#Whatever

My latest stupid thing is rinsing the engine of my new used car with the hose. Not a pressure wash or even a full blast, I swear! Just a light drizzle to rinse off some degreaser in a couple nooks and crannies the morning after I brought the thing home. Before I did that, my new-to-me 2000 Jaguar XJR had been running like a 4-liter V-eight Jaguar with an Eaton supercharger on top of it. After it, the RESTRICTED PERFORMANCE lamp was lit and it would barely run. Dang. (I hope we can talk about cars here, too, can’t we? I was a car guy before I was a motorcycle guy, and the same concepts apply.)

I wondered out loud the other day, during a MO conference call, how many new motorcycles still have carburetors? Not much more than a day later, Dennis Chung shared an Excel spreadsheet with all of them. It’s about what you’d expect: Three Rokon Rangers, Suzuki and Yamaha DS and TW200s, Honda’s XR650L soldiers on alongside Suzuki’s DR-Z400s and DR-650s… the Honda Ruckus still has a carburetor. Beyond that, there are a bunch of Kymco and lesser-known small-displacement scooters you’ve never heard of. I have never had the pleasure of seeing, much less riding, Taizhou Handa Engine Science Co., Ltd.’s Adonis, Defender, Discovery, Excursion, Falcon, Falcon R, Super, Super R, Vestalian, or Wasp.

(WARNING! This is an opinion piece by MO’s Senior Content Editor and does not represent MO’s official position on anything at all.)

I didn’t get a new motorcycle for Christmas, but I did get a new chainsaw. They’re enjoying the same conundrum as we are over there in the chainsaw world – gas versus electric. Since “range” is not important for me (I only want to trim branches and cut things up around the house and maybe in the bathtub), I went with a plug-in electric. I didn’t know you could get a chainsaw for 75 bucks, or I probably would’ve gotten one years ago. I mean, I’d like to ride motorcycles every weekend, but somebody’s gotta take care of the homestead – and the faster the better.

Time really does fly. Hopping onto the laptop for my morning coffee and daily fix of the American Dream, Facebook informs me that I joined it ten years ago. What? How is that possible? A lot of people my age refused to take the FB plunge, but that’s okay because I still see what they’re up to on Instagram, via random text and on the news ( David Pecker). I tweet but rarely.

Well, there’s absolutely nothing funny about the latest set of fires consuming California. Closest to home is the Woolsey fire, which is currently burning up our finest riding roads in Malibu, all the famed “canyons” I read about in the bike mags when I was a kid. Not to mention a few friends’ houses who live up in there – at least one of whom managed to secure for himself a quite palatial estate right in the middle of the burn zone complete with an impressive chicken coop. I hope his five-car garage makes it. I knew this was a serious fire when I saw a beautiful ’69 Camaro SS driving past the roadside reporter when the news first broke last week: Oh damn, that’s another downside to being wealthy I never thought of: Which of your collectible automobiles do you flee in? Your motorcycles, since they can’t carry much stuff, probably aren’t going to make it unless you’re good at loading your trailer pronto.

There, I was rocketing across the German countryside on the way from Cologne to Heidelberg with number-one son at my side. With no traffic ahead, my mechanical steed lowered its head and plunged ahead, bit firmly in teeth, rolling along the silky smooth bahn… 240 kph said the digital speedo, 260, 288, 303… yo that’s 188 mph! The telephone poles looked like a picket fence as the countryside flew past. We’d just spent a couple days at the big Intermot motorcycle show, and now were rewarding ourselves with a couple days of European vacation. How could it get any better than this, I asked myself as we sped crazily along? Pinch me.

It’s not that I didn’t want to go on the big Adventure Bike Shootout a couple weeks ago; it’s just that I didn’t want to die a hot, thirsty death in the middle of nowhere. My perfectly legit excuse, though, was that as a team player, I want what’s best for MO, and having anybody less than a guy who really knows how to ride 600-pound motorcycles over terrain Marines would refuse to assault would be a disservice to both the manufacturers and MO’s faithful readers. Am I right? Of course I’m right. I know people who can ride a Triumph 1200 Explorer up and down vertical single-track trails; I’m not one of them.

