Crazy Collector Stories

This blog entry is nothing more than a statement of inquiry. I’m trying to write a story about the mental state (habits, motivations, attitudes, and rationalizations) of folks who “collect” motorcycles. A collector, in my mind, is everything from:

• someone who inherits/buys a bike and keeps it, unused, in the back of the garage for decades
• to the packrat who buys and stores as many rat bikes as his garage can hold
• to the Leno-style loony who builds an ostentatious storage facility and employs professional mechanics to clean and maintain his motorcycles in case he gets the urge for a short ride to the local Hard Rock or just wants to straddle a clean seat and make “vooroooom” noises.

For my money, each of these characters is exhibiting a form of eccentricity that is worth examining, simply for the entertainment value. When we’re being honest, I imagine all of us “hoard” something: family pictures or letters, ceramic dolls, musical instruments, ballpoint pens stolen from the office, and items that symbolize precious memories. Motorcycles are on the mild extreme of the crazy side of this addiction. After all, you can stuff a dozen bikes into a normal two-car garage which is slightly less nutty than buying a barn or airport hangar for a “collection.” Of course, that means the garage can’t be used for anything else. Even a collector has to admit filling a garage with unused machinery is an obsession; especially a collector who lives where severe winters make owning a garage a near necessity.

What I’m hoping to gather in this space (http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/) is any kind of story that describes the motorcycles in one of these collections or a description of the collector himself. Please, feel free to pass this along to anyone you know who can add something to this highly academic “analysis.”

The Repercussions of Having an Opinion

This summer, I reviewed a bike that put me in an ethical bind. I really liked the folks at the dealership, although they were clearly not motorcycle people. The dealership was a hardware store trying to get into the exciting, high-profile, profitable scooter and motorcycle market. Yes, I'm joking about the characteristics of our market but I'm not joking about their expectations for that same business. They were almost childishly anticipating a flood of cash from their entry into American motorcycling. I thought they should have been a little more cautious, since they had only recently dropped Polaris' and were still trying to offload their inventory (two bikes) of last years' It turned out that the bike was, largely, junk. 

 You can read the review linked to this column for a mild-mannered opinion of that motorcycle. Not only was the quality and design short of modern standards, it was overpriced, unreliable (based on my short and uncomfortable experience), and possibly dangerous. For example, the clutch grabbed so severely that it would intermittently yank the bike several yards on engagement and disengaged a fair distance from the misnamed "friction zone." The dealer admitted they had experienced this before, the factory offered a "fix" that didn't work, and I still have no idea if the bike can be made safe due to this defect. 

When my review hit the stands, I got a few calls and emails from Hyosung owners describing their experience with the clutch problems and asking if there was remedy. Since the dealer had decided to toss fuel and a lit match on our relationship, the best I could offer the Hyosung victims was a phone number and web-link for the NHTSA recall hot line. 

In my review I tried to briefly describe many of the bike's defects as accurately as possible. There is, or should be, a public service aspect to product reviews and I take that seriously, having been burned a few times by half-honest product reviews. It is hard to be critical of a motorcycle that has been handed over with the expectation of unbridled love, but that's a critic's job. Of course, the basic design was pretty funny on its own, which added an aspect of humor that was out of my control. The Korean manufacturer went for a really weird and retro chopper look and a totally stupid riding position, which was a regular source of entertainment by everyone who knows me and saw me on the bike. 

 To be blunt and honest, I hated the bike and think it is the worst representation of the style I've ever ridden. But, I'm no cruiser expert. I do my best to stay off of the damn things and have yet to ride one I'd consider owning. The article says as much. In a form-follows-function world, cruisers have lost their way. The Hyosung was the worst representative of a terrible motorcycle style that I've ever suffered. My review didn't reflect even half of my dislike of the Avitar. As toned-down as it was, the resultant article received the following comments from the manufacturer's sales department:

• ". . . You assured both myself and [names deleted], our National Sales Mgr. that you just wanted to do a fair, light hearted review on some of Hyosungs models and that no matter how bad the bike or scooter may turn out to be (should that be the case, which it is not), neither you nor your writing staff would be overly hard or in anyway unfair on said unit and would emphasize the strong points of the model more so than its weaknesses. . .
• "Well I can assure you that if this lop sided, closed and narrow minded, cruiser hating editors article hits the newstands as written, I will personally guarantee you that you will never ever review one of our bikes, scooters or anything else we manufacture again either. Did the same Jackass that wrote this article happen to ride the HD too?
• "I am shocked that you call yourself a motorcycle magazine and that your reviewer considers himself a motorcyclist at all least of all an motorcycle editor? . . .
• "However to send a person to test a motorcycle that openly admits to hating any and all types of a certain style of motorcycle (in this case cruisers) is just plain stupidity and completely unethical and can only lead to an uninformed and uninspiring review!
• "Also, how small is this reviewer that he doesn't fit on the GV650? We had women that stood all of 5ft 4 inches tall and weighed 105 pounds soaking wet sit on it at the show, easily pull it up off the sidestand and feel very comfortable doing so? In fact, its neutral riding position along with how well it carries its weight low . . .
• "He has no business testing ours or any other manufacturers products because he does not carry anything remotely close to unbiased, fair or ethical writing skills...or dare I say any writing skills at all. . .
• "There are so many holes in this article that I couldn't plug them with all ten fingers and toes...but I digress, if this is what you call a review in your magazine, then please don't bother to ask to "review" our products in the future. . . "

Where the marketing doofus got the idea that I'm an "editor" is a confusion. He also appears to think my first or last name is "Jackass," which I suppose is more likely than me being an editor. While his own "writing skills" would make most text messengers blush in shame, he seems to feel pretty confident in his ability to blast mine which makes for entertaining reading. It is interesting that he conveniently chose to forget that MMM had not signed up to review the cruiser. In all the magazine's negotiations, the bike we were anticipating for review was the Hyosung GT650R; a Korean attempt at copying the Suzuki SV650. I was signed on to the review because I ride a Suzuki V-Strom 650 and previously owned and enjoyed an SV650 for 50,000 miles. Neither Sev, Victor, or I would have even considered putting me on a POS cruiser from any manufacturer under practically any conditions. If the goofball sales doofus had done any research, he would have known that MMM, in general, is not fond of cruisers and I, in particular, think they are clown bikes. 

Until the Avitar was rolled into the dealer's driveway and my wife had driven away in my escape vehicle, I had no idea that I would be test riding a Shriner vehicle. I would have dressed appropriately, had I known: protective bandana, butt-less leather chaps, Doc Martins, and the usual Harley comedy accessories. As it was, I arrived in full Aerostich gear, helmet, boots, and all. I was as appropriately dressed as a riot cop at a Grateful Dead concert. If I weren't cursed with a Midwestern inability to say "no," I would have recalled my wife and simply left after explaining to the dealer why they did not want me reviewing the Avitar. 

As it was, the dealer had spent all of the magazine's lead time prepping the bike, delivering it almost two weeks after they had promised it would be ready. Two of the four possible reviewers had dropped out of the pool of writers because of the near deadline and the poor timing. It would either be me and Steven Heller or Steven alone. It probably should have been Steven alone. So, I can't disagree that with the marketing doofus' basic premise that I was bound to dislike the Hyosung cruiser. A more adventurous manufacturer might have taken my position as a challenge and accepted any level of approval as an accomplishment or an opportunity to fine tune a vehicle that clearly needs critical design input. So it goes and Hyosung was already on record as being "sensitive," since they had burst into indignant flames over Cycle World's mediocre review a few months earlier. I admit it. I hated the bike. 

Riding the Hyosung Avitar was almost a crippling event and it felt unsafe at all but in the slowest, least traffic critical situations. My neck and back hurt for a week after escaped the Avitar experience. And the bike is butt-ugly. I did my best to picture it in the best light, including a pretty flattering (in my opinion) picture of the abomination next to a lake on a dirt road upon which only a masochist would venture with a machine so limited in capability. I gave it my best shot, but we were doomed to hate each other. 

Obviously, I didn't rave about the bike's glorious features and that was, apparently, a crime. Even I can only lie so much in 1,200 words. I do apologize for the "uninspiring" quality of the review. The best I could do was to reach for "funny." When I look back at the pictures of myself on the Avitar, I think we both accomplished funny. I still take crap from friends who posted a collection of pictures of me on that damn bike with my feet extended in the gynecologically-correct cruiser position and the rest my body so uncomfortably positioned that vacationing Guantanamo prison guards were taking notes as I rode by.

 In the aftermath of this experience, I've been relegated to finding my own bikes for review because MMM is growing gun shy of sales and marketing department backlash. Every once in a while, I feel a tinge of jealousy when the other writers get to play with cool bikes like the BMW F800ST (and I was on the list for that review before the Avitar fiasco) or the 2008 Aprilia Shiver. But I missed out on the H-D FLSTSB Cross Bones and the Can-Am Spyder, so I'm not all that injured. 

