketing Manager. “This is our way of saying ‘thank you’ for everything they do.”

Kawasaki's In-House Magazine Goes On-Line
Kawasaki's owners' magazine, Accelerate, has become an on-line 'zine. You can find it at http://accelerate.presspublisher.us/. Articles by Dr. Gregory Frasier and a variety of contributors are there, free for the reading.

Texas Motorcycle Cop's Bike Was on Recall
In January, Arlington, TX police Sgt. Craig Story struck a school bus with his Harley Davidson motorcycle and died of his injuries. The motorcycle was included in a December 2009 recall that warned of failure of the "front fuel-tank mounts, which can distort in crashes and cause fuel leaks and fires." Sgt. Story's motorcycle was scheduled for the repair at the time of the crash. While Story's motorcycle burst into flames, the department said there was no evidence that the fire contributed to Sgt. Story's injuries.

New Laws
April 12, Maine's Governor John Baldacci signed House Paper 1170 (An Act Relating to Road Noise), a bill that says "A person may not operate a motor vehicle in an area designated as a quiet zone by the department or the Maine Turnpike Authority and clearly identified as such by posted signs if the noise emitted by the motor vehicle exhaust system exceeds 62 decibels at a distance of 50 feet or greater." I wonder who that is aimed at?

Missouri House Bill 2421 would require "every applicant for a motorcycle license or endorsement shall show proof that he or she has successfully completed a motorcycle training course. . . "

New York Senate Bill 7302 "establishes the 'New York state consumers' right to repair act' which mandates automobile manufacturers to release vehicle repair information to vehicle owners allowing such owners to choose among competing repair facilities for the convenient, reliable and affordable repair of their motor vehicles." Senate Bill 7385 requires a motorcycle operator to keep both wheels on the ground at all times for a wheelie-free New York state. .

Deaths Down, Down Deaths, Down
According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, motorcycle fatalities were down 10% in 2009, from 5,290 in 2008 to approximately 4,762 in 2009. This was the first fatality drop in more than a decade, following the 2007 peak. You can find a copy of the study at http://www.ghsa.org/html/publications/spotlight/index.html. The reasons for the drop were explained to be "less motorcycle travel due to the economy, fewer beginning motorcyclists, increased state attention to motorcycle safety programs, and poor cycling weather in some areas."

GHSA Chairman Vernon Betkey said, “Clearly the economy played a large role in motorcycle deaths declining in 2009. Less disposable income translates into fewer leisure riders, and we suspect that the trend of inexperienced baby boomers buying bikes may have subsided.”

2010 NHTSA Recalls
BIG DOG 2004 Chopper, Bulldog, Ridgeback, Mastiff, Boxer, Pitbull: Loose connection between the harness connector and the electronic harness controller causes intermittent loss of power to headlamps a causes engine stall.

Politically Incorrectness

Ah, political correctness:. saying what shouldn't be said, calling things what they are, expecting common sense in a world that has made sense about as common as unicorns. A friend recently sent me a definition of "political correctness" that included the phrase "a doctrine . . . that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end." (Credited on the WWW to a student from Texas A&M, the University of Melbourne, and several other institutions, including the US Army.) The rest of this definition included the delusion that political correctness is a property of liberals and that a minority is vested in this delusion, so I'm less than impressed with the whole. The part I quoted, however, seems pretty true.

My wife and I are deemed politically incorrect by our daughters and their husbands. One family is largely liberal and the other is very conservative. We're as incorrect to one as the other. Hence comes a portion of my belief that political correctness is one of those perspectives that depends on the viewer. Rush Limbaugh and his cronies have just as many untouchable subjects as do the most radical of the left, those topics are just found in different areas. In other words, both groups display typical "common sense" in their touchiness.

In a discussion about gayness, one of my daughters suggested that "no one" would "choose to be outcast" by a substantial portion of society. I'm not disputing the biological aspects of gayness, but I suspect (and always have) there there is a portion of nurture involved in most human qualities and decisions. Nature, while powerful, doesn't have much more power than does nurture. I know that's politically incorrect, but I'm too old to care.

In my eyes, this politically correct position was particularly funny coming from a woman who shaved her head (when not dying it a variety of florescent colors), spiked her nose, ears, and other body parts with all sorts of odd sharp objects, tattooed herself with a ball point pen, and did everything she could to make herself as strange looking as possible from age 15 until her early 20's. Knowing my own history as a 60's long-haired hippy freak, you'd have thought some aspect of discontinuity might have struck her during this proclamation.

In our speck of American culture, motorcyclists are packed with these sorts of intentional social rejects. The most obvious is the Harley gangbanger crowd. The majority of society looks at these folks as outcasts, even other motorcyclists. Why anyone would want to dress-up like characters out of a 1950's B-movie escapes me, but a substantial portion of the wanna-be crowd is really into looking like society's unwashed and unwanted and unemployed. There must be a strong call to those who can't find acceptance in polite company to make a sincere effort to find a home wherever they can. If that's true for punks and bikers, I can't help suspect it might be true for other outcast micro-cultures.

Once a group finds enough members to create critical mass, that group begins campaigning everyone else to grant their different-ness with proper respect. If respect isn't possible, fear seems to suffice. A group can leverage fear in a variety of ways: threatening legal action, threatening popular condemnation, or with violence. Fear rarely turns into respect, regardless of the tactic, and many of these groups continue to alienate the majority without a thought for the fact that fear is closely related to hate. Generating hate usually backfires.

The gangbanger motorcyclist attitude is creating that sort of back-pressure for motorcycling in general. In promoting their threatening, law-disobeying lifestyle, air and noise polluting "rights," and a lousy safety record on public roads, Harley's corporate image and the company's fans are spilling over into motorcycling in general. We're becoming as easy a bad guy stereotype as the Mob, IRS, FBI, CIA, and Arab terrorists. When an author or screenwriter wants to whip out an easy character to hate, a biker is as likely to come to mind as is any other culturally negative stereotype. I just finished John Stanford's Storm Prey and, for the 4th time in this 20-book series, bikers are among the bad guys. Stanford doesn't even have to work to create believable, crazy-vicious, stupid motorcycle characters. They just flow from the page without a hint of lost credibility. If you know these guys in real life, you know they are just as sociopathic and worthless as Stanford draws them.

