The 10th Anniversary of 40on2

Gold Wing Sunset

Ten years ago today Forty Years On Two Wheels sprung to life from the flotsam and jetsam of motorcycle stories and thoughts rattling around in my head.   Something past 400 blog entries have been made, some of them good, and there are a handful of which I'm really proud.  I only rarely used anything but my own writing and photos; for good or ill I want the blog to be a reflection of who I am as a motorcycle enthusiast.

I am in my in my 48th year of riding and I confess that I'm getting a little burned out.  During the past several years bikes have come and gone from my garage, I believe in part because I thought another bike might buy me some new enthusiasm.   Out of that parade-of-bikes-through-my-garage situation I have discovered, as my friend Simon, over in the UK, wrote about himself at one point "Somewhere along the way I went from enthusiastic motorcyclist to motorcycle enthusiast."  I love nearly all things motorcycle, riding is only a part of that.  Simon stopped riding for a few years after a bad crash and shifted his focus to photography of bikes but he's been back for a year or three now, first on Triumph and now on one of those new Honda 750's with the dual clutch transmission.  Bike fever might go into remission but you're never really over it.

For what it's worth, I sold the Gold Wing a couple of weeks ago.  It seemed like the time to do that as the bike was sitting too much, only accumulating an additional 3000 miles in the eleven months I owned it.  My timing must have been right in deciding to sell the Wing because after only a week on Craig's List only one guy contacted me, came to look at it, brought a fat envelope of $100 bills, and rode the Wing away.

What's next for for me bike-wise after 48 years, and for Forty Years On Two Wheels after 10 years?  I dunno.  No rush.

Art, Individualism, Or Just Stupid?

I spend too much time on-line but at least a lot of it is spent on motorcycle sites.  As I look at what's being done in the custom world these days with so-called bobbers, rat bikes, or even cafe bikes,  I get the feeling that a lot of what's being feted out there in publications and custom bike blogs was never intended to be ridden, or not ridden any further than from its trailer to the bike show floor.  

Going way back to the '60s and '70s customized bikes started getting stupid with suspended frames swapped for hard tails, mile high sissy bars, and forks extended to the point that a bike couldn't make a continuous u-turn on a two lane road.   Giant ape hanger bars?  Look cool?  To a few.  To others it just looks stupid, like an accident waiting to happen.   

Yes, yes, I can hear people saying "Hey, it's their bike, they can do what they want with it!" To that I would agree, everyone has a right to self-expression and no one has the right to tell another person how to express themselves; I understand that.  I also understand that I have the right to call stupid impracticality what it is.  What people do in the privacy of their own garage is their business, how they parade around in public makes them fair game for criticism, if not laughter.

Seriously?  One slip and you're gelded.

That over done Wing above is no worse, nor less lacking in art, than some of the "customs" and "bobbers" that I'm seeing around the 'net.  Huge, impractical Firestone balloon front tires that would play havoc with steering, little tiny thin seats at steep angles that would give you hemorrhoids in 30 miles, are stupid.  They are not even esthetically pleasing to anyone with a genuine sense of taste and function born of experience.  I can understand a bike as art but I don't have much sympathy for bikes-as-art that are barely rideable or even unsafe.  A bike that doesn't work well has little meaning to me.  A motorcycle should still have some reasonable practicality and function left in it and not torture the rider or be outright dangerous to ride.

Same goes for the current fad in helmets.  Somehow, now to be cool you need to get some crappy old helmet from 1967, re-do the liner, and wear it, preferably with two days growth of beard on your angst ridden face, and also a flannel t-shirt, and low top sneakers or lace up Red Wing work boots.  Don't forget to have a pack of unfiltered cigarettes in your pocket, too.   I hate that look.  It's an affectation, a copying of motorcycle world past that never quite existed as it's imagined now.   It's not much different than dressing up as a character from a science fiction movie. Think of is as motorcycle cosplay.  Bikes and bike clothing moved on and riders got smart and moved on from the old days.   Helmets evolved for practical reasons like...oh...safety.  Wearing an old, refurb'd  helmet is stupid.   Want to ride in low top sneakers?  Your choice, but also stupid (If you're doing it because you have no money for boots, fine, try the Salvation Army thrift store).  If you're wearing your sneakers, battered metalflake helmet, jeans with rolled cuffs, and a flannel shirt so you like like some imaginary rider from the 1950s or 60s, you're just a hipster motorcycle poser and look stupid.

Having strip mined biker culture, HD moves on to hipsters.

Years ago I wrote a piece about the gawdawful Icon Skull jacket.  I didn't think motorcycle apparel could sink lower than that ridiculous piece but it has.  Barbour International, formerly an actual motorcycle clothing company of renown, has brought out a fake Steve McQueen jacket or several of them.  So what's the big deal?  We all like to think we might look just a little like the King of Cool if we just had the right gear, were handsome, and immensely talented.  

Barbour International has over 100 years in the rugged apparel business including motorcycle jackets

and they've drawn own their illustrious history to being you the Babour Steve McQueen MacGrain jacket (MacGrain?).   To help you look cool, to look just a little more like Steve, the jacket comes with fake rubber mud applied to it.  Yes, fake mud.  How desperate for an identity do you have to be to wear a jacket with fake mud on it when it's not Halloween?  I'm pretty sure any mud on McQueen's jackets got there honestly.   I don't believe in ghosts but if I did I'd be hoping McQueen would come back and haunt every moron that buys that joke of a jacket.  At the least, decent motorcyclists everywhere should laugh out loud at anyone they see wearing it, especially since the owner paid $835 for it.