Successful humans almost always become more conservative and, no matter how you play games with the meaning of that word, that means we become less adventurous, courageous, and less willing to challenge the status quo. Believe it or not, I can remember when FM radio was adventurous. I can even remember when National Public Radio produced radically entertaining and informative programs. Way back in the dark ages of motorcycle publications, Dirt Bike Magazine actually performed shoot-outs that ended up with clear winners and losers. I wonder if Newsweek and Time Magazine had a golden age? I think the reason so many of us get our news and information from the Internet instead of magazines and newspapers is that the World Wide Web is still largely economically unsuccessful. Until the money starts pouring into blogs and web news sites, there are still ways to get attention on the Web without much financial incentive, so there is nothing to lose in telling the whole, nasty story. Once money creeps into the equation, the story's motivation changes. It's human nature. That doesn't make the occurance any less disappointing, though. Mostly due to a lack of patience, I'm going to post more product reviews on this blog in the future. I like the fact that I can say exactly what I think here without having to worry about offending whoever I'm likely to offend. It's easy enough to simply not read a blog if you don't like the writer.

Why I Hate Cruisers

What a totally bogus title. I don’t hate cruisers. They are inanimate objects. You should reserve a powerful emotion like “hate” for vicious characters like Nixon, Reagan, Georgie Bush and his sidekick Little Dick Cheney, Sideshow Bob, and the Anti-Truth (Fox News and their cast of clowns and freaks). I don’t hate cruiser owners, either. Some of them are among the lowest of the low, but they advertise that fact with their patches, tattoos, and crimes. Most folks who put on Village People costumes and ride a hard 50 miles-a-day from bar-to-bar on their big iron are mid-life-crisis walking wounded and are no more dangerous or despicable than the guys who dress up in gray flannel in Civil War enactments. So, really what this rant is about is why I dislike cruisers and the culture from which they are spawned.

First and most obviously, I can’t find a purpose or a function for the basic cruiser design.

It’s just a dumb-looking design without a single practical consideration. I once suffered through a Discovery Channel program on the history of motorcycles and that program tried to explain away the dopey riding position as being reminiscent of western cowboy saddles. I grew up riding western style saddles and I always had my feet under me anytime I was horseback. I’m completely unconvinced that sticking your feet in a pair of gynecologist stirrups is western, macho, or functional in any way. The “style” is derived from the piles of crap that the gangbangers chopper crowd rode during the days when only degenerates and Europeans rode motorcycles.

The riding position is primitive and uncomfortable. The chassis design negates all of the advantages of a motorcycle. The long, low, heavy, low ground clearance means the bike can't be maneuvered quickly in any kind of emergency. Cruisers can't turn, they can't get over obstacles, they can’t stop quickly, they can only accelerate in a straight line, and they are too heavy to get out of their own way. From a motor vehicle perspective, a cruiser is the equivalent of a Cadillac or, even more accurately, a single-passenger limousine. In other words, useless.

Most cruisers start with a single positive mechanical attribute; they are tuned so mildly that they can get pretty decent mileage when driven conservatively. Cruiser owners “fix” that almost immediately. Put on a noisy pipe, drill random holes in the intake system or put on a geeky chrome airbox and fuel efficiency will be sacrificed for the god of peak power at some random, probably unusable, rpm.

As far as the low CG advantage, that’s only useful when the bike is stationary, which (I guess) is a cruiser’s normal posture. Almost any inseam-challenged, overweight invalid can waddle a leg over a typical cruiser’s seat. A “tall” cruiser will have a 31” seat height while most customs will be modified so that small children can perch comfortably on the seat while planting both feet firmly on the ground. The other advantage to this “design” is that the bike practically stands itself in a parking lot. Like a sand-bottomed Bozo the Clown punching toy, with a pair of flat profile tires, a cruiser is a free-standing structure.

That, of course, is only an advantage when the bike is in a parking lot or barely moving. If form isn’t following some kind of function, I find no useful purpose for the form. A friend once said the cruiser “form is the function” and that lost me even further. If cruisers are art, I’m outta here. I don’t like non-representational art unless it’s on wallpaper and blends in with the furniture. I may not know art, but I know what I like; especially in motorcycles. A cruiser’s primary purpose appears to be to look impressively sedentary parked in front of a bar. I get that function from a rocking chair on my porch.

Tnere are folks who put the lie to my analysis, I'll admit. There are people who put long touring miles on their Harleys, Victories, and such and they amaze me. They are the exception to my "rule" and, as such, are exceptional. Sometimes I suspect they pick these ungainly, unsuited motorcycles just to prove that they can be ridden (tamed?) like a real motorcycle. I have the same kind of attitude toward really small motorcycles out of a similar motivation.

Humans are an irrational animal.

The social and historical aspects of cruisers turn me off even further. The riders who gravitate toward cruisers display a collection of traits that oppose most of what I believe in. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of very nice people riding completely silly motorcycles. Even some of them appear to be ignorant of what their ride-statement represents.

For example, the Nazi paraphernalia. A rider who also teaches MSF classes thought it was funny when I mentioned how insulted my WWII vet father would be seeing him displaying an airbrushed Nazi helmet. The guy is an ex-Marine, ex-policeman for cripes sake! How can it be that hard to figure out? Is there something about Nazis that I don’t know?

It gets a whole lot worse. I know bikers who sport Nazi swastikas and Harley tattoos, side-by-side. Biker rallies co-exist and cohabit with Klan’ers, skinheads, coke and meth dealers, gangsters, and all kinds of vicious, evil creeps. The posers who imitate the biker “style” don’t seem to realize that they are linking themselves with the worst of the worst.

The other social appeal for cruisers seems to be a freaky desire to turn back time to when men were boss and non-white men need not apply. The basic design of the “modern” cruiser recalls the crap that Hardly and Indian were making in the early 50s. Heavy, plodding, underpowered two-wheeled tractors that were more about sound than fury. All the 50s nostalgia recalls for me is fruitcakes like Joe McCarthy and lazy, do-nothing politicians like Eisenhower. The 50s were a time when superstition ruled our education system until the godless Russians gave us a demonstration of the axiom that “the only constant is change.” Of course, once science and engineering became popular areas of study, superstition took a lot of hits and off we went into the godless 60s and 70s.

From a public nuisance standpoint, it is, apparently, practically impossible to simply ride a cruiser. The kinds of people who pick this style of bike also want to announce their presence. Loudly. Their disrespect for my privacy and neighborhood goes right back at them every time they rattle my windows as they roar out of the corner in front of my house. You’d expect that kind of antisocial behavior from teenagers. Geezers blasting rapid fire farting noises are a different kind of retard. That kind of low tech cobbling passes for “customizing” and engineering in this breed of quasi-vehicle and I have to say I find it insanely boring and incredibly irritating.

The damage cruiser doofuses are doing to motorcycling is high on my list, too. They often pick these rolling wheelchairs because they are too fat, too incapacitated, and too scared to swing a leg over a real motorcycle. The prime quality of a typical cruiser is the low seat height. Some of these disabled machines are practically miniatures, with the associated useless suspensions, micro-powered motors, auto-pilot straight-ahead steering, and underpowered brakes. The obvious result is that near-cripples are riding these things into traffic and dying in large numbers. If they keep it up, they are going to give motorcycling such a bad name that no amount of whining by the rest of us will save our vehicle of choice from being banished to go-cart and snowmobile status.

Finally, I have to admit that I think the majority of cruisers are simply eyesores. All that shiny chrome placed in random patterns on badly welded low-grade steel chassis decorated with girlyman fringe and creepy, low-tech paint jobs grates on my nerves like a late night frat party that I can't shut enough windows to allow escape. To my eye, they are incredibly ugly and I can't get past that. It's no more rational than a "no fat chicks" tee-shirt, but ugly is as ugly does and cruiser owners do a lot of ugly.

There is a reason for this longwinded explanation. Stay tuned and all will be revealed.

A letter from a "fan":

From: Foxster5 . . .
Subject: MMM #103 (http://www.motorbyte.com/)

Thomas, in Statistics vs. Useful Information I found it disturbing that you would refer to the use of a PUBLIC way, by which the people PAY for, is referred to as a PRIVILEGE and not a right. A "driver" is a paid occupation, a "traveler" has the right to use the roadway free of charge and only so far restricted as the rights of others may be respected. We have the right to life, liberty and property as well and the STATE can not TAX our personal and private property, 10th Amendment of the Constitution.The STATE can not restrict or prohibit the right of movement. Almost all courts in the country agree, including the Supreme Court. I gave you a load of information on just this subject and you must not have read any of it. To say that the STATE may "BAN" motorcycles from the roadway is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. THEY CAN NOT!! It is our right to own property and included in that right is the right to use that property any way we see fit so long as we respect others rights. I would think that being your age you would have read the Constitutions and the Declaration of Independence and now these things to be self evident. Are you employed by the Rothschilds and are you part of the New World Order? Only a journalists that is employed by these morons would make such absurd and defeatist statements. I really want to meet you and explain the whole truth. You can reach me at 76 . . . and we can talk about meeting, I will even buy you dinner.