In the not-so-long-run, this connection to the majority or motorcyclists is going to cost motorcycling a lot of rights and privileges. Our lame "representative," the AMA, is trying to handle this turd by what it hopes is the clean end. But as long as motorcyclists allow bikers to cling to some corner of "respectable motorcyclists" we're all getting tarred with a black leather brush. I'm starting to think that motorcycle commuters and touring riders need their own organization, one that seperates itself from the cruiser crowd and returns to Honda's successful "you meet the nicest people" sort of image-making. The boys in bandannas and leather can whine about how they are politically incorrectly seen as gangsters and bums, but the rest of us should serious consider what linking our means of transportation to their gangbanger activity does to/for motorcycling.

Think about it.

Standing in Line

All Rights Reserved © 2007 Thomas W. Day

Here's a brief personality test: you're standing in line at a big-box store, asking for the assistance of a "sales associate." That employee is carrying a telephone which rings in the middle of the conversation and the salesperson says, "I have to take this, excuse me." What do you do?
Here's another scenario: you're zipping down a two-lane highway, having a fine time playing with your two-wheeled vehicle/toy when you come upon a dozen or more bikers in a staggered-line parade. As is typical of this kind of demonstration, they have spaced themselves in a precision "rolling bowling pin" formation that doesn't allow for passing unless you are willing to pass all of them at once or you have the skill/risk-immunity to fit yourself into the small spaces allowed between bikes as you ladder-step your way past the wannabe-Shriners highway obstacle course. What do you do?

I think both of these situations are some kind of Rorschach personality test, but I don't know what the results mean. In the first instance, I would walk away and find another salesperson or a different place to buy what I want to buy. I know that insanely stupid big-box company managers require floor employees to "service everybody, all the time." So, the salesperson is doing his/her job, as directed, by answering the phone and leaving you two twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the telephone conversation to end and hope the phone doesn't ring before you get the information you need. However, anyone who thinks a telephone "virtual customer" is more important than a live, in-store, with cash-in-hand customer is too dumb for my money and time. I don't care where the store CEO's mommy bought his MBA, that's stupid logic.

In the second scenario, if I'm just out for a ride, I look for another road to travel rather than making the monster pass or the precision step-pass. If I'm in a hurry, one or the other passing tactic is the choice. Better yet, I wait for someone in an SUV to pass me, then pass or breakup the bowling pins so that I have a little more space to work with. Regardless, my tolerance for certain kinds of motorcycles and motorcyclists gets reduced, a little more, every time I experience this kind of road arrogance. Eventually, at this rate and if I live long enough, I'll be as pissed off about motorcycle road blocks as the rest of the driving population. For now, I can still see the humor in another demonstration of declining human intelligence.

As an MSF instructor, at the beginning of each season we have the pleasure of attending a sign-up "conference" where we stand in line for several hours, waiting to sign up for the classes we want to teach in the spring, summer, and fall. The line is semi-sorted by instructor senility (using the usual "honor system" that, in these modern United States, works only slightly more effectively than when Germans used "honor" to sort out gas chamber patrons). If an instructor wants to teach more than a couple of classes during the season, he or she will have the pleasure of working through the line several times. Honestly, it's mostly a fair system and, if one hadn't been exposed to the technology advances that have occurred in the last 40 years, it would seem to be "efficient."

Standing in line simply grates against one of my pet peeves. Actually, lines in general, of all sorts, in any situation, drive me nuts.

A decade in Southern California taught me more than I want to know about the "human herding instinct." What finally drove me from the beach, a state with lane-splitting and filtering, year-around motorcycling weather, and friends and family and a great job, were . . . lines. I will walk a mile to avoid a three-person-long line. I will abandon a cart full of groceries that took me an hour to collect if I have to wait in line for more than a few minutes. I will take dead end two lane exits, go off-road (including through alleys, across lawns and golf courses, down or up freeway ditches, and damn near off of a cliff) to avoid having more than a couple of vehicles in front of me. I have changed the destination of vacation trips when I found myself stuck in traffic. I have slept in a tent, my car, buses, and train or airport depots when my hotel reservation required standing in a line of suits waiting for an over-taxed clerk to wrestle with a hotel chain's crappy computer system.

I freakin' hate lines.

Because of this personality weirdness, I rarely see movies in the first release week (I usually wait for Netflix to put the movie in an envelope and mail it to me). I rarely go to concerts or sporting events. I am totally disinterested in popular restaurants. I spend a lot of my daily commute traveling through neighborhood streets rather than more efficient freeways. While politicians see congested freeways as an opportunity to waste more money on asphalt, I see traffic as evidence that I need to send another $100 to Planned Parenthood and ZPG. There are too freakin' many people and, even worse, there are too damn many people between me and where I want to go.

Many motorcyclists and a statistically equal number of motorcycle instructors like to stand in line. What else would you call those lines of hippo-bikes jamming up traffic, violating community noise standards, and stacked in front of bars and restaurants? Gotta be line-lovers. Apparently, a fair number of instructors consider their time in line as "opportunities to network" and "social events." Wow! I either have a way better social and personal life than I thought or I'm lacking in the gene that leads humans to gather in packs, herds, crowds, and lines.

Social scientists who study animal resources have spent a lot of energy determining the square acreage or mileage that a given animal needs to be healthy and sane. An obvious and true result of that study has found that the further up the food chain an animal climbs, the more resources (read space) that animal requires. Hence, predators need a lot more territory than herbivores. Omnivores, like us, fall somewhere between being comfortable in small groups (chimps and baboons) and requiring moderate space or being incredibly solitary and requiring mountains (literally) of space (gorillas and orangutans) for the "elbow room" required to remain sane and healthy.

The top of the food chain, we'd like to think, is occupied by humans. Based on the modern urban experience, we may be as dumb and far down the food chain as Mark Twain suspected (read "The Lowest Animal") because we allow ourselves about as much territory as a hill of oversized ants. Can you think of another animal that tolerates standing in line for a morsel of food? How about sitting in line (in a cage) or standing in line (in a bus or train) for hours to get to a place where we'll stand or sit in place for hours so we can earn enough credit to sit in line (in a cage) to drive to a store where we can stand in line to exchange credit for food? There may be no other animal on earth that passive or unaware of the need for livable conditions. Mr. Clemons was an optimist.

How long do the lines have to get before we realize that overstuffing this planet to standing-room-only is going to reduce worthwhile riding (and living) territory to nothing? Pretty soon, I won't be able to find an alternative Twin Cities route that allows me to escape from the roaring mindless mass of humanity. Then what? Whatever happens, you know that you won't have me to kick around, if you're standing in line. I'll find a nice cave in the mountains to spend my leisure years.