“If you want a friend in this world, get a dog.”
—Harry S. Truman

It’s “Touring Month” here at MO, and how fitting, ’cause I’ve been riding the wheels off our borrowed Honda Gold Wing for a while now. (Just to let you know I’m not in Honda’s pocket, I’d be just as happy to be riding the wheels off the BMW K1600B, but BMW had to have it back.) I could also be happy to be riding the wheels off a Victory Cross Country 8-Ball, though a quick sweep through Cycle Trader informs me those things seem to be holding their value nicely and are still out of my price range.

I’m a capital C Conservative when it comes to holding onto some rituals, chief among them being the time-honored tradition of toasting one’s co-workers with a beverage at the end of a hard day of motojournalism. That tradition, I’m sad to say, is coming under attack from the forces of evil. At the recent Austrian launch of the new Yamaha Niken, it was almost difficult for me, Rider magazine’s illustrious Editor Mark Tuttle, and the 50-something guy Popular Mechanics sent, to enjoy our cocktails, knowing that the 20-somethings Cycle World/Motorcyclist sent were at that moment out gathering even more video footage of the Niken, on top of the thousands of hours we’d already captured that day. I know what it’s like to be young and ambitious, but outworking the other guy is no way to get ahead in the modern workplace. That’s only going to bring out the Tonya Harding in people.

Well, what shall I write about this month? I am kind of a left-wing liberal, so naturally I want the free and/or easy stuff, the low-hanging fruit… you know what was freer and easier when I got to California in 1988? Time. There was lots more of it then. It was kind of a settled matter that the magazine I worked for would come out monthly, so you knew what you had to do and you did it and the pages got filled. Looking back upon it from today’s 24/7 (ok, it’s more 24/5 or /6 here at MO), it was a remarkably stress-free and pleasantly paced existence most of the time, though we of course complained constantly how overworked and underpaid we were. Come to think of it, there were more than a few late nights when we were on deadline – a thing that really doesn’t happen anymore now that every day is a deadline – but not really a hard deadline since there are no longer any actual presses to stop.

A big part of it’s probably the fault of all the movies, especially the rags-to-riches ones, so Americanly popular, where the underdog comes from nowhere to lead the pack here at Augusta, a real Cinderella story. If you only watched people play golf on TV, you’d think it would be a simple matter to go out there and break 80. Sometimes Cinderella works hard and gets a little training, but usually natural talent, a little persistence and a lucky break are the only requirements to make it to the top in the movies. Seldom is there any actual study or much practice involved. (Of course, if you’d read the book instead of just watching the movie, you’d know better.)

Hello. Is it safe to stick my head up out here yet? Yes, it’s true. Big Dirty Sean Alexander and Kevin Duke have Left the Building (not that MO actually has a building) – also our compadre Scott Rousseau from sistership Dirtbikes.com. As the wise man once told me on my way out the door, don’t think of this as a door closing, but as another one opening. Ahh… why not? The bad news is we don’t get to work with those guys anymore. The good news is they’ll be fine; Duke’s already slogging away making videos for a large marketing company with oceanfront offices – his strong suit, really. The other good news is that my direct deposit is still depositing. C’mon, that’s a joke. I’m gonna miss those big lugs.

Plenty of weird stuff happened in 2017, but no weirder than usual so I really can’t complain. We’ll miss Nicky Hayden, who I remember reading about in Roadracing World when he was 13 years old (how old does that make me?), and has now departed this mortal coil way too early. I won’t miss, they tell me, the corporate tax rate of 35%, which is going down to 20% and will supposedly juice the economy like crazy and lead to a new bull market in motorcycles like the one in the ’Aughts. That’ll make everybody around here happy. All the kids are getting rich on Bitcoin, too, and home equity is on the rise again. We’ve already got granite countertops and big knockers; what does that leave? Motorcycles, that’s what. Basically we’re all set to get on up out this biatch and do some serious WINNING! Here are my predictions for 2018!