Cheers, Don

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don,

Even worse, I'm "subsidized" by the infinitely powerful Wanchena family. They are beyond New World Order and well into the Usual World Disorder, something far more likely to occur in my lifetime.

I read lots of silly stuff on the web, but I don't believe everything I read just because someone took the time to document their paranoia. If you really believe the government can't ban motorcycles from the road, try riding an unlit, unlicensed 2-stroke dirt bike from New York to California. Let me know how many dirt bikes you have to buy before you finally reach the Left Coast. Hauling it in a pickup doesn't count. How about putting a horse and buggy on the freeway? Or a 50cc scooter? Tried that lately? I don't find it difficult to imagine a high risk, low value recreation vehicle like motorcycles being legislated into limited use RV status.

A few years back, a self-described "ex-cop" took time to rant at me about his right to damage the ears of anyone foolish enough not to wear hearing protection as he rode his unmuffled Hardly through neighborhoods. I love discussion, but if I wanted to be preached at I'd join a church. His idea of "discussion" was to call me an idiot and to wave his years of meter-maiding as evidence of his superior knowledge. Again, I can get argumentum ad hominem and verecundiam at any bar or church. It's not worth crossing the street to hunt down. I've watched "rights" far more important than motorcycle transportation vanish without a whisper in my lifetime, especially in the last ten years. I'm unconvinced that standing behind our great Constitution provides much solace for those who are held in prison without hope or who are spied on because they aren't Republicans.

Anyone who has spent a moment or two looking at the history of economics, transportation, and individual rights can see that some "rights" are more inherit than others. Where privilege comes into play is nested in your own statement, "so long as we respect others rights." Publicly financed facilities, like public buildings, highways, and many state-managed natural resources (state and national parks, for example) are regulated by the will of the whole public for the good of the majority (even when we disagree with their assessment). I'm simply arguing that we should try to fix the unnecessarily disproportionately high mortality and morbidity rate for motorcyclists and reduce our irritation quotient before we join the long list of "historic" transportation modes.

As for the "whole truth," I've been an engineer too long to believe in it, or a close approximation, exists. You can wave the "I won't stand for this" and "You can't do this" flag at the rest of the population, if you think that will get any traction, but I'm not betting that it will be successful. You probably have noticed that many people have, even recently, ended up in jail imagining that the "STATE can not TAX our personal and private property." Evidently, they can. Ask Wesley Snipes.

Thomas Day

Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine
http://www.motorbyte.com/mmm/
http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/
thomas@motorbyte.com

The 6th Annual Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Show

I’m reading a book by a Frenchman, American Vertigo by Bernard-Henri Lévy, that attempts to follow the path of Alexis d Tocqueville across this country. More accurately, he tries to cover all of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America bases, not necessarily in the order that he touched those places but in the spirit of that journey. One of Lévy’s continual features of amazement is our fixation on our own history. Not only do we spend a lot of time formally and institutionally collecting pieces of history and storing them in expensive buildings, we, individually, collect bits of history and display it as if it had some deep meaning. As individuals, we seem to think our personal history has interest to other people, as if we are all worthy of published and well-read autobiographies. I suspect he is implying that we are a bit self-absorbed.

A few days ago, on my way to a beginner’s MSF class, I passed a motorcycle shop that had some sort of convention going in the parking lot. There were loads of weird looking, and totally, ordinary bikes in the lot and a pretty decent sized crowd wandering around the bikes. So, I had to go back and check it out. Turns out it was the “6th Annual Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Show” and it was more than entertaining. All of the self-historical aspects of American character that Lévy described were on full display in this parking lot.

For me, the most entertaining part of the show was the spectacle of “collected” cheap bikes that were practically throwaways when they were in their prime. Most of these bikes were still in their prime, too. Many of these motorcycles cost a fraction of a month’s income, back when a month’s income was today’s pocket change. Kids would save up their lawn mowing money to buy these little Japanese motorscooters. There was a Yamaha DT1 with less than 100 miles on the odometer. A Honda SL350 with 256 miles of road experience. In fact, most of the bikes were barely broken-in. While most were attempts to recreate a brand new 1970’s replica, some of the bikes demonstrated the “personality” of their owners in either creative or psychotic ways. At least one, not on display but for sale just off to the side of the show, had as split a personality as any weirdo ever depicted on CSI or Homicide. I met the owner, he seemed relatively normal, but his bike made me more than a little wary.

Here’s a quick look at some of the better moments in the 6th Annual Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Show:

http://s247.photobucket.com/albums/gg127/grudgegeezer/?action=view&current=c1a6401d.pbw

I’m trying to establish this blog site as a place to go for motorcycle stuff. If you have comments you’d like to make regarding today’s subject, I’d appreciate it if you’d make them on the blog instead of emailing them to me. I’ll receive whatever you have to say the same way (through my regular email), regardless of how you send your comments. The more hits and comments I have on this blogsite, the more likely it is to get flagged by Google and that means even more hits. And so on. Feel free to pass this on, write bad things about my posture and grooming on the blog site, or add your own take on the state of American motorcycling. Thanks.

The Sherpa Story

After putting about 3,000 miles on my 2000 Kawasaki Super Sherpa, I decided to do more than just change the oil. I've had an oversized plastic tank since last winter, waiting for my garage to warm up, for the Sherpa. The bike's 1.7gal tank is too small for anything resembling a serious trip. Even with 90mpg, I'm still stopping for gas too often. The valves needed checking. In fact, after pulling the top, I found they were all tight. The fork fluid needs changing. The swingarm needs cleaning and lubing. It needs a new chain. The list goes on for a while.

Then my riding mower broke, right after chainging the oil and doing a spring cleaning and lube. The magnetic clutch that engages the blade ripped out its wiring. Now, two pieces of equipment are disassembled in front of my garage and my spring projects are getting out of hand.

Minnesota Eyesight

I don't like to jump on the "Minnesota sucks" bandwagon, because I think driving skills are declining all over the country, but Minnesota is far too accommodating to particularly heinous driving handicaps. Eyesight, for example.

In 40 years of driving, a half-dozen states, and a dozen licensing tests, Minnesota is the only place in the bunch that thinks I see well enough to drive without corrective lenses. Thirty years ago, Texas suggested that I have my left eye removed, if I wanted to drive without glasses, since that eye is practically useless at any distance. Just add an extra mirror to the car, poke out the eye, and they'd have taken off the restriction. I chickened out and went for the glasses. Minnesota is far more accommodating. I've passed this state's vision test twice in the last six years. I failed that same test in Kansas, Texas, Nebraska, California, Colorado, and Indiana. Inspires confidence in our system, doesn't it?

Good Will Toward All Bikers

A while back, a friend sent this to me and it seemed appropriate today, after an "interesting" confrontation with an H-D owner at a restaurant.

The following quote is from the December, 1920 edition of the H-D Enthusiast Magazine.

"It would be a fine thing for the world if some of this goodwill could be bottled up at Christmas time and dealt out regularly wherever it was needed during the rest of the year. For instance, I'm sure the motorcycle world could stand some of it; for, even though we boast of our "good fellowship" spirit, there still seems to be a tendency among a good many motorcyclist to slight the fellow riding another kind of machine. Motorcyclist are all bound together by a brotherhood tie through their love of the sport, and what difference does it make what make of machine he rides as long as he belongs to the clan?" -- Walter Davidson

My Top Ten Bike List #3: Honda Transalp XL600V

Since I first saw a Transalp, in 1987, this bike was high on my list of all time favorites. The Transalp didn't last long in the US, but it's alive and well in the rest of the world. More evidence that we're too dumb to reproduce in the US. The photo on the right is the 2008 model. This, of course, is zillions of times cooler than the coolest bike imported into the US.

The XL600V was a 450 pound, V-twin, 4-stroke, with a semi-Paris-to-Dakar styling that was ahead of its time. It wasn't fast, it didn't have a monster suspension, it wasn't flashy. It was just a solid, reliable, easy to ride bike that could carry you across the country, deserts, mountains, and lousy roads without worry. Every once in a while, a used Transalp appears on the want ads and it always vanishes faster than free money.

My Top Ten Bike List #2: Montesa Cota Trials

#2 on the list is all of the versions of the Montesa Cota trials bike. Every one ever made. I think they are among the most beautiful vehicles ever designed by anyone.

I first ran into this bike in the mid-1970s and was blown away by the bike. It looked, worked, and rode like a dream. The Cota made everyone a better rider, even untalented, uncoordinated, balance-disabled clunkers like me. I was selling Ossa Mick Andrew's Plonker replicas at the time, but the Cota was a far better bike. The 125, in particular, was the best beginner bike of the time.

