#Whatever

And now for my next complaint. The topic keeps coming up: Why aren’t more people buying motorcycles? When applied to Millennials, we conjectured a few Whatevers ago – after minutes of careful thought and some research including opening our eyeballs – that they’re not buying more motorcycles because they have no money. I’ll add to that today: In addition to not having any money, riders are also not buying more motorcycles because they simply have no damn time to ride them.

OMG WHAT’S THE WORLD COMING TO?! PACKS OF WILDING MOTORCYCLES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY GIVING US RESPECTABLE MOTORCYCLISTS A BAD NAME AND BRINGING THE GUB’MINT DOWN UPON US!!

One cool thing about working at print magazines in the good old days was that there’d be new magazines every day, from all over the world: Australian Motorcycle News with Fred Gassit on the last page, Bike from the UK along with SuperBikes and Performance Bikes; Motorrad from Germany, PS from Belgium or someplace, Cycle Canada, a French magazine or two. Even if you didn’t speak the language, there was a little foreign culture lesson in each one, tied to the favorite thing we all had in common. Cycle News came every Wednesday, I think, or was it Tuesday? I never understood how Paul Carruthers could put that thing out every week and still par-, er, celebrate as hard as we did at various press events. With all those mags lying around, if you needed a fresh story, well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They’re also where much of our information came from in those days. Bike magazine and Motorcycle News still seem to be doing pretty well, mainly because their websites only exist to tease you with what’s in the current print issue. Which you have to buy.

I could be wrong, but I feel like the demise of the sportbike has been greatly exaggerated. That or I’m confusing the demise of the sportbike with the demise of myself? We’re junkies loose in the pharmacy with all kinds of motorcycles here at MO, but every year – or at least every couple of years – when it’s time for the big Superbike Comparison!, well, all of us get even more amped-up than usual.

Okay, I admit I’m pretty out of touch when it comes to Supercross. I enjoy watching sports that I slightly know how to participate in (even if it was decades ago), but I just haven’t ever been able to relate to that much flying through the air. I love riding dirt bikes when I get the occasional chance, but stadium Supercross has about as much to do with how I ride a dirt bike as a Saturday morning softball game has to do with the World Series; they’re almost not even recognizably similar activities. They’re really even further apart than that. I wouldn’t be afraid to stand at the plate and listen to a 100-mph fastball sizzle past me (doubt I’d be able to see it), but I’d be terrified to hit a triple wide open on a modern 450. Or a modern 250. Or a modern PW50.

I read somebody’s theory a while ago about why we never hear from distant planets: About the time we learn to broadcast into space, we also learn to build nuclear weapons. So by the time we’d hear from Tralfamadore, 200,000 light years away, it’s already toast and so will we be.

A week or two ago I had the pleasure of “testing” some new Dunlop tires up north of the L.A. sprawl – all up through recently rained-upon green backroads and citrus farms reeking of orange blossoms, around Fillmore and Santa Paula, looping around Lake Cachuma (filling back up with water!) and Ojai, back down along the ocean and through the Malibu canyons – all on a brand new KTM Super Duke GT, all under blue skies with temperatures hovering in crispy low 60s. Nearly as good a day on a motorcycle as you can have, really. When you’re working, anyway.

A few MO commenters are always encouraging me to keep my politics to myself, which I do as much as I can because I understand people want to read about motorcycles and look at pretty pics when they come here to get away from it all. The problem for me is that if you’re paying attention to your life, including motorcycles, politics can’t be avoided any more than you can just ignore the family of bears who just decided to share your campsite. Politics affects my bottom line.

One interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed over the years is the seeming inability of the non-motorcycling public to read. Inevitably, when whatever motorcycle I’m riding draws a layperson’s attention, they’ll ask, ‘What kind of motorcycle IS that?’ And it doesn’t matter how large VICTORY or HONDA is written on the gas tank. The sole exception is Harley-Davidson. Then the comment is always ‘Nice Harley.’ And if some casual observer says ‘nice Harley’ when you’re on a Japanese cruiser trying to hide its identity, you know the Japanese have won another skirmish but are destined to eventually lose the cruiser war.

No matter how cynical you become, it really is impossible to keep up. Politics in the U.S. has reached a new level of crass, the international newsfeed is no cheerier, and now we hear that Motorcyclist magazine is going down to six issues per year. Actually that’s probably a good thing for our colleagues who work there, since putting a print magazine to bed 12 times a year while trying to fill a website every day too, really is a lot of work, even if it is fun work.

The original plan was to be in Calico to shoot the wrap video for last week’s “Bagger Brawl” four-bike comparo tour (which should get posted next week, maybe…), but you know what they say about best-laid plans. That goes double for MOron plans. Instead of being an hour-and-a-half from the barn, we wound up running low on daylight and needing to roll tape while we were still in Death Valley, four hours north. Motorcycles tend to make you think things are a lot closer than they are, even if you were just there last year. By the time the cameras were packed back up and the Harley Street Glide, Victory Magnum, Moto Guzzi MGX-21 and Indian Chieftain were ready to roll, the sun was setting and the “mega moon” was rising over one of the most desolately beautiful places in North America.

As you’re reading this, I am doing something I haven’t done in about 10 years, not officially anyway: being on vacation! That’s right, I’m motorcycleless up in the eastern Sierra Nevada of California, possibly half-heartedly attempting to catch a trout, clambering around over boulders, soaking in hot springs, emulating fine beer commercials, probably humming to myself David Bowie’s final musical vanishing trick, “Look up here, I’m in Heaven.”

Strange how some people who call themselves motorcyclists like some forms of racing and not others. When I was a kid dreaming of my first motorcycle, it was a KX125 or a Hodaka Combat Wombat or something like that, and my heroes were the exotic characters in the magazines who raced them. This was before pavement racing had been invented I think. Now, I have to admit that while I think outdoor MX is pretty entertaining, given my choice between attending a Supercross or roller derby, I’d probably go with the skaters.

I was talking to a new acquaintance the other day when the usual topic came up, i.e., what do you do for a living? I write about motorcycles. Oh, she said, my good friend Whatshisname is a huge motorcycle guy; he’s practically a professional motocross racer. He’s broken every bone in his body!

I don’t remember the first time I rode a motorcycle up Mt. Palomar down there in beautiful San Diego County, but I do remember it being one of the top three “you have GOT-to-be kidding me” moments I experienced when I moved to the left coast. Wiki says there are “over 20 hairpin turns over the distance of less than seven miles” as the road climbs 6000 feet to the world-famous observatory, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like 200 hairpin turns, sharp lefts, quick rights, increasing-radius sweepers both left and right and a few series of S-bends you can straightline while practicing your rebel yell inside your Shoei. Do they ever run the Isle of Man backwards? Abusing the front tire going back down the South Grade is just as fun, or there’s the East Grade option to the bottom of the mountain too, just as hairball and faster, with a lovely vertigo-inducing view of Lake Henshaw. (There it is in the lead photo.)