Funnier than Comedy

The boys, Trey and Matt, explain their rationale for "The F-Word." It's even funnier than the original show. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gYIAudAzjo.

Those dudes are an inspiration. Years ago, I read a Guitar Player Magazine interview with Tom Petty. He was talking about "maintaining an edge" in a world where every comfort, every desire, every thing he might want was available because he was a rich, famous rock star. In that world, writing about things that matter to real people is damn close to impossible. Petty said all he had to do to find something to write about was to look out a window (plane, train, tour bus, hotel room, or whatever) and look at what's going on in the real world. He'd find something to be pissed off about and go at it.

Matt and Trey are the gods of finding shit to be pissed off about. Role models for any writer trying to say something worthwhile.

Loud Pipes Are Powerful Fun

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

People who worry about the future of motorcycling are particularly concerned that the statement being made by a blasting motorcycle exhaust is going to be the death of the industry and the activity on public roads. Proponents of this noise pollution like to claim that "loud pipes save lives," but the evidence for that claim is weak to non-existent. Obviously, if it's true for motorcycles it should be true for small cars, medium sized-cars, buses, and every other highway user and, if one motor vehicle gets to claim that "safe ground," everybody will want a piece of the action. The trend is going the other way. Most industrialized societies have had more than enough of noise pollution and the public is not going to take much more of it. Noisy motorcyclists may claim discrimination, but it's easy to argue that, outside of emergency vehicles, motorcycles are consistently the loudest vehicles on the highway and the least useful.

Anyone familiar with manufacturing and quality systems knows that you don't go after all of your problems at once. Even the federal government doesn't have unlimited resources. One tactic is to use the Pareto Effect, which states "80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes." When it comes to peak traffic noise, improperly and illegally muffled motorcycles top the 20% list. We can whine about being picked on, but logic would dictate we get hammered first. Since evidence points out the fallacy in the connection between loud pipes and safety, the only reason left for making that kind of noise is recreational.

If safety isn't a useful reason to be noisy, why are so many motorcyclists so damn loud? I think the most likely reason is, "Loud pipes are power." Jimmy Page once argued that electric guitar was the coolest musical instrument because "with a flick of a pick, you can drive 100,000 fans deaf." That's power. Similarly, with the twist of a wrist an untalented, uninteresting working class man or woman can nearly deafen everyone within a few dozen yards. At the least, you can irritate people for a mile in every direction of your exhaust. For people who are powerless in their everyday lives, this kind of clout isn't something to sneeze at.

Loud pipes are a statement of freedom. Again, flaunting the law, good manners, and the opinions of people who otherwise might be able to control your life, a noisy motorcycle is a way to "stick it to the man," even if "the man" is your neighbors, your community, and the rest of society. Loud pipes are a giant middle finger held high above the din of a boring life. It's hard to argue someone out of their "right" to make that kind of statement. Hard, but not impossible. When the statement is made so broadly, hitting the people you want to offend and everyone else, it's not hard to imagine a rapid succession of legal events that could shut down a lot more than just loud motorcycles.

A while back, a trio of Canadian goofballs were fined $16,000 for filming themselves shooting ducks from their car. The Canuck boneheads posted a video of themselves on YouTube "laughing and firing at least 42 rounds from a high-powered rifle into a large pond filled with ducks and grebes." One of the three compounded the stupidity by saying. "We thought we were just having fun — really immature, stupid fun, you know?"

Same story, different device. Blasting the highway with omnidirectional, illegal, unnecessary noise is "really immature, stupid fun." I know. Tolerance for immature, stupid fun is vanishing in our overcrowded world. When that noise produces absolutely no value for anyone, even the dumbest biker ought to know how this is going to work out. One of the goofy duck-blasting Canucks apologized by saying, "“We should have known better but we didn’t, and for that I am sorry.” All motorcyclists are going to be apologizing for the actions of a few who didn't know better and aren't bright enough to quit their destructive behavior. Like ignorance, stupidity is a poor legal defense.

Your Opinion, My Opinion

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

On a web mail list, I stumbled into a discussion about air filters and it quickly turned into a pissing match between a guy who hated everything about the brand of filter that I've used for almost 30 years and he was pretty unimpressed with all other filtration options. I was a little put off by the dude's venom, so I bailed out of the discussion and fired up my word-processing software to write this column.

In my life, I have been rightly described as someone who is overly-dependent on personal experience and practical application. I'm all for science and theory, as long as it doesn't get between me and getting something done, but I'm not dependent on the advise of sanctioned experts or popular opinion. I've personally known quite a few of the folks the media uses for expert opinions and I'm not particularly impressed. They are all good men and women, but just like you and me they have opinions and their opinions are no more founded in fact than yours or mine. Sometimes, less so. In the end, if something I've been doing has worked for me, I'll keep doing it even when the experts claim it doesn't work. I'd rather spend my time fixing the things that are broke and the things that aren't will get my attention in my next life; the life where I will be born rich and with lots of idle time on my hands.

Sometimes, even well-intentioned scientifically conducted studies don't impress me. Of course, some scientific studies don't live up to the name, either. (I wasted a decade in medical device manufacturing and saw more of that kind of science than I want to think about.) Often, the constraints of a study limit the value of the study to rare conditions. For example, if a rat has a forced daily diet of one-fourth of his body weight in a given substance, he will get fat. Therefore, said given substance is fattening. Yeah, I'll keep that in mind the next time I sit down to a 50pound dinner.

In the case of the aforementioned air filter discussion, the one and only test I found on the subject assumed the user would improperly clean and prepare the filter and, therefore, the filter would be ineffective. On the other hand, I have subjected my bikes to above average dirt road and trail exposure and have seen no signs that my applications of this same filter are allowing above factory filter contamination into the engine. In fact, I have seen signs of contamination on the intakes of other bikes using stock or aftermarket paper filters that I never seen in my bikes. I was told that a poorly functioning filter won't necessarily leave signs on the intake manifold. 2-strokes, especially, tend to produce dust accumulation on the manifold, since the fuel-oil mixture provides a little glue for the contamination. Obviously, engine wear would increase with poor filtration, too. I see those signs of air filter failure on others' bikes when I maintain them, I don't see it on mine, for what it's worth.

I do not know what it's worth. I only know that I'm likely to change my behavior when I see evidence that what I'm doing doesn't work. The older I get, the less inclined I am to experiment with things that seem to work for me.