When Honda bought into Montesa, the best just got better. World champs, Dougie Lampkin and Takahisa Fujinami dominated the world round for a decade on Cotas. Personally, one of my favorite moments in my writing life came when I lucked into interviewing an old hero from the boom days of US trials, during the 1970's. I'm still not clear on what lured Martin Belair from Southern California to Minnesota, but I will always be grateful for the opportunity to talk at length with Martin about motorcycles, great trials riders, his own experience near the top of the US game, and everything between and around those subjects. Martin was the US distributor for Honda Montesa, until Honda decided the US market was too small, too unpredictable, and unprofitable for Montesa and discontinued importing their trials bikes into our country. When that dried up for Martin, he packed up his family and returned to sunny California where he occasionally sends me a "glad I'm not there" email bragging about the perfect weather and his distain for down-filled clothing. Martin rebelled against the Minnesota funny hat fashion statement and managed to spend every winter in short baggy pants, regardless of frostbite and practical sense.

My Top Ten Bike List #1: Honda NT650 Hawk

After seeing the Ten Best Designs article in MCN this month, I decided to post my own, one-at-a-time. This list is not necessarily in order of preference. I'm just listing my favorite bikes, by design, as I think of them.

My first pick is the 1988 Honda NT650 Hawk. Ahead of its time, the NT650 had a super cool dual spar aluminum frame frame and single-sided swingarm and was advanced for 1988 and is pretty far ahead of most sportbikes today. If there was one, the downside was the mild-mannered twin-cylinder motor. Honda over-estimated the public's ability to deal with future-think. The bike bombed. In 1992, Honda was still trying to unload 1988 models.

Regardless of the marketplace, I think this was one of the most fun-to-ride bikes ever. A friend owned one and every time I visited him I borrowed this bike. The thing most obvious about the NT650 was that the frame, brakes, and handling were way above the motor's capability to get the rider into trouble. It is a great ride, especially when corners are so tight that the lack of a 110+ mph speed motor doesn't seem an inconvenience.

Albuquerque noise

A reader in Albuquerque commented on a motorcycle noise article I'd written a few years back. At one time, Albuquerque had enough of motorcycle noise and stuck gangs of motorcyclists into the same barrell as gangs of truckers, cagers, and other noise makers. Apparently, the AMA took offense and plied some political muscle to Albuquerque's weak city government and "turned the law around." Here's a little of the discussion I had with the reader:

Thomas,

In an old (2006) article, you mentioned a noise ordinance in Albuquerque that may have been effective in curbing motorcycle noise. In 2002, the situation reversed itself, in response to pressure from the AMA. The allowed noise level for motorcycles in Albuquerque is an earsplitting 99 dB, 19 dB above the level for other light vehicles. It is incredible to me that the City Government would do this to the residents here. The motor vehicle portion of the city noise ordinance is attached as a pdf file.

So much for Albuquerque as an environmentally friendly place in which to locate a clean business or even in which to spend a restful night in a hotel!


Al,

I'd heard that Albuquerque had caved to pressure/money/whatever, but this is an interesting development. The noise spec they are using, SAE stationary test method J1287, requires the test measurement to be made at 20" from the exhaust outlet. With the same standard test, the city is allowing 95 dB for vehicles under 6,000 lbs (not including motorcycles). The 99dBspl standard is 1dB louder than the AMA allows for race bikes in sanctioned events and 3dB louder than their recommendation for "General Off-Highway Use." However, it is an easier to test (assuming semi-competent cops) standard than the old rule and could be easily modified for quieter standards if the city proves they employ semi-intelligent., marginally technical cops who can enforce the new rule.

Outdoors, sound pressure degrades approximately 3-4dB every doubling of distance. So, at 25' the new rule is asking for a noise output of roughly 83-85dBAspl. In the detailed noise rule description, they also state "The requirements in §9-9-9(A) apply to the total sound from a vehicle or combination of vehicles and shall not be construed as limiting or precluding the enforcement of any other provisions of this article relating to motor vehicle mufflers for noise control." Then they follow that with this piece of smoke and mirrors, "Any motor vehicle with a GVW rating under 10,000 lbs. or more except motorcycles" at "all times" "will be limited to 80dBA" "The requirements [above] apply to the total sound from a vehicle or combination of vehicles and shall not be construed as limiting or precluding the enforcement of any other provisions of this article relating to motor vehicle mufflers for noise control." With the sneaky insertion of the "except motorcycles" in the above description, they are allowing groups of motorcycles to make unlimited noise, while restricting all other groups of under 6,000 lb. vehicles to a max noise level of 80dBA.

With all the whining from motorcyclists about being discriminated against seems to disappear when the discrimination is in their favor. I wonder where the political clout to do this comes from?

MSF and You?

I had to re-register myself on the MSF's instructor site today. Looking back at last year, I realized that I committed most of the last two summers to teaching motorcycling and, other than a trip to Alaska and a later trip to western Kansas, I hadn't been riding all that much. I commute, of course, but that barely adds 5,000 miles a year to my bike each year. Alaska added just short of 10,000 miles in June and Kansas put another 2,000 on the odometer.

It's hard to be current enough on the MSF cirriculum to be an effective teacher and to find enough time/energy to ride enough to be a credible one. Last year, I felt pretty confident about my teaching style and my riding cred. Year before, not so much.

I'd love to hear from some new riders about their MSF class experience. We do a "customer satisfaction" review after each class, but I wonder if the answers would be different a few weeks after the class.

Still Frozen & My GPS

A couple of days ago, the temperature in Minnesota crept above zero and I was in the garage checking battery conditions and making sure the bikes all survived their lonely life in the garage. Sunday and, today, Monday, the temperature is back near zero and miserable. I'm going to go watch Faster! and Dust to Glory just to remind myself that somewhere, someone is riding a motorcycle today.

Last spring, I loaded up my V-Strom and headed for Alaska. Along the way, I "tested" a couple dozen products. One of those products was a Garmin 2610 GPS and a "low profile barmount" (P/N # 6215 from Aerostitch). It turned out that the failure of one of those products provided a radical testing ground for the other. The barmount is a piece of &%$#@&) crap. On a lonely highway in Sasketcheuan, after the barmount had let the GPS sag in every useless direction possible, the Garmin plastic mount let go of the 2610 and it hit the highway at 70mph+. I almost gave it up for lost or totaled, but decided to hunt the unit down, mostly out of frustration and anger. Turned out, the 2610 was bruised but not broken, one of the most amazing product shock tests I’ve ever imagined. Duct tape held the unit in place for the next 8500 miles but nothing held the barmount in place. That piece of crap continued to plague me until this week.

Aerostitch put the RAM 2610 mount on sale this month and I bought one. I mounted it today and it is as solid as the handlebars. I’m looking forward to being able to see the 2610’s screen for many thousands of miles, especially the 8,000 miles I plan to put on the V-Strom on the way to Nova Scotia this coming summer.

#16: They Are Not Men, They Are Bikers

Maybe this is an old age thing. Maybe I have always been a wimp. Whatever my situation, I'm not ashamed to admit that the Vikings I see on the road this time of the year are the kind of guys who have always intimidated and amazed me. If you're one of those guys who thinks Minnesota fall riding gear is a leather vest, a sleeveless flannel shirt, jeans, boots, and a protective skull-and-cross-bones bandana, you are who I'm talking about.

Last fall, I made a 40 degree late-September evening run from the Cities to Rochester, to hang with an old friend who was visiting from the left coast. On the way, I passed four bikes. Two of the bikers were "normals," wearing full-face helmets and cold weather riding gear. The third guy was a Winger, who probably had his heater going full blast, along with the grip warmers and the electric vest, while the heat generated by the Wing's helmet sound system toasted his ears. Finally, the last guy was a real Minnesota Viking on some kind of low-slung, ape-hung cruiser (sorry, I can't tell one from another). He was keeping up with traffic, which was doing about 75mph, and didn't appear to be any more uncomfortable than the guy on the Wing. Accounting for the wind chill and humidity, 75mph and 40 degrees Fahrenheit equals a wind chill of about 11oF.

How do they do that? I want to know. Seriously. This is the kind of weather that has always separated me from real bikers. When the temperature falls below 50, I wear a full-face Shoei (all vents closed), an old but very wind and water-tight Aerostitch suit, boots with heavy wool socks, winter gloves, and more clothing inside the Aerostitch than the Viking bikers probably own. Last September, by the time I got to Rochester I was close to chilled enough to serve with cheese and crackers. If I did a dozen miles in forty degree weather, without my helmet, I'd be nursing a head cold till next spring. If I went helmet-less and jacket-less for the same distance, I'd fall over like the guy on the "Laugh In" tricycle when I stopped. I'd bust like an empty beer bottle when I hit the pavement.

Riding in the cold has always been something that makes me nervous. It's a well known fact that you have to stay loose to ride smoothly. I don't know how you stay loose when you're frozen stiff. Those Viking guys don't even look uncomfortable, though.

Almost thirty years ago, I got talked into doing a 24-hour off-road race. The race was in south western South Dakota. The race was in January. The race was a two-man team deal and my teammate was a buddy who happened to own a small Suzuki dealership. We tricked out a 185cc dual-purpose Suzuki, including adding a half-dozen lights to the bike, and brought along his camper to serve as a deluxe pit.

