#Whatever

I have thought for the longest time that if you need to depend on your horn to save your bacon on your motorcycle, you’re doing it wrong – an idea borne out by this Canadian maroon Troy posted on MO last week. In that situation, your horn just sounds like whining. The fat lady in the Kia has already sung, she beat you fair and square, and running to tell the policeman is only going to compound your shame.

Unlike Will Rogers, I have met plenty of men I don’t like. (Okay, it usually takes a minute or two for me to not like them.) But I’ve never met a motorcycle I didn’t like. Which comes in handy for me, since the biggest sin we motorcycle journalists are accused of is not revealing our honest opinion re: the bikes we review. This month’s column comes to you courtesy of a post by one TC, who commented on our H-D Iron 883 vs. Indian Scout Sixty comparo of a couple weeks ago: “If they only made cruisers, I wouldn’t ride a motorcycle. Too bad the reviewers can’t say what they really think, because they would lose their advertising.”

Rats, I missed the Quail Motorcycle Gathering again for the eighth year in a row. Not to worry, our excellent correspondent Geoff Drake was there to deliver an excellent story for MO. Luckily, I’m not terribly upset. I seem to have a pretty low tolerance for standing around looking at rich guys’ motorcycles, though at the Quail I hear there is at least a good ride to break things up. (You have to sign up early and pay like $350 to go on it, but lunch is included!) Getting to Carmel and back is usually better than being there, unless the reason you’re there is to go to Laguna Seca. Or if somebody else is picking up the tab.

Maybe what made us all fall in love with two wheels is simply that they’re cheaper than four wheels? That was true for me; I loved my Camaros and Panteras as a youth (not that I’d ever seen a Pantera in person), and couldn’t get enough Car and Driver and Hot Rod. Road & Track was a bit highbrow, but when I saw the checked upholstery in the new V8-powered Porsche 928 in there, I could see myself graduating into one someday…

Last month in Whatever (okay, last three-weeks-ago, and feel free to take it up with the management if you think that’s too often), I went slightly negative again, complaining about the AMA banning young Danny Eslick from attempting to be the first guy ever to win three Daytona 200s in a row, and thus metaphorically man’s inhumanity to man in general. In the Whatever before that, I probably did the same negative thing since that’s how five decades living with the hobnailed boot of the Man on one’s neck tends to influence one’s worldview, but who can remember six weeks ago? Certainly not Google or MO’s own search engine.

It was kind of a bummer that two-time Daytona 200 winner Danny Eslick didn’t get to race the 200 again this year, but not that big a bummer because I guess I have to number myself among the millions who just don’t much care about the Daytona 200 anymore. Which is an interest the people who run it had to work pretty hard to squash; I remember being hugely excited to go to Florida for the big race, and being amazed all over again every time I rolled through the tunnel and inside that enormous place. Holy cow.

From across the room, Brian Gillen is just another handsome, well-dressed Italian guy at the typical MV Agusta unveiling in the south of France or along the Cote d’Azur, but when you begin talking to him, something’s missing? Oh, it’s the accent in his English. Even without it, he seems just as conversant in Italian or Espanol (not that I would know) talking with his co-workers and other journalists.

Maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but since it became my job a couple decades ago to ride motorcycles, I no longer spend every weekend riding them too. One of the new activities I acquired in the last few years is pedalling around on a bicycle. I always did keep a beach cruiser around the house for short hops and for, ahh, cruising to the beach. When the kid absconded off to college with that fat-tired beater, I decided it was time to find out what I was missing that all the guys with the $5,000 bicycles were so excited about; your Josh Hayeses and Ben Spieses and plenty of serious professionals really love their bicycles. So I bit the bullet and bought myself a nice “hybrid” road bike, what we used to call a ten-speed when I had a Huffy, but with a flat handlebar that makes it what we’d call a standard if it were a motorcycle.

It’s always amusing when we have news to report about Erik Buell and his star-crossed motorcycle company. Most people are like me, pulling hard for EB to triumph over evil once again and build more great motorcycles. But every time his company dies, there are also plenty of voices who pipe up to say he deserves it! His motorcycles are junk, the rake and trail are all wrong! He’s a terrible businessman, he doesn’t know how to market…

I was highballing up the freeway on a shiny new V Star 950 last week, feeling the mighty pistons of her 942cc radial Twin pulsating through my forward-mounted dogs, when the same song popped into my brain that often does when I’m riding a swashbuckling American-style cruiser; “The Wreck of the Old 97”. Mine’s the Johnny Cash version, which was on like the first album I ever bought, but the song was already old in 1968. The Old 97, for you kids, was a train powered by a steam locomotive. Running late, Johnny Cash turned and said to his black greasy fireman, “shovel on a little more coal”.

Mr. Burns vigorously stirred the pot with this column about how the subjects of motorcycles and guns commingle. This piece was followed one week later by another MO columnist, Chris Kallfelz, who has a different perspective about how issues surrounding guns and motorbikes exist in the sphere of personal responsibility. Read his column here. —Ed.

Motorcycle journalism is a pretty distant cousin to journalism journalism, but when I got here a few years ago, whether we always stayed on the right side of it or not, everybody was very aware of The Wall that’s supposed to exist between Editorial (the people who write the magazine/web content) and Advertising (the people who go out and twist the arms of advertisers to make money). The reason for that wall should be obvious; a big bank shouldn’t be able to buy its way out of a scandal by buying a big bloc of advertising in a newspaper. A motorcycle shouldn’t win the Big Shootout because its manufacturer spent the most ad dollars. Sure the advertising people might buy an editor lunch now and then, sometimes even with an advertiser at the table, but attempting to influence editorial for profit was, and remains, strictly forbidden at any respectable publication. It’s common sense, really, but the older I get, the less common sense seems to be.

Hang on, I’ll be right back – gotta grab one of those mini Milky Ways I picked up for Halloween before somebody else eats them all. May as well wash these dishes. Looks like my basil on the patio is drying out better give it a drink. Reminds me we are out of olive oil, I’ll need to make a grocery run, but let me make a bathroom stop first … ooooo who left that skidmark? Gimme that brush…

The more stuff you know how to fix, the more things fall apart. Before I started keeping not one but two flat tire repair kits on hand and a shiny new air compressor, I never got flats. Now I seem to pick up about one nail per vehicle per week. I took the old Ranger truck in to have a tire patched the other day when I couldn’t make a plug work. The next morning, the same tire was flat again. Oh, said the dude at Pep Boys upon my return, after a little investigating – there were two nails in there. Sorry.

It’s a hard and dangerous business passing judgment on all these new motorcycles. Not so much physically dangerous (though there is that), but more like dangerous we’ll get it wrong. One of my favorite parts of being a MOron is going out with the other kids to do comparison tests over the span of a few days, when we have the chance to stop and smell the lattes, comparing notes and impressions on each bike every time we stop, and reach a consensus. Most of the time.