On the practical side, when I go on a long, backroads trip I don't worry about being able to find a clean filter after a couple thousand miles of dirt roads. All I need is a little soap, warm water, and a small can of filter oil. I don't need a Suzuki dealer, of which there seems to be a short supply in Canada or Alaska or North Dakota, for example.

In the mid-70s, when I first started using this brand of filter, a cross country race in western Nebraska provided a pretty severe test. About twenty miles into 120, the racers got hammered with a dust storm so thick that it was hard to see twenty feet ahead. In the dusty valleys, visibility dropped to less than ten feet. It was a Dust Bowl quality storm, a huge black cloud of sand and dirt that rose out of the southwest horizon and swept over the land like some kind of Hollywood supernatural evil. On top of the dust, the terrain was difficult and dry and the race would have been dusty, even without the storm. With the storm, bikes fell to the side of the road --sputtering and dying--like diseased animals in a plague. When I finished the first lap, I stopped to replace my choked up goggles and my wife and daughters got a kick out of my racoon-eye'd appearance. My mouth and nose were full of dirt, and I spit out the first half-gallon of water I tried to drink as it turned to mud in my mouth.

I took of for the second lap as the storm really turned ugly. About halfway through that lap, the event organizers threw in the red flag and called the event. Out of the original 50-or-so bikes, there were about a dozen of us still running. We cut across the course in a blizzard of dirt and fumbled out way back to our cars and trailers.

Some racers headed for Ogallala, where they planned to hide out in a bar or motel until the storm passed. I had to be back at work on Monday, so I pointed my car east and hit the freeway trying to out run the storm. A few miles later, my car's hydraulic clutch died. Both the master cylinder and the slave were seriously leaking fluid. Without a clutch and towing a trailer, getting back on the road was a hassle, but I had enough fuel to get home and planned to run every stop sign and light that didn't cooperate with my objective. Fifty miles later, my brakes became suspiciously soggy, but they still worked and I escaped the storm and made it home without any additional problems.

After repairing the clutch and brakes on the car and hauling a bucket of sand and dust out of the interior, I started getting the bike ready for the following Sunday. When I pulled the top off of the bike's filter box, I was amazed to see how much dust surrounded the filter. It was nearly buried. To keep from pouring crud into the cylinder, I pulled the whole air box off and dumped it out before removing the air cleaner for service. Still, not a speck of dust to be found in the intake manifold. I raced the bike for another year, sold it to a friend, and it lasted one more year off road before it died. The little Rickman ended up in the old motorcycles graveyard because the new owner tossed the air filter when it became so packed with river sand that the bike stalled. He almost made it back home before the motor seized. I don't know what that proves.

I've been using the same brand of air filters for exactly the opposite reason on my cars (older cars, anyway) and dirt bikes since the 1970s and I'm always amazed at how clean my intakes have been after some really nasty events and LD rides. Maybe it's the preparation and maintenance that bothers others? I put 380k miles on a 1973 Toyota HiLux pickup over 20 years and it was running strong when I sold it. Its whole life was spent with a the same filter. My CX500 gave me 130k miles with only a timing chain problem all with the same filter. All of my dirt bikes, from an OSSA Phantom to a Yamaha XT350 to my current 250 Super Sherpa breathe through that brand. So does my current bike, a Suzuki DL-650. I just have no motivation to change, so until some catastrophe inspires me to amend my opinion I'm sticking with what has worked for me.

I'm not trying to convince you to go with my brand. I'm not trying to convince you of anything except that the old adage "don't fix what ain't broke" isn't a bad way to go. It's not rocket science, but that's not all it's cut out to be either.

Getting Geezerly

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

I've noticed a change in my attitude since turning 60. I care less and less about the future of the things that won't affect me. This is fairly significant, since I am sort of notorious among my friends for living as much in the future as the present.

A fair number of my Geezer columns, beginning with the first one from 1999, are about how motorcyclists' anti-social behaviors are likely to affect motorcyclists' access to public roads and parts of cities. It's happened before and it's going to happen more. Even dumps like Daytona are reconsidering the effect motorcycle invasions have on their residents' already miserable quality of life. Lots of lesser "traditional" motorcycle destinations are opting out of the loud pipe, hooligan-behaving, tough-guy-dentist, vandals-took-the-handles secondary effects of going after the motorcycling dollar.

Fortunately for me, I don't go to any of those events or places. Even more fortunate, I live in an insanely conservative country where progress and innovation has been slowed to a crawl and change rarely comes in less than a generation. For example, we're going to be the last industrialized nation to ban lead from manufacturing processes. We are more concerned with the inconvenience manufacturers will experience if they stop pouring that metal into our drinking water than we about poisoning our children. If something that big doesn't get fixed instantly, how long will it take cities to rid themselves of pesky, but rare and insignificant and non-socially-redeeming, motorcyclists? Seriously, even though motorcycles are not in any way part of "smart highway" planning, how many decades will it be before this country moves to that kind of vehicle? In the Land of the Brave we're conservative (timid, afraid of the dark, terrified of change) and we won't do anything rash, innovative, or sensible in a hurry. The oceans may rise up and float our cities away and we'll still be debating who will pay for any technology change.

With that knowledge behind me, I have quit worrying about the future of motorcycling. Whatever happens, won't happen to me. At best, I have maybe 10 years, 15 tops, left to ride. More likely, I'll fall off of a cliff, contract some nasty cancer from my years of industrial chemical exposure, trip over my dog and fall down the stairs, or blow a gasket in any number of clogged vessels or organs. The future of motorcycling is not likely to change in my lifetime. None of my kids have chosen to be motorcyclists and I don't see that as something to worry about. My grandson might become interested, but he probably won't. I've lost the capacity to worry about generations beyond the ones I know personally.

That “freedom” has a cost, though. Recently, a younger, more politically involved friend asked my opinion of helmet laws. For the last 25 years I’ve had a split mind on this issue. On one hand, I’m a fan of Darwin’s selection of the fittest and am all for getting the stupid out of the gene pool. On the other, I’m worried that if too many of the unfit kill themselves on motorcycles their surviving relatives will rise up and campaign against the existence of “murdercycles” on public roads. As I explained that pair of concerns I realized I had passed the point of caring about the second hand. My explanation was blunt, honest, and very politically incorrect. It happened so quickly that it was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.