The trick-est thing about riding this bike in that race was that, if someone tried to hang with me, I could switch off the lights and, for a few seconds, it was like the sun instantly eclipsed. Pause a few seconds, listening for the sound of crunching metal, fire up the lights and I'm back on my own.

We were clinging to first place, about 18 hours into the race, when we ran out of hot chocolate and coffee and had to switch to beer. Beer, in case you've not heard this, does not provide any useful energy. Beer will not help you stay warm. In fact, I would go so far as to say that drinking beer is a stupid thing to do during a race, regardless of temperature, but really stupid when the riding surface is covered with snow and ice.

I went down three times on my first beer-lap. Until we had made that tactical error, we had ridden about 400 flawless, fall-less, miles. My buddy not only crashed several times, on his turn, but he took out half of our lights when he went down. The last three hours of the race were miserable and we got our butts handed to us by a couple of sober guys on a Penton 175 ISDT; and whoever got second, third, fourth, and fifth place. The lesson I took away from that experience is "beer good, cold bad."

A decade later, I took a job in California. Since I figured my Omaha-rusted cars wouldn't pass any sort of physical inspection, I decided to sell my four-wheeled crap and move to the Sunshine State by motorcycle. On my very first street bike (a Honda CX500) and my first serious touring experience, I headed south toward Texas on a sunny, warm and windy April day. A day later, I was in southwest Kansas and it was snowing and 25 degrees. On the assumption that it might get worse before it got better (which it did), I decided to keep going south.

Late that evening, I rolled into Hereford, Texas; frozen, wet, and miserable. My bike was loaded with saddlebags, a large backpacking bag tied to the luggage rack, and camping gear was strapped to the passenger seat. I pulled into a 7-11 and stepped off the bike to get coffee, a phone book and a motel phone number, and whatever heat I could absorb in the store. With my right leg suspended in the air, I realized that I had forgotten to put the kickstand down. Me, the bike, and a good 150 lbs. of personal belongings landed in a heap in the parking lot.

Lying on the frozen ground, hoping someone in the store would see my predicament, I realized that the 7-11 had an "closed" sign pasted to the window. I couldn't budge the bike. I couldn't get my leg out from under it. Three hundred and fifty miles of freezing rain had sapped my strength and body heat. I lay there thinking how stupid my obituary was going to read, "Idiot freezes to death in abandoned store parking lot."

After only a few minutes that seemed like weeks, a light swung across the store front and stopped on me. A seven foot tall (I'm probably exaggerating) cowboy (they have real cowboys in Hereford, TX) stepped out of a big wheel pickup, pulled the bike up and dropped the kick stand. With the same hand, he drug me to my feet and said, "Those things get heavy sometimes, don't they? There's a motel down the road a piece," he pointed out the piece's general direction. "I think you might want to see if they got a room."

There was, I did, they did, and I spent all of the motel's hot water in a two hour shower that probably brought my body temperature up to about 80 degrees. A huge steak with trimmings and double desert got me back near 98.6F. The next day was sunny, still cold, and I held to the Texas two-lane speed limit (anything under 100mph) till I passed Lubbock, where the sun actually succeeded in warming the earth; a little. I stayed close to the Mexico border all the way to California. Again, I learned that motorcycles, cold, and me don't mix.

Now that I'm a geezer, I like being cold even less. All the places where my bones have had to reattach themselves do unfunny things when I'm cold. The joints that I abused so carelessly when I was a kid seize up and make snap, crackle, and popping noises. If it gets cold enough, I forget to breathe. I'm not a Viking. Never was. Never will be. But I envy the hell out of those guys and if I could pry my cold, cramping hands loose from the bars, I'd wave at them when we meet on the road.

Winter 2001

Helmet Logic

A while back, some logic-inhibited wacko wrote MMM about how dangerous helmets are because he/she had a friend whose helmet got so smashed up in a wreak that the docs had to pick pieces of fiberglass out of his skull. Think about that. The helmet, which has about a zillion times the impact resistance of a bandana-protected skull, was shattered while still protecting the rider. It protected him well enough that there was a medical argument for surgically picking out the chunks. That sounds like an endorsement for helmets, not an argument against. That's the kind of "logic" I'm used to hearing from helmet-phobes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that there are large numbers of riders who don't wear helmets. There are too damn many people on this planet and the more who want to volunteer to leave, the more empty highway space there is for the rest of us. Thanks for asking.

On the other hand, I hate losing friends to stupidity (or anything), so I don't use this argument on anyone I care about. Not wanting to add to the depletion of the world’s resources, I'm not one of those do-gooders who loves humanity and hates individual people. I'm the reverse, couldn't care less about humanity but hate the idea of my life without certain people in it. The rest of you can do what you want: helmet/no-helmet, seatbelt/no-seatbelt, do-drugs/don't-do-'em, drink, smoke, get fat, chew gum and try to walk, whatever. As long as you have the whole story, you can do what ever you want and I'm on your side.

The first time I spiked a pointy rock with the top of a brand new Bell -- and walked away with nothing more than a ruined $120 investment and a fat lip -- I made up my own mind for life. That was thirty years ago. Since then, I've learned that I'm not man enough to ride helmetless. I've splatted thousands of wasps and bees with my faceshield, slid along dirt trails with my head leading the way through the shrubbery, and tumbled ass over teakettle through barbwire fences and cactus and I'm still here to write about it. That’s me and you are you. I'm still riding, after almost 40 years of falling off of motorcycles, and my protective gear gets a good bit of the credit for that. Jujitsu training and learning how to fall gets the rest of the credit.

This isn't a matter of me wanting to make your lives safer. I don't care about the "cost" of a helmet-less society. Even the medical insurance argument is a wash, in my mind. Sure, you'll cost me a few bucks on the front end, in emergency services and when the ER docs chew up time and resources trying to paste your busted head together, but you won't be there to suck up the Social Security account reserves. Except for those of us who die of boredom in our cubicles, everybody's going to be a drain on society at some time in their life. It ought to be a free country and you should be able to write yourself off anytime you feel the need. The problem with the "story," told to newbies by the “a helmet restricts my freedom” crowd, is that most of that story is a fantasy.

“Helmets prevent you from hearing hazards.” Actually, just being on a moving motorcycle does that job almost perfectly. Between the wind and motor noise, you can't hear a 747 until it's a second away from your good ear. Unless you are stopped, and sitting on a Honda step-through-90, the only noises a helmet keeps you from hearing are too quiet to be dangerous. On the other hand, a good helmet (and earplugs) will protect you from premature hearing loss. Weirdly, many of us think we can better hear important things with both a helmet and earplugs. I can’t explain that, but I’m not the only one who is mystified by that psycho-acoustic phenomenon.

“Helmets obstruct your peripheral vision.” Not wearing a helmet with a face shield often obstructs your vision in all directions. (There's the reason the chopper crowd plods along at 45mph, hanging up traffic for miles behind them and irritating little old ladies on their way home from church: they can't see if they go any faster.) Between the bugs, dust and pollution, birds, flying rocks and gravel, and your own flapping eyelashes, serious wind protection goes a long way toward maintaining visibility.

“Riders sometimes die (or worse) from neck injuries received in helmeted accidents.” Without the helmet the stuff from the first vertebrae up may be all that is left intact, the skull is goo. Using your brain as bubble packing to protect your neck is seriously weird. The first motorcycling death I witnessed happened when a kid hit a stopped car at less than 10mph, rolled over the hood, and cracked his skull on the curb. His neck was in perfect shape when they buried him. A lawn sprinkler washed a gob of his brains down the gutter before the EMTs arrived.

All this said, I don't want new laws passed. Helmet laws do exactly the wrong thing. The only result I've seen from helmet laws is that a lot of helmets get sold because a lot of helmets got stolen. Rider safety probably isn't impacted nearly as much as the lawmakers might have expected because half of the helmets on the road were stolen. The stolen helmets got lifted by cutting the buckle from the helmet lock. A great helmet without a strap and buckle is next-to-worthless. After getting a couple of $400 helmets stolen, even the guys who love helmets end up buying a cheap hat. The end result is pretty pointless.

I’m sure some of you will write MMM (heck, go direct and write me at twday@usa.com) and tell us how you believe we’re criticizing your "personal choice." I'm sure you know better than the AMA and four generations of motorcycle racers who wouldn't cross the street without a helmet securely strapped to their heads. I just want to be sure you know what you're risking. I want you to be as free as you can be. Free to live or die, because it's no skin off of my skull.

September 2001

A Different Breed

A company called Mesa Engineering has recently marketed a really expensive power amplifier, called "The Baron," aimed at folks who don’t blink when they’re asked to cough up $75,000 for a home stereo rig or $150,000 for a home theater system. In The Audio Adventure's hilarious review of this big bucks toy , the reviewer wrote "The word that came to mind as I listened [to the Baron] was ‘attitude.’ This characteristic gives the Baron an attitude comparable to the attitude you’d expect from a person who rides a Harley--especially a woman. Tough but extremely attractive in a slightly dangerous way." If that doesn’t make you want to regurgitate, you’re slightly dangerous in an extremely unattractive way.

