Category: Just a Biker thoughts

From the mailing list:

“If one is riding down the pitch black road at 4 in the morning on a beautiful, cool and brisk day, with a full moon still shining…

 And a skunk runs out in front of you…

 And said skunk is barely clipped…

 Your bike will still smell like skunk.

Just incase any of you ever need to know that.

1. Never place your Bike keys on your seat after locking up your Bike because if
you swing your leg over the seat to get off your Bike you can accidently knock
the keys (attached to the PLASTIC key fob and “gremlin bell”) down between the
red hot smoldering muffler and the frame: and mark my words the keys will get
caught on the “gremlin bell” and not fall to the ground like they should. The
key fob will probably melt unless you can figure out how to retrieve your keys
without burning your fingers. However, if you are riding with someone else who
is willing to save your key fob from melting, by putting their hand between the
smoldering hot muffler and frame, thereby burning their hand instead of burning
yours, it’s a good thing. Buy them an ice water to say thank you; they can drink
it or soak their hand.

2. Make sure your helmet strap is properly closed under your chin or snapped
shut before you take off down the road to avoid the realization that at 55+Mph
your helmet isn’t secure and thereby have to ride holding onto your helmet
straps because the helmet bouncing up and down on your head and will be
airborne at any moment – and of course the road you’re on doesn’t seem to have
room to pull over because you’re concentrating on the helmet and the road in
front of you. However the Biker you are riding with somehow notices your
dilemma (lucky they let you lead), passes you and leads the way to a safe stop
to fix the problem.

3. Never drop your keys, especially in a Bar parking lot during a Poker Run when
you are in a hurry to get to the next stop and don’t realize you dropped your
keys. Because, your new Harley has that wonderful Harley key fob security
system which requires key fob proximity to the Bike before the Bike will start
after you shut if off – even if the Bike is unlocked. However the Biker you’re
riding with can go back to the Bar parking lot, pick up the dropped keys before
someone runs over them and bring them back to you. You avoid a call to either a
friend with a trailer or to Harley Davidson, who, although have 24 assistance
they don’t always answer their phone.

4. It’s nice to have a second pair of hands when you drop your bike, that’s how
you learn the meaning of side stand.

5. Make sure you close and lock all saddlebags and tour packs before you take
off down the road. This measure will avoid pieces of stray clothing and other
items from sailing out of your tour pack and saddlebags and end up on car
windshields. Your friend can help you pick up the litter, only if you’re not on
a main highway and there’s room to pull over, and they stopped laughing enough
to help.

6. Make sure you pants aren’t longer than your legs in a sitting position.
Nothing worse that getting your pant caught up on the shifter so you can’t put
your foot down at a red light. (Refer to number 4)

7. Never ride with your mouth open when riding though a cloud of bugs. Friends
always have tissues.

8. Make sure you always top off when everyone stops for gas; there is nothing
worse than running out of gas in the Florida Everglades with the nearest gas
station miles down the road. Your friend can buy a gas can and come back with a
gallon or two, even if you’re waiting for them several hours in the sweltering
heat without water. (They can bring back water too)

9. If you can’t see in the rain and you have to ride anyway because you’re going
down the side of a mountain that has traffic and no place to pull over, be happy
the friend in the lead has no problem riding in the rain and has an LED
taillight to follow because that’s all you can see.

10. And if you rent or ride a loaner while your Bike is in the shop make sure
you get a key for the loaner Bike. Don’t expect to ride it all day almost run
it out of gas and fill it up – because you can’t, if you don’t have the key.
And if you’re riding two up because their Bike is in the shop also, just hope
there’s reserve to get you back to the dealership.

By Webmistress

The Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski

There is cold, and there is cold on a bike. Cold on a bike is like being beaten with coldhammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone falling from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it’s hard to give up my bike in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among bikers. When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and height as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

But when warm weather finally does come around, all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A bike is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a scooter is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes, and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a bike I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on my scooter I hear whole songs: rock’n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane.
Transportation is only a secondary function. A scooter is a joy machine.

It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
When asked to describe what they love about motorcycle travel, riders toss around romantic vocabulary like “freedom” and “escape.” We think there has to be a more tangible component, a key sensation perhaps, or a unique emotion that can only be roused by humming tires, rushing wind and the promise of a long ride. But what is it- that sensation that once tasted, leaves us so eternally hungry? Where’s the magic in a motorcycle journey?
Perhaps it’s in the posture. When you’re riding down the highway on your cruiser your arms are open and extended as if you’re expecting an embrace. In this position you’re uniquely receptive and vulnerable to the world as it rushes towards you . . . I know that when I roll off a few miles and click into my riding posture, I suddenly feel at peace. And when I know I can stay in that position for hours–I feel joy. The weight of my world rolls off my shoulders and gets lost somewhere in my wake.