Another friend, a non-helmet wearing friend, was part of the discussion and was obviously offended by my lack of concern for his offspring. That’s the other effect of aging on me; I’m less sensitive (and I was always insensitive) to who I offend. Honestly, I’m less afraid of the consequences. At work, this has resulted in a feeling that I’m “bulletproof” to the politics and backstabbing that goes on in an academic institution. The worst thing that can happen is that I will get fired. If I get fired, I’ll find some other way to occupy my time and pay my bills. I have a good gig, but there are other good gigs.

In personal relationships, I worry less about what will be thought about me and more about saying what I mean to say. Getting old sucks, creaks, hurts, aches, and provides occasional stabbing pain. However, it is sort of liberating. If "the worst" that can happen can only happen for a short duration, how bad can it be? It's not like I'm going to be disabled and suffer through the prime of my years. My prime passed about 30 years ago.

The older I get, the higher my tolerance for pain becomes. Getting out of bed is more painful than crashing a dirt bike was 35 years ago. Bending over, running, squatting, reaching over my head, twisting, and flexing any joint provides a constant reminder that my body is increasingly fragile and rapidly decaying. The choices are: 1) avoid pain by not doing anything or 2) get used to pain and keep doing stuff.

For a while, I'm going to chose to keep doing stuff. If the rest of you choose to screw up motorcycling, I'm not going to worry about it. You can't screw it up fast enough to mess up my time on the road.

Not Like Everybody

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

We motorcyclists are an odd group, even compared to other members of our odd species. We are so full of contradictions that it's hard to take seriously anything humans say or do. Motorcyclists are even less consistent than "normal" people.

For example, I've heard motorcyclists claim that our vehicle should be a protected species because by riding motorcycles we are saving fuel, creating less pollution, and creating less traffic congestion. Some of that seems legitimate, although there are some motorcycles that get pretty miserable mileage and many motorcycles barely do better than modern compact cars. However, we aren't anything special in the emissions realm. A 2008 L.A. Times article1 about motorcycles stated, "In California, such bikes make up 3.6% of registered vehicles and 1% of vehicle miles traveled, yet they account for 10% of passenger vehicles' smog-forming emissions in the state. In fact, the average motorbike is about 10 times more polluting per mile than a passenger car, light truck or SUV, according to a California Air Resources Board comparison of emissions-compliant vehicles."

Even that is misleading because motorcycles are "tested at lower speeds, which pollutes less" and a bike only has to maintain that level of emissions "for the first 18,600 miles of a bike's life, compared with 150,000 miles for cars." Those lax regulations only exist for bikes over 179cc. Smaller motorcycles and scooters can crank pollutants into the air without any regulation. The Times story concluded with "Motorcycles, even small ones, are more polluting than Hummers, but it's the best that can be done for now."

Leaving behind my paranoia of being a pin in a rolling bowling pins configuration, I went on a short group ride a year ago. I discovered what those critics say about motorcycle emissions is true. In the middle of a pack of mostly modern, mostly unmodified bikes, the smell of unburned gases was strong and, after a few miles, I bailed out of the crowd to clear my head and wait for my eyes to stop watering. My wife, who is sensitive to petroleum fumes, was close to nauseous before we left the pack. A bunch of motorcycles is as noxious as a convoy of military vehicles (another group of notorious EPA rule violators).

While individual motorcycles are definitely able to reduce traffic congestion, a parade of motorcycles quickly makes up for all the benefit individual riders can create. Some riders take a lot of pride in hauling out their garage jewelry once or twice a year for a "charity ride." It has always seemed to me that simply putting the gas and jewelry money used for these rides into the charity would do a lot more good, but maybe I'm missing the point. Those parades of slow-moving hippobikes jam up traffic for miles and raise the general ire toward motorcycling. They do, in fact, raise motorcycle awareness among the general public, but not in a good way.

Likewise, motorcyclists try to link the noise of our vehicle to other similarly irritating noise producers. It's true that there are all kinds of irrationally noisy vehicles on the road and it's also true that the police do a lousy job of enforcing noise standards. However, if you would spend a couple hours along a major road with an SPL (Sound Pressure Level) meter, you would find that motorcycles are consistently the loudest non-emergency vehicle noise maker on the street and in most neighborhoods. It's fun to argue that if motorcycles have to be noise limited, every other noise source should be equally restricted, but the logical way to reduce any kind of unwanted activity is to go after the worst offenders first and work your way down the ladder to the least offensive offender. Motorcycles are at the top of the worst noise offenders.

Motorcyclists go ballistic on any attempt to resist attempts to legislate safety into motorcycling. Cagers, of course, wonder why they have to wear seatbelts and buy cars with airbags and safety cages when motorcyclists don't even have to wear clothing, let alone helmets. Bikers rant that if they have to wear helmets, everybody else should, too. The fact is, once again, we're the least safe on the street. Even bicyclists have fewer deaths-per-mile than motorcyclists. In most statistical measures, we're more unsafe than pedestrians. Again, it's reasonable to fix the worst things first. We're high on the list of worst things; less than 1% of highway traffic and approximately 12% (nationally and internationally) of fatalities.

Motorcyclists see themselves differently than what the social mirror reflects. A writer for Motorcyclist Magazine in an article aptly titled "The Great Pretender," imagined, "Everyone--at every stoplight, at every rest area and every gas stop--will want to talk about your [Harley] and participate in, however vicariously, the collective Harley-Davidson fantasy." I'm probably a little sensitive to words like "everyone," "everybody," "no one," and other all-inclusive terms that abuse reality. It's possible that many downtown Milwaukee residents are continually impressed with every Harley rider they see, but I doubt that every one of them feels that passionately about an object that is no more remarkable than a Big Mac. A few years back, I went on a ride with a friend who owned a vintage Harley something-or-other. It was heavily customized, well-polished, and sparkled like something mostly covered in chrome should. We rode from the Cities to Duluth and back via Minnesota and Wisconsin two-lanes and country roads. Every time we stopped (fairly often occurrences because the Harley beat up my friend's back pretty badly), a few people wanted to ask about my Suzuki SV and a few people talked up the Harley. He was a little miffed at the people who were disinterested in his badass ride. He probably knew that he wouldn't be able to tell our friends that "everyone" wanted to wanted to talk about his Harley.

Some motorcyclists like to think that the public service they perform by being the most obnoxious vehicle the on the road should be rewarded with legislative protection. The fantastic fetish with special "failure to yield" protection seems to be a contradiction to the "I have a right to take risks" anti-helmet attitude. It seems to me that someone who is disinterested in wearing minimal protective gear ought to at least be able to face the fact that when bad things happen, they're going to be a lot worse if you add the risk of being naked to the elements and asphalt.