In the motorcycle world, Harley riders seem to be taking all kinds of diverging paths. A lot of the new Harley owners are really upset that many non-Harley owning motorcyclists don't cough up instant respect for their vehicle and lifestyle choice. You see this on the Internet, but that crowd of geek bikers would probably rather talk to you about Unix and stock option tax tips than Sonny Barger's trials and tribulations.

Based Harley's advertising, and the usual riding costumes, the big part of the "Harley mystique" is still about being an outlaw. An outlaw, according to Danny Webster is someone who is "a person excluded from the benefit or protection of the law." Or, if you're a mild-mannered outlaw, "one that is unconventional or rebellious." A bunch of us, who have been on motorcycles for a long time, have learned to avoid that first group because they're dangerous and unpredictable. At best, you'll get your bike messed up. At worst, you'll get yourself messed up. The second group is mostly humorous and will often buy beer if your listen to their two-wheeling and stock-brokering stories. Here's where the mud meets the crystal ball, though. A good number of the first group's old members appear to be merging into the second group.

The Angels and their offspring, being the primary importers of various illegal substances back in the free love years, were dangerous to be around even when they weren't trying to be dangerous. In Omaha in the 1970's, talking to a Harley biker at a stoplight could get you pulled over and searched, just out general police principles. In LA in the 1980's, nodding at a bandit Harley owner, while stopped at a similar traffic light, could get you shot. From 1963 until the last few years, I made it an act of self-preservation to stay on the other side of town from guys on Harleys. That was as close as I could find to being on their "good side."

Now, it seems, a lot of the new breed of Harley owners wants to dress like outlaws (or a member of the Village People) but be treated like a respectable member of the society of road-loving, bug-toothed motorcyclists. They want the rest of us to respect their choice in vehicles, simply because it happens to have two wheels. When we see them stranded along the roadside (as often happens with overweight, marginally engineered, air-cooled motorcycles), they want us to stop and offer assistance. They want us to wave at them, even knowing that, at best, one in two dozen of them will wave back.

Even more weirdly, some of the old breed are blending into the new breed. It's really confusing when a strongly held stereotype turns out to be useless information. Seeing a pack of leather-clad, Harley mounted 300 pounders getting teary-eyed over Make A Wish kids is that kind of experience. It’s impossible to calculate the label-busting that these bikers do when they spend half a year fundraising for an organization that grants the wishes of terminally ill children.

Since I like to think of motorcyclists as members of a universal good-fellowship club, I'd like to accommodate the new breed Harley owners while, still, maintaining a safe distance from the nasty guys. Like I've said, at least once, it's getting so that you can meet some of the "nicest (and richest) people" on a Harley. But I can't tell one from the other because they buy their costumes at the same store. From those safety-beanies to the shirtless vest to the black cowboy chaps, I can't make the good guys from the scary guys. Until there is some clear label for me to read, I'm marginally willing to stick out my hand because I still need all of my fingers. I'm old and can't afford any more broken bones, especially ribs.

My opinion about hate and distrust is that it is all based on fear. Humans want to ridicule, avoid, beat up, or kill the folks who scare us the most. The intensity of the reaction depends on your level of intelligence and how much fear you hold. Supposedly, the more you know, the less you fear. The more you fear, the more violent your reaction. I believe that as much as I believe anything about the human animal. Or any animal. And it's still just my opinion. Pretty early in my motorcycling career, I learned to be tense around Harleys. Ok, I learned to fear being around Harleys.

In my dirt racing days, a couple of times, a half-dozen Harley heavyweights unexpectedly appeared at the track and, uninvited, rolled into the pits. Twenty scrawny--still wasted from their last 30-minute moto--bikers would interrupt whatever they were doing and start looking for the longest, heaviest wrench in the tool box. At the same time, our wives would begin to shepherd the kids together and as far away from the scene as possible. If the odds were fairly even, we'd circle the wagons, help each other load up the bikes, and get the hell out of there before the world came to an end. Guys who ride 125cc two-strokes just don't fare well in all-out street fights with 280 pound gangsters, pumped up on coke or PCP, and wielding well-chosen and often used weapons. The valor part of discretion was in sticking around long enough to make sure all the good guys (and their families) got out alive. Otherwise, we just wrote off the escape to good sense and found another place to meet for the next race.

Those were tense times when bad things often happened. I still get a mild urge to keep a big pipe wrench under the bed when a Harley blubbers past my house at night. Just describing this ancient history has reminded me that I really need to own a big pipe wrench, in case a big plumbing job comes along. I'd love to keep writing about my 40 year love affair with Harleys, but I need to go to Sears. Ride safe and see ya on the road. Wave, if you're a good guy.

August 2001

Never Do That Again

I admit that I'm unusually repelled by the idea of buying a new . . . anything. The fact that the act of driving a new bike off of the dealer's lot is economically identical to gathering a hard-earned pile of cash and throwing 10-50% of that pile into the wind may forever keep me from owning another new motorcycle. My last experience with this form of "investment" came in 1974, so I've been suffering this trauma for a long time. That's all I'm admitting and you'll have to live with any other remorse you think I should suffer.

All that said, buying used bikes is another form of self-mutilation. Over my 35 years of buying used vehicles, I've formed a collection of rules that, if I followed them, could prevent a lot of the usual used-bike/car misery. The first of those rules is "never buy a motorcycle from a kid."

If you force me to define "kid" in chronological terms, I'd have to arbitrarily say anyone under 40 is, more than likely, a kid. However, I've known 15-year-old adults and 65-year-old kids. So numbers don't do this psychological defect much justice.

Kids are destructive little monsters who think their motorcycles (and cars) are educational toys. There's nothing wrong with that logic, until the little motorcycle mangler decides to sell his &*()*#$#%@ Erector set with all the missing, stripped, bent, and broken bits "as is." It's only when a real person gets stuck with a vehicle that was previously owned by the Kid that a capital crime has been committed. Unfortunately, the capital or corporal punishment usually gets played out on the buyer, not the &*()*#$#%@ Kid.

The most fatal flaw in buying a bike from the Kid is that the little dweeb thinks he's a better engineer than the folks who designed and built the bike. If it were true, this would be a more than typically pointless Geezer rant. But it's not. The kinds of things most often "re-engineered" by the Kid are exhaust systems, handlebars, lighting, threaded holes (especially sparkplug holes), brakes, suspension parts, fuel systems, and critical bits of the power train. Not a one of these areas were easy design tasks for the skilled engineers who built the bike. Without exception, the Kid will whack away at any one of these areas without a clue in his head or a skill in his hands.

When I'm shopping for a used bike, comments made by the current owner about shade tree work done in any critical area of the motorcycle's mechanics becomes a deduction in my valuation of the bike. In my best moments, I'm ruthless about taking those deductions from the price of the bike. In my usual moments, I'm not nearly vicious enough. Most Kids won't consider messing with a motorcycle unless they have 1) already crashed it or 2) have found an easy way to really mess up the bike's operation or 3) Daddy gave them a pile of money for Xmas and they want to "decorate" the motorcycle with useless crap that suddenly became affordable. Knowing this, you can be realistic about the damage done and the resulting price deduction. However, it's hard to keep all that in mind when you just want to buy a bike for cheap and go for a ride.

Even if the seller is 95 years old and only rides the Goldwing at Shriner parades, you should probably make the paranoid, or conservative, assumption that he's the Kid. With that thought in mind, start from the front of the bike and work your way back, looking for mangled bolt heads, loose stuff, non-stock stuff, and beer cans hammered into clutch plate shims. When you finally do get to ride the bike, be critical. Don't assume that any odd quirk in the bike's performance is something you need to get used to, assume it's an introduced design flaw, courtesy of the Kid. Don't even consider hoping the quirk will go away after you ride it a while. Fix it before it fixes you.

From here, I'm tempted to go into a marginally rational rant about aftermarket pipe, carb tuning kits, and suspension modifications that turn the bike into a self-destructing, back-breaking vehicle that will cripple you in any number of ways. But I won't because I've already been there and it makes me crazy. I will suggest that every fastener between the top of the tank to the manifold clamps is probably cross-threaded. Buy stock in Emhart Fastening Technologies (the folks who make Heli-Coils) before you get started.

Even better, do what I hope I will do the next time I come upon a Kid's bike being offered for a great price; walk away and don't look back. It's not worth the hassle or hazard. Repeat after me, "I've been here before and I will never do anything that dumb again." Or do like me, forget that mantra and spend most of the riding season returning your bike to the condition real engineers intended.

June 2001

Keep Yourself Alive

Instead of indulging one of my many grievances against the universe, I want to actually try to babble about something I've learned in the last year. This is really obvious, in retrospect, but it’s something that practically escaped me for too long.

It's April 3, 2001 and I rode my bike to work for the first time this year. The world is a much nicer place than it was last week, or has been for the last five months. I've lost much of the urge to squish the life out of the first living thing that irritates me. I even skipped coffee this morning and I'm not falling asleep while I write this. A buddy came by and said he could see the Disney bluebirds circling my cube. But doing my first 2001 ride to work isn't the point of this non-rant, as nice an event as that was.