The danger and subsequent concentration might also play a role in the satisfaction. Have you ever taken a moment to realize how much stimulation your mind and body calmly absorbs while you ride? The wind’s noise, vibration, buffeting and the cold or the heat would quickly reach intolerable levels if you were standing still. The sound alone would be enough to separate you from your skin. Realizing how subtly these things register while we’re riding reminds us how focused we are. It’s fundamental meditation without the lavender and tea lights.

Perhaps another explanation can be found if we tear apart what makes a motorcycle trip so different from other acutely pleasurable experiences in our lives. Think of your favorite things for a moment . . . things that heighten the senses and quicken the heart just to imagine doing them. Maybe it’s eating perfectly tendered abalone, stepping into a bubbling Jacuzzi, or making passionate love. Even at their best the thrill of these things simply doesn’t last long enough. All too soon we’re sated and left to remember the joys of expectation. Motorcycling is different. Riding is an ongoing, endless state of anticipation that requires no apex to bring satisfaction.

Unlike most other forms of travel, riding lets us feel the world we’re moving through. We get to taste every nuance, smell every subtlety, feel every pulse of the elements. It puts us in touch with the essence of the planet and separates us from all that distorts it. In order to travel any distance on a motorcycle we’re also forced to pare down our own clutter until we find what’s vital. The process of strapping these fundamental items onto the spine of such a simple machine is in itself an act of purification. In motorcycle touring there is simplicity, and with simplicity comes fulfillment.

The answer to what makes motorcycle travel so magical may not be so complex. Perhaps it’s just like a delicious book you hate to put down. Each journey is a chapter and each corner a twist in the plot. It’s a story that lasts a lifetime, with a moral only its own characters can understand.

Twas the night before Christmas, And not until Spring,
Would an engine be running, not even a Wing.
The bikes are all sleeping, They’re covered and warm
Batteries are tended, nylon covers their form.

My Bros were all nestled snug in their beds,
While visions of new chrome danced in their heads.

And I in my doo-rag, bike jacket and boots,
Out shoveling snow, and dreaming of scoots.

Then from the horizon there came such a clatter,
My shovel I dropped, what could be the matter?

Away up the hill, I slogged through the snow,
Looked up at the sky; where’d all that noise go?

A throb from the heavens like straight pipes so hearty,
Gave Summers’ good thoughts, a loud bikers’ party.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a neat ‘02 Retro, Red trailer in rear.

With a little old rider, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than Crotchies his Retro came on,
And he whistled, and shouted, and sang out this song;

“Now, Harley! Now, Big Dog! On Honda and Beamer!
Now Vulcan! Now Injun! On Vict’ry and Trumpet!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now RIDE away! RIDE away! RIDE away all!”

As small bikes that from the semis do fly,
When they meet with the air blast, mount to the sky.

So up to the house-top that Ol’ X it flew,
With a trailer of goodies, and ole’ St. Nick too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof,
The rumble and thunder of pipes that gave proof.

I ran to the house, boots thumping around,
And in came St. Nick all bearded and round.

Dressed all in black leather, from do-rag to boot,
His chaps were all tarnished with road grime and soot.

A T-bag of goodies he’d flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His shades — how they twinkled! his do-rag how scary!
With chains intertwined, through skulls that were cherry!

His droll little mouth had done many a row,
So the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
The smoke had a strange smell; it gave him relief!

He had a broad face and a large fat beer belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was tattooed and plump, a right jolly old rider,
So I offered a cold Bud, thought what could be righter?

A wink of his eye as he downed that cold beer,
Gave me to know I had nothing to fear.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to my ride,
And fixed it with Chrome, Horsepower and Pride!

And giving the peace sign with bikers’ good cheer,
Took off for his Retro which was rumbling quite near.

He sprang on the saddle, his gloves on the bars,
A wheeley he threw then off towards the stars!

I heard him exclaim, as my chest swelled with pride…
“HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD RIDE!”

an article somewhere about deer vs. Motorcycles and said encountering a deer is like this:

“Being ambushed by a deer is like walking into a bar, ordering a drink. The guy next to you hits you over the head with a bar stool while you are reaching for your wallet to pay for the drink!”