According to these characters, you can't improve motorcycle safety by protecting the organ that is most often damaged in a crash, but you can legislate better driver awareness by making a "failure to yield" violation a felony. You have to wonder if these folks have made investments in privately owned prisons.

Another example of the same logic comes in the battle to protect risky activities from added insurance costs. Some states have representatives whose claim to fame is creating bills to prevent insurance companies from "discriminating" against consumers who engage in risky activities. If the public is supposed to be subsidizing our risky habits, what value do we provide for them? A recent unsigned letter-writer punctuated his rant with "Cagers need to TOLERATE us, not the other way around." [His capitalization] Obviously, this is a modern definition of "need" The fact is, highway traffic in the US has no need of motorcycles at all. We contribute an insignificant portion of commuter traffic; especially in places like Minnesota. If motorcycles were banned from public highways it wouldn't inconvenience the public at all. In fact, if you take into account the noise, public menace, and congestion that "group rides" create, most of the public would be glad to see motorcycles vanish from public roads.

Motorcyclists do epitomize the American individual-over-society attitude. The idea that "my rights are more important than the needs and best interests of the overall society" is well demonstrated in American history. When times get tough, that attitude gets more careful scrutiny than during ordinary conditions. Change happens and, when it does, the unnecessary and detrimental activities of the privileged few often get swept into history. We should be careful to not be so useless that we end up as a historical footnote.

1 http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-throttle11-2008jun11,0,3268856.story

Personality

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

After an afternoon teaching an MSF Experienced Rider Course, I got into a conversation about the new bikes I'd be interested in owning. It's always fun to dream about a bigger budget, a bigger garage, and unlimited time to play with extra toys. I'm pretty happy with the few toys I own and really don't fantasize about owning a collection of bikes that I would rarely ride. Still, there are a lot of cool motorcycles and when guys get together to talk about bikes we don't bother with practical considerations.

When I started talking about some of the cool small Japanese bikes we don't get in the US, the Yamaha WR250X Supermoto, the Kawi Versys, the updated Kawi Ninja 250, and even some of the weird new scooters, the other riders wanted to talk about Euro-trash and big chrome weirdness. I'm as fascinated as the next guy by the old country and some of the freakin' strange stuff that old guys swing a leg over in the interests of aging-male-psychology, but the conversation stopper came pretty quickly when one of the guys said, "Japanese bikes are well built, but I like a motorcycle that has personality."

Wham! I'm out of the conversation, tuned into listening to the other guys discuss "personality" while I try to figure out what that means when it comes to motorcycles. Webster's says personality is "the quality or state of being a person" or "the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual . . . " Ok, motorcycles with personality sounds like the ultimate in anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. Disney would be proud.

I'm only half-on-board with vehicles with personality, though. I admit to cursing my motorcycle, shop tools, the unfairness of life, and the atmosphere surrounding my workspace when my tiny brain fails to grasp basic mechanical properties or forgets where I put the 10mm box-end ten seconds after I last used it. I don't, however, believe that any of those targets of my rage hear a word I say.

1'cause you got personality,
Walk, personality
Talk, Personality
Smile, Personality
Charm, personality

So, I did some research on the bikes my new friends mentioned by browsing bike reviews of motorcycles with "personality." Immediately, I see phrases like "the bike mysteriously turned itself off twice in hot weather," "neutrals could be found between every gear," "high altitude oxygen depletion was fixed with a . . . kit," "operational quirks," "infuriating feature that caused the headlights to switch off when the twin cooling fans would turn on." I found those comments on a single page describing the experience with three Euro-exotica bikes. Whipping through bike rag after bike rag, I see these kinds of comments passed on, and over, as calmly as my wife relays an important telephone message from a telemarketer.

So, personality means "design flaws?" I can only hope not, but from my own experience with European motorcycles I could believe that is part of the mystery. If that's part of the attraction, I'm only going to be more confused. I've been around odd motorcycles my whole biking life. I sold Ossas for a short while. I have friends who own and have owned everything from eastern European dirt bikes to Bimotas and Vincents. Honestly, I wouldn't consider heading into the back country on any of them. Between the lack of parts, dealerships, competent mechanics, factory support, and the penchant for Euro-complexity, the whole experience is too high-maintenance for me. What do I know? I've been married for 42 years because I lucked into a low maintenance, high reliability woman when I was young and impressionable and I have no motivation to test my luck again.

It's in the reliability area where I most dislike personality the most. When I was young and stupid, I owned a British car (an MGA) and, before and after, a couple of British bikes (a BSA and a Rickman). Both experiences taught me that "personality" in a motor vehicle should be left to folks who have no family, friends, life, or interesting hobbies. A buddy in California owned a Mercedes and a Porsche, both were highly regarded models of those brands and both were broken more often than running. I tried working on the Porsche for one weekend and was embarrassed for the 25% German of my heritage. Plywood floorboards? Didn't Henry Ford give that up after the Model T?

My experiences with European bikes, both as an owner/rider and as an entertained observer, have convinced me that I do not want mechanical personality in my motor vehicles and I don't like being in the vicinity of motor vehicles with personality. Part of my aversion to riding with other people is that I have spent too much of my riding time ferrying another rider back to civilization to obtain parts, tools, or a pickup to rescue one of those personality-laden bikes. In 350,000+ miles of riding, I have never had the pleasure of having that favor returned. Maybe I haven't put in enough time traveling in groups to earn payback, but I have put in enough time to know that it's easier to rescue myself than it is to get tangled up being the rescuer. Add poor engineering and parts unavailability to the mix and I choose to enjoy this kind of personality in the safe confines of museums.

I don't get personable style, either. Some of the personality bikes that other folks rage over leave me cold, appearance-wise. Those ever-changing Euro lines that are supposed to be so stylish just look dated and over-stated, like last year's Apple laptop or big hair and bell-bottom jeans. Of course, some of those bikes just photograph poorly, like the KTM Duke.

My friends say I´m a fool
But over and over
I´ll be a fool for you

Not me. I'm a big believer in the adage, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." You can argue that riding motorcycles is risky and foolish and I can't disagree with your logic, assuming you are using logic for that conclusion. Money is the root of all evil. Eating meat is bad for your cardiovascular system. Bread is fattening. Beer makes you stupid. Going outdoors is dangerous. Urban air is full of carcinogens. Rural air is contaminated with bacteria and poisons. The globe is warming, the poles are shifting, and the sky is falling. Some risks have a bigger payback than others. I don't need to experience the wonder of motorcycle personality more than the few times I've suffered that affliction.