A year and a half ago, at the end of the 1999 riding season, I had whipped past a half-century of life and thirty-five years of motorcycling. I was beginning to feel someone else's age, someone disgustingly old and, practically, feeble. As you might have figured by my generally bad attitude, I am an office drone. For the last nine years, I've spent my working days at a desk, surrounded by cube walls, doing mindless repetitive tasks that could be taught to a marginally intelligent, boredom-tolerant chimp. While that brilliant career plan has allowed me the time and motivation to develop all sorts of attitude, it hasn't done much for my physical condition. In fact, it's nearly crippled me.

Until I moved to Minnesota five years ago, I'd been able to justify the hazards of my motorcycling habit by burning up fifteen to twenty thousand miles a year, commuting and touring, on my bikes. Minnesota winters, a new grandson, a house that needed more work than it will ever be worth, and general purpose laziness cut those miles in half for three years and, in the summer of 1998, I began to think that I might be getting too old to ride a bike.

I'd get up in the morning, look at my way-too-tall-for-my-28"-inseam Yamaha TDM 850 and my way-too-much-like-a-desk-chair SUV, and ride to work in the gas-guzzling desk chair. When I did ride, I made myself nervous. I was not the rider I used to be. I wasn't aggressive when I needed to be aggressive. I wasn't strong enough to deal with the bike when I got into trouble. I had my first-ever street bike accident early that spring. I started thinking about buying a cruiser, to compensate for being too fat and stiff to swing my leg over a real motorcycle. I was starting to see the point that other geezer bikers make when they claim that helmets limit visibility and loud pipes began to seem like a useful defensive maneuver. Too often, I couldn't see who was beside me, in heavy traffic, let alone what was behind me.

The problem was not that I’m getting old. It’s that I was out of shape. You can’t do anything about being old, but you can usually fix being out of shape.

Somewhere, years ago, I read that good luck isn’t something that’s happening all the time, it comes when it’s important. That’s why it’s called “luck.” In my case, my desire to hang on to motorcycling coincided with my need to get back a chunk of my life before it was too late. I love motorcycling so much that the idea of quitting, selling my bike, and doing all of my traveling and commuting in a four-wheeled birdcage scared the snot out of me. That nasty prospect convinced me to look for some kind of conditioning routine that would help me regain enough flexibility and strength to stay on two wheels. I’m lucky to have had motorcycling for motivation.

For me, the activity turned out to be cranking up a regular yoga routine. I started light and short, fifteen minutes a day, and have worked up to forty-five minutes to an hour, five or six days a week, in the last year. At my last physical, my doc called me “an owl,” when he saw how far I could swivel my head and torso. Last I heard, he was starting his own workout routine. I have rediscovered the joys and rewards of being able to bend over to pick up dropped stuff, without screaming in pain. My balance is better than it’s ever been. I lost 25 pounds and gained strength and stamina.

This isn't a yoga promotion. This isn't a for-geezers-only column. Riding a motorcycle is physically demanding, somewhat hazardous, and more fun than anything you can do on four wheels (except sex, which is nearly impossible on a moving motorcycle). Motorcycling is a sort of double-edged sword. It's dangerous, but living is dangerous. Living without a little danger, an edge, something to crank up your juices, is almost pointless. That's why we love motorcycles.

Just owning a motorcycle isn't enough to keep yourself alive on a bike. Doing the MSF Experienced Rider class every year or two is nothing more than a survival tactic. The things you learn in a racing class or off-road on a dirt bike may be the difference between riding tomorrow or getting to know your doctor really well. But that's not enough. Every racer has some kind of cross-training routine to keep sharp and fit. They don't just do those things to win races. They do them to stay alive and uninjured. Strength, flexibility, balance, and response time are all physical characteristics that can be improved. You can cover your pickup with "Start Seeing Motorcycles" stickers, but the only person watching out for you on the road is you. If you can't do the job, you're screwed.

Since this anti-rant is a complete failure at my life’s purpose in ticking off all six of the Geezer column’s fans, here’s a web-link that ought to do the job for you: www.dennisjsullivan.com/loudpipe.htm. Enjoy.

May 2001

Failure to Communicate

A few years ago, a friend who had just taken up motorcycles decided that we weren't getting enough out of our trips into the Colorado Rockies. He'd become a motorcyclist, mostly, to be part of a group (of which I was a member) who spent most weekends exploring the area within a day's ride of Denver on bikes. He had discovered yet another intrusive piece of technology that he was convinced we should all buy for the purpose of enhancing communication on our road trips; helmet headsets.

One of the two experienced riders, not me, was into vintage Japanese bikes. Lots of vintage Japanese bikes. At the last count, I think he has 11 unreliable, under-powered, bad-handling junkers that he loves like children. I had an almost-new Yamaha 850 TDM that made my children a bit jealous. Who'd have guessed that kids want attention, too? The third hand in our deck of mountain explorers had a Yamaha 650XS. It didn't take him too long to discover that he couldn't keep up with us on rolling junk.

Regardless of the XS's limitations, the third guy was such a cautious rider that I always took the precaution of planning our rides so that we'd have a designated place to meet at specific times, along the route. I thought this effort was an extraordinary act of friendship, on my part. He was so slow moving that he'd often be stuck in his driveway, still fiddling with his minimal riding gear, when I arrived at the first "check point" to wait. Sometimes, I waited for hours. I caught up on a lot of reading during those trips.

One day, while waiting to pick his bike up, after some minor repair work at a dealership, he discovered helmet communications systems. From that day on, every conversation we had started and ended with "I think we all ought to get these things, then we could talk to each other while we ride." I could ask him where he wanted to eat lunch and end up having to fend off a pitch for why I needed a radio in my helmet. Even the absolutely true and logical argument that I didn't need yet another voice joining the crowd in my head failed to deter him.

I admit that, purely through accidental survival and decent genes, I am a geezer. I'm not all that fond of new stuff for the sake of newness. I hung on to points and electro-mechanical ignitions longer than necessary because I understood them and could fix them. I still won't own a car with electric windows. Being a geezer isn't something that I have actively pursued, but will take responsibility for having made a few choices that resulted in my getting old rather than getting dead. Many of those successful choices had to do with keeping life simple as possible. Electronic gadgets, by definition, do not fall into the "simple life" category.

However, a lot of people have contributed to my being a geezer with a fair collection of grudges. The folks at Nady, for example, made those damn helmet communications systems so inexpensive that I could have afforded one if I were lifeless enough to want one. Which provided my friend with the ammunition to bug me about buying a set, whenever something resembling an opportunity arose. Because of that fact, I will never wish the engineers at Nady anything but uncontrollable feedback and poor fidelity. A grudge that I plan to hold till I die.

Eventually, after a year of nagging, I had to give up my feeble attempts at being a nice guy. When my buddy fired up one too many arguments on the radio-in-the-helmet thing, I admitted that I don't ride a motorcycle to socialize. In fact, I ride a motorcycle to be alone. I rarely take on passengers and I don't want a radio in my helmet because I like it that way.

I didn't quit while I was ahead, either. I told him that these things are glorified walkie-talkies and they have a range of about a mile, in perfect conditions. Since he was only likely to be able to stay within a mile of me when we were in the same parking lot, the radios would be a waste of helmet space. This is a guy who actually believes that posted speed limits are "reasonable and safe speeds," not arbitrary numbers selected to irritate skilled motorists and to control the far more common totally-inept-screwball-behind-a-steering-wheel.

After absorbing my insults, he doubled his efforts on the other member of our trio. Finally, he convinced him to waste his money on a helmet transmitter-receiver. After a couple of rides with his new electronic riding buddy, he discovered how irritating conversation can be when you're doing something fun. After a while, he started leaving the radio on, 24 hours a day, draining the battery while appearing to be cooperative. When our talkative buddy discovered that he was going unheard, he started carrying extra batteries so that his gems of wisdom wouldn't go unappreciated.

Finally, his victim gave up the pretense and bought a new helmet, sans radio. He took to wearing that helmet all the time, claiming it was more comfortable because it did a better job of muffling the "wind noise" (which, technically, was true in at least two ways).

I wish I were that diplomatic. I wouldn't have thought of that excuse in a million years. The closest I came to being subtle was, when we were all together in a bike shop listening to the helmet-yak lecture, I bought a tee-shirt with "Shut Up and Ride" silk-screened on both sides.

When I see bikers coming into a bar, obviously continuing a conversation they'd been having on their helmet walkie-talkies, I know I don't want to be anywhere near them when the road turns twisty and fun. They are just a small step up from cagers with cell phones. When radio-riders ask me if I get lonely out on the road, by myself, with no one to talk to, I remember a lyric written by an old Minnesota folk singer, "You ask why I don't live here? Man, I don't believe you don't leave." No, I don't get lonely when I'm on my motorcycle. I have the bike under me, the road in front of me, and we're all happy as two inanimate objects and one grumpy geezer can be. Thanks for asking. Was that diplomatic enough for you?

March 2002

A Good Day, Well Spent

(Because of the time lag between the bike show and the first spring issue of MMM, my editor decided to pass on this column. However, I still like it so I'm putting it on my own page of Geezer articles)

Incredible, isn't it? January in Minnesota and we get to spend a weekend pawing over motorcycles that our local dealers would keep behind glass rather than expose them to every Tom, Dick, and motorcycling wannabe Harriet. As many things as they get wrong, you gotta give Cycle World some credit for being cool enough to put on that show. And the fact that Toyota pays for a bunch of the show makes me look upon my two rust-bucket Toys with a little more affection.

Here's my definition of a good day in January. First, it's Saturday, Sunday being uncomfortably close to Monday.

Having put my stuff together the night before, I don't need a lot of prep-time. So, I crawl out of bed about fifteen minutes before a buddy picks me up for a trip into the pit of Minneapolis. I'm stumbling into my boots and coat about the time he pulls into the driveway. I'm out the door before he gets a chance to even think about turning off his car heater.

We've done this trip a three times in the past three years, so we have the schedule, finally, figured out. No point in getting there early, so we head for Keys and a breakfast built for six. It's a struggle, but we do what we always do and my dog wouldn't find a scent of a past meal from our plates. We still have an hour or more to burn before the Convention center doors open, so we talk about bikes and guitars and women. The sort of guy-talk where hope never stops springing eternal.

Finally, we've worn out our welcome at Keys because a line of folks has built up at the door and they all look hungry enough to be threatening. We hit the road, aiming in the general direction of downtown Minneapolis, by way of Willie's Guitars, a shop my friend has never seen and I never tire of seeing. Willie's isn't open, but we blow ten minutes staring into the windows and fogging up the glass.

Finally, we're on the direct path for downtown Minneapolis. I'm not a fan of downtown, uptown, or around town Minneapolis. Jesse, the Gov, thinks St. Paul was designed by "drunken Irishmen" and I'm equally convinced that Minneapolis was laid out by a tag-team of drunken pro wrestlers. The highway and freeway system is about as user-hostile as Microsoft's legal team. There are only a few places in the city, which I visit as rarely as possible, where I can get in and out without getting lost. Today, the Convention Center turns out to be one of those places; at least on the way into town. I even manage to direct my ride to a parking structure, where we find a slot on the 2nd floor, just a few feet from the skywalk entrance.

On the hike to the Convention Center, my friend discovers that a long suffering Achilles tendon injury has finally healed. The day just keeps getting better and better.

At the site, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that not only did my favorite editor ask for a press pass, but the show's administration people actually issued one for me. I've obviously spent too much of my life in the rock and roll world, where you always assume that everything can and will be screwed up. Being the crude and rude guy I am, I leave my friend in the ticket line and head for the Suzuki booth.

If you have never worn a press badge to a trade show, you really need to try it sometime. All riders should be issued press badges. At least I think it was the badge that made the difference. It seemed to me that the vendors and bike reps were a lot nicer to me than usual. I, in exchange, was a lot more ruthless to them. Two victims wearing Suzuki badges were forced, as best I could tell, to listen to me rant about the center stand that is missing from the SV650's accessory options while being available for the Hyabusa.

These guys actually paid attention to my argument, or pretended to, and took notes. I caught them glancing at my press badge, every couple of minutes, as if they were trying to decide what MMM was and if its readership was worth the abuse they were suffering. I milked my moment under the florescent lights for all it was worth and repeated the experiment at every booth I visited. The Harley guys weren't particularly interested in Suzuki SV650 center stands, though, so I'm going to write something mean about them at a later date.

Power is an evil thing. I don't get enough of it to even rate "obnoxious," let alone evil. Usually.

After a long day of exposing the limits of self-control to motorcycle vendors, we left the Convention Center, found our car in moments, and got lost finding our way out of Pro-Wrestler-ville. Eventually, we made it back to Willie's, which was now open, played a bunch of vintage guitars, bought a couple of noisemakers, and ended the evening drinking beer and eating bar food. January doesn't get any better than that.

April 2001

Reverse Psychology

I'm thinking that the EPA and the Federal Transportation Department are all taking the wrong approach on motorcycles. With reasonable consideration of the purpose of vehicles, the environment, and decent manners, these agencies have attempted to encourage motorcycle manufacturers to build (and motorcyclists to own) vehicles that meet these objectives. The problem is that Americans (and rest-of-world American wannabes) don't want reasonableness. To many of us, our motorcycles are not transportation but some kind of "lifestyle" icon. A nation of "born to be mild" types are buying and fiddling with motorcycles to demonstrate their individuality.

What if the government gave up on trying to manage all this stuff and just let the manufacturers ship us the absolute minimum vehicle, for us to redesign at will? Of course, at least one manufacturer is already doing this and making a bundle at it, so they might flex their powerful legislative muscle and prevent the competition from doing the same. Still, since the popular trend seems to be toward downsizing government. Imagine the whole thing getting downsized until diddly stuff like motorcycles are completely out of the federal and state viewfinders. It could happen.

This fantasy occurred to me as I took yet another step toward returning my new-used bike to stock. I know this is the exact opposite maneuver from typical, but, so far, it's been pretty successful for me.

I bought an almost new Suzuki SV650 from a kid in Michigan. The kid, like all self-respecting boy motorcyclists, had accumulated about 10 minutes of motorcycling expertise before he decided that Suzuki just hadn't built the kind of motorcycle that someone of his talent and experience deserved. So, he took some of Daddy's money and started re-engineering the SV. He had a shop install an expensive and noisy (the most critical characteristic) exhaust system. They applied a Dremel tool to the air filter, to allow "better breathing." The shop boys fiddled with the carb jetting, mashing the throttle cable between the carb housing and the frame in the process. He installed sticky race tires. He added some racer-boy cosmetic accessories. After the fine-tuning and thread-stripping was complete, he dumped the bike in his driveway and decided that motorcycling was too expensive and dangerous. He put the bike up for sale and I bought it for an extremely reasonable early-March price.

I admit, without guilt, that I have a serious bias against noisy pipes. In this one aspect, I probably have more in common with non-bikers than most bikers. I see absolutely nothing wrong with a cop firing a warning shot to the head, when said cop pulls over a biker, a jacked-up SUV owner, or a semi-driver for noise emissions from a non-stock, non-EPA, non-DOT approved exhaust system. Even more non-biker-like, I don't believe that 99.9xx% of the riders I see on the street have any capacity to manage the unlikely 1-4% horsepower/torque gains they might, on a miraculous perfect tuning day with the moon and stars just right, achieve with a "competition use only" exhaust system. I think most folks with loud pipes are just being antagonistic toward their neighbors and anyone they might muster up the nerve to pass on the highway.

In fact, I doubt that any modification made by a non-racer (or an unsuccessful racer) has a practical purpose. Having bought a few of these cobbled-up mis-engineering attempts over the years, I suspect that "buyer's hysteria" is responsible for the sale of more motorcycle junk than performance. So, what I'm suggesting to the Feds and State regulatory folks is that they might try a little reverse psychology. Allow all of the bike manufacturers to make completely obnoxious and massively polluting bikes and, in that way, challenge motorcyclists to improve their bikes in the direction that they're trying to lead us through current regulation.

After a brief burst of irresponsibility, bikers would start tuning to improve mileage and emissions. We'd would be pawing through exhaust system catalogs, comparing the systems' noise output, and trying to quiet their bikes down so that neighbors would quit keying the bikers' cars and teepeeing their houses, while they were out riding. Motorcyclist hobbyists would be involved in real engineering, rather than de-engineering. Imagine that.

One of the early manufacturing engineering gurus found that assembly folks noticed an improvement in their working conditions when he modified the plant's lighting system. Their output improved accordingly. Later, Mr. Guru change the same lights back to stock and the assemblers thought that was better, too. Again, their efficiency improved. Humans aren't very good at making fine distinctions based on memory. We're even worse about being objective regarding the results of our investments. We spend our money, put in a few hours fiddling with our bikes, and we're convinced (regardless of any real evidence) that we've improved our bikes. The results of most of our modifications are grossly subjective, for those of us who don't race. For most of us who do race, pouring money into the bike isn't any where near as productive as spending time on the track.

In my situation, I've started with a bike that's had a fair collection of hop-up attempts made and I'm working backwards toward the stock bike. When the original owner had the bike, I read his posts to the SV owner's mail list, bragging about how each pile of money and weekend of fiddling with the bike had done something wonderful to the bike's performance. I've been spending my money and time to get back to stock. Regardless of the type of investment, I'm seeing the same kind of improvement that original owner reported, except that I'm removing the stuff he put on the bike to get those improvements.

I think this experiment is meaningful (it's one I've run a few times with the same results). I'm just not sure what the meaning is. I'll bet the accessory manufacturers would just as soon you didn't think about it too much.

October/November 2000