I accept all of the nasty things of life and more, but I don't want any backtalk from my motorcycles. I just want to ride them, go places on them, look cool standing beside them, and swear at them when I do something stupid with, or on, them. If my motorcycle has opinions or eccentricities, I don't care to know about it.

1Lloyd Price, "Personality"

Highway Blues

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

A while back I spent a flu-infested weekend watching European motorcycle travel videos. For several minutes a critical aspect of the first film, the smooth on-bike camera work, made absolutely no sense to me. Eventually I decided that European roads must actually be paved competently. Any attempt I've made at Minnesota on-bike camera footage has been marred by massive vibration. One incident cost me a few hundred dollars in camera repair bills when the trip vibrated the guts loose in a supposedly "indestructible mini-cam." Over the years, I've had a few videos submitted for my Motorcycling Minnesota show that were interesting, but too regularly interrupted by camera glitches and sync dropouts to be used without hours of frame-by-frame editing. I did that once and decided to never be tempted again, no matter how interesting the footage. I've been trying to do a helmet noise test for the last year, but my solid-state sound gear keeps shaking to pieces while I try to gather road data. Highway construction is simply not a skill belonging to the citizens of this state.

For example, MNDOT built an extravaganza of weird highway engineering in my backyard. Some government genius decided that the five minute traffic jam that occurs every weekday rush hour was justification to build an LA-style multi-lane freeway mousetrap that will filter two lanes of 35E into two lanes of I694. Esher would be proud of MNDOT's assortment of swooping overpasses, but I think they created one of the nation's last monuments to mindless urban sprawl. After two years, the construction is still on-going and I figure MNDOT will finish this shrine a few minutes before gas hits $10/gallon and everything north of White Bear Lake and south of the Humphrey Airport becomes a collection of tele-commuter ghost towns.[1] When the asphalt mousetrap is finished, I give it about three weeks before it all decays into the rubble Minnesota calls "pavement." The crap that passes for asphalt here wouldn't be used for patching rural driveways in other parts of the world. Minnesota and other eastern states build the world's only water-soluble highways.

For the most part, the United States (and, especially, in the east) are incapable of building highways worth traveling. Moments after we pave a section of road, it begins to crumble into disconnected chunks of asphalt, strip-mine-sized potholes, and mini-canyons. It's probably a nasty combination of corrupt bureaucrats and incompetent contractors, but the result is that roads last a few seconds before they begin disintegrate. There is a section of I35 just a bit north of Albert Lee that is so freakin' awful that I once stopped to see if I had a flat front tire or a disintegrating wheel. Heading west on I90, the right lane of the freeway was so trashed that my back was practically pounded into dust. These two pitiful excuses for roads typical of Minnesota's attempts at the art of road building. At the local level, most of St. Paul's residential streets would make a respectable motocross course and Minneapolis is no improvement. Many of our two lane roads are simply a waste of tar and paint.

Before I condemn all of American highways, I have to admit that Colorado actually manages to put a surface on a roadway that approaches a decent paved standard, although they often take a decade to build a mile or two. New Mexico is astoundingly un-American in its ability to manage asphalt and cement. However, Rust Belt highway engineering is a national embarrassment. Chicago's freeways and toll roads are unattended bomb craters. It's hard to tell Cleveland and Detroit pavement from volcano rubble. My limited experience with east coast freeways and highways always makes me appreciate the fact that I'm only partially responsible for the condition of rental cars. Face it, from the western edge of Nebraska heading east, "highway engineering" is an oxymoron.

So here's my suggestion: Give It Up. As a nation, we can't manage construction, so we should admit failure and quit trying. The rural dirt and gravel roads we have are actually pretty drivable, in comparison to the paved disasters. Even if our dirt roads weren't better road surfaces than our freeways, I'm happier knowing that traction and road surface will be consistently poor; rather than inconsistently mediocre.

One should always go with the talents one has, rather than waste effort on unobtainable skills. Since we can't manage pavement, I advise that we give up the whole idea. We're simply not smart enough to deal with it. I recommend that we plow up the highways, freeways, and streets and give back most of the land to the homeowners to whom that property originally belonged. We can leave just enough asphalt for paved bicycle trails, because if MNDOT can't manage pavement, it appears that the folks who design the DNR's bicycle trails are almost competent. A little of the roadway could also be left "undeveloped," for off-road vehicles. I don't mean four-wheel blimps because that's just a waste of space. I mean vehicles like . . . dirtbikes. Good old fashioned, real motorcycles; not girly-man whimp-bikes that require impossible-to-build smooth-as-a-baby's-butt roadways, but real motorcycles that can negotiate any terrain nature coughs up. This brilliant solution would inspire mass transit design, getting the idiots out of their SUVs, and reduce hydrocarbon emissions.

And it would be a lot more fun to ride to work.

[1] A depressing, but complete site for all sorts of links to information about the coming energy crisis is http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/.

Traveling Heavy, Traveling Light

"'cuse sur. Soes stay here." It took me a bit to figure out what he was saying. I was in the Dodge City Best Western for my father's funeral. It was 5AM and I'd wandered the motel's halls discovering the closed pool and the locked gym area and I'd found myself in the "hospitality room" breakfast area. I'd almost sat down to take advantage of hospitality coffee when an employee dressed in kitchen whites pointed out that I needed "soes" to be in that area.

It brought me back to memories of California, almost instantly. As I plodded back to our room, I thought about how strange it was that the wealthiest, hippest place I'd ever lived, Southern California, was the least formal and the worst places I'd lived, Dodge City as a prime example, were the most formal. One of our favorite hangouts in Huntington Beach was Duke's Beach Restaurant and Barefoot Bar another was Mazotti's. I doubt that I ever wore shoes into either of those great places or half of the other restaurants where I spent money in California. The "shoes" I wore for almost all of my spare time were flipflops and they were practically invisible because my feet were covered in sand most days away from work. Along the beach, which is the only place to be in California, not only are shoes optional but clothes were optional-to-minimal.

Travel 2,000 miles inland to the worst armpit villages you can imagine in the Midwest and you may be expected to wear a tie and sport jacket for food that is barely digestible and "atmosphere" that reeks of feedlot aroma. You will not be allowed to grab a coffee and roll wearing a swimming suit and towel without being reprimanded by a non-English speaking hotel employee. This isn't about insurance liability or any practical value, it's a local taboo with a long, strange history.

If taboos in 2010 weren't so pitiful, they would be a lot funnier. Hell, it's hard for me to say the word "taboo" without laughing. It conjures up images of bones in noses, pedophile priests torturing heretics, and baseball players living in the same sox all season.

Clothing, especially formal clothing, has been designed to project an image of wealth and power or function and utility; if you are working class. The more you know about the history of clothing, the funnier looking rich humans become. Ties, particularly, provide a lot of entertainment. Like loop earrings, they provide a handle for an opponent in a fight, so wearing either is a demonstration of either helplessness or a good bodyguard. In a business environment, those of us not blessed with pencil necks are cursed with poor blood flow while wearing ties and buttoned top collars. Shoes are pretty hillarious, too. Recent research has found that modern shoe design might be a cause of foot, knee, hip, and back injuries. It turns out that walking and running barefoot could be dramatically healthier than walking or running in any shoe design we've yet devised. Go figure. A couple million years of evolution beats the best work of New York's fashion designers?

I'm a big fan of shoes, particularly boots, on my motorcycle. The heavier, the less-flexible the better. But I'm not planning on walking much in those boots. Their purpose is to protect my feet from the abrasive effects of asphalt and gravel. My favorite riding boots have done that job pretty well in the past.

It turns out that my packing skills are better suited for solo motorcycle travel than for crossing the country in a station wagon with my wife. I'm more comfortable sleeping in a campground in a tent than in a hotel suite and I pack more what I need and less what I think I might want in the limited constraints of a motorcycle's storage. For example, I brought three books, this computer, school course work to organize and homework to grade, a suit, two pairs of uncomfortable shoes, a couple dress shirts, a tie, but I forgot to pack a warm jacket or comfortable shoes. On the bike, I live in my 'stich Darien gear and my riding boots, and I pack a pair of camp shoes that I live in once I'm off of the bike. If I don't need it, I don't pack it on the bike. I could haul a rock band in my wife's Taurus station wagon.

Summer is coming and I'm going to need a long ride to sort out all of the baggage I'm taking on this weekend. Where ever I go, shoes will not be required any time I'm off of the motorcycle.

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.

Say What?

This post is more about the geezer half of my life, rather than the motorcycling 10% or the grudging 40%.

Passing 60 is like getting passed by a bicyclist on a mountain road; not only are you clearly too conservative to be driving on public roads (and, maybe, golf courses) but you are too unaware of your wimpiness to hide it. Everything starts failing at once: eyes, ears, nose, taste buds, muscle tone, reflexes, and all the stuff I forgot to mention because memory also goes.

There is a type of old biker that, particularly, has to be in incredible danger because not only does this sort of nut ride practically everywhere with his wife on the passenger seat but the crazy moron is also helmet-wired for conversation. Anyone who ever tried to talk to a grandparent about anything semi-complicated knows where this is going.

I get a taste of this every time my wife comes into my office to watch the Colbert Report. Every other thing Steven says gets punctuated by my wife asking, "What did he say?" If his buddy, "Jimmy," puts up a graphic with words smaller than full-screen height and width, my wife asks, "What does that say?"

Like most Boomer babes, my wife refuses to wear glasses, wouldn't be caught dead wearing a hearing aid, and can't see anything smaller than a coffee cup or hear anything quieter than a shotgun blast. When I come into a room when she's been watching television by herself, it sounds like Oprah or Ellen singing along with Led Zeppelin live. If the reverse is true, she asks, "Why are you watching a movie with the sound turned off?"

Now, put that sort of relationship on a motorcycle. You're in a stream of freeway traffic on a 900 pound cruiser or touring bike and she's constantly whacking you on the back of the head, shouting into your headset, "What did that sign say? What's that noise? Did that kid give me the finger? Where do you want to eat? What? Where do you want to eat? I can't hear you." And so it goes until you finally smash the bike into the back of a bus while trying to reply to your wife in sign language, since words are useless.

In one of my favorite lyrics, Bob Dylan once sang, "You ask why I don't live here. I say, 'Man, I don't believe you don't leave.'" When I bump into an older couple on the road, wired up like space monkeys, in one of the many hilarious coordinated costumes that paired-up motorcyclists wear, and wondering why my wife isn't along for the ride, all I am hearing while they yammer at me is Bob Dylan's "On the Road Again." Which is where I want to be the moment they start talking to me. and will be as soon as I finish eating, get off of the damn ferry, or get my tank filled and escape to the solitude of the road.

Way back in March of 2001, I wrote a rant called A Failure to Communicate about a friend who was turning insistent on the "radio-in-the-helmet thing." I eventually went straight with him and asked, "Why do I want to talk to you, while I'm riding my motorcycle?" He thought that was a personal insult. People who knew me better knew that comment applied to anyone and everyone. Staying rubber-side down, away from idiot cagers, and on top of my own tendency to daydream myself into a ditch takes all of the limited geezer concentration I own. Your mileage may vary, but I doubt it.

The Geezer on YouTube

About 5 years ago, I had a regular local motorcycle show on cable called "Motorcycling Minnesota." The show ran a few more than two dozen episodes between 1999 and 2006. It turned into a regular headache with every show turning into a ClusterFox of assistants/interns/employees deciding they didn't like video editing as much as they'd imagined and with deadlines and sponsors acting as moving targets. I got what I wanted out of the experience, broke even on my equipment, and got a little further into the business I thought I'd left behind. I don't have a history of all of the shows (no great loss), but I have a few of the shorts and complete shows in archive format, so I thought they might as well be taking up space on someone else's computers.
With this website and my regular column turning in a little cash flow, I decided to take another show at being a movie star (in my own mind). So, I fired up a Geezer with A Grudge YouTube channel, posted a few of the old shows, and started working on turning my Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly column into a regular video issue on YouTube and on the cable station that used to run the Motorcycling Minnesota shows.

One of the original shows is linked above. This is my video take on the cool stuff from the 2004 Cycle World International Motorcycle Show. The kid who keeps popping up in the show is my grandson, Wolfe.

Again, if you are getting this column by email and wish to continue reading the silly crap that pops into my head, please consider subscribing to the Geezer with A Grudge blogsite. The email service is temporary and the list changes regularly.