I was looking at the picture of Grand-dad Morris on his motorbike again this morning. With a bit of digital wizardry I was able to get the name of the bike: A Coventry Eagle.
Fitted with a 250cc twin port villiers engine, back in 1933 the bike cost £36.00 new. She still has her brass headlight & tail lights and brass horn.
I found this in a UK online classic bike sales site. Looks like the same creature!
I wonder where Grandad’s bike went… it’s probably long gone.
Thirty six quid back in 1933 (about $3000 in modern Canadian, or what I purchased my Tiger for)! That 247cc engine could push the bike up to sixty miles per hour. I can imagine Bill thundering down winding Norfolk roads on that Eagle…
The West Runton Sea Road – one of my favorite places to go when I was a kid.
Riding a motorcycle is episodic. You experience thermoclines of temperature… the rush of cold air in a pocket, it’s exhilarating. In life that’s a good thing too, surrender to conditions rather than mind managing everything and see what happens.
Total eclipses don’t happen very often. This is complete totality, the moon perfectly covers the sun’s disk, the sky goes dark, birds go to sleep, and a couple of minutes later everything comes back and it’s another normal sunset in the mountains. It’ll be spectacular. I got some nice shots of a partial solar eclipse during sunset a couple of years ago, but a chance to see totality is a bucket list item. If I can time it with another bucket list item (riding the Tail), what a day that’ll be!
I’ve seen a spectacular partial eclipse at sunset, but totality is something else entirely. If you’re able, try and get into the path of the total eclipse and the moon’s shadow slides across America at over 1000 miles per hour.
Get between the blue lines (and as close to the red one as you can get) and you’ll see a total solar eclipse.On the Portland side you’re looking at a 5:15pm start, As the shadow slips into the Atlantic around Charleston, it’ll be a 6:46pm event.
The Fireblade project has the main bits (fuel leak leading to an engine drowned in gasoline) fixed with a carb rebuild and a new petcock. But there are lots of bits and pieces to sort out before I go get it safetied and put on the road.
The weather warms up tomorrow so I’m hoping for a ride, but Saturday was a -20° March 7th kinda day, so into the garage I went to get the little details worked out.
I was initially going to hold off on the LED indicators, but dead bulbs and broken covers on a 23 year old motorcycle meant the LEDs were actually the cheaper, easier and more modern looking fix anyway. I’d brought a second set when I got the ones for the Tiger, and also got an adjustable indicator relay, so I had all the parts on hand.
The rear indicators look like they were attached by a monkey. I ended up pulling them all off and removing all the stripped, half installed wood screws that were holding them in. I then drilled a hole in the rear plastic under-tray and mounted the second set of LEDs I had on hand from the Tiger upgrade.
The wiring was pretty straight forward with green being ground on both indicators (connected to black on the LED) an orange to LED power (yellow) on one side and light blue to LED power (yellow) on the other. The LEDs also have brake light function where they strobe when you first press the brake. Both red cables on the LEDs go together into the middle pin on the brake lights. It works a trick:
Some other odds and ends are also proving troublesome. Living in rural Canada means everyone’s still in love with imperial sized fasteners. All our local hardware stores have rows of ’em, and maybe 2 metric bolts. It was tricky figuring out the sizes of missing fasteners anyway, but some internet research into OEM parts supplier parts listings got me this far:
A 6×40 metric bold means (as I understand it) a 6mm wide bolt that is 40mm long. But metric sizing also looks like M6x40. I’m assuming their the same but don’t understand why there isn’t a consistent format for metric bolt sizing.
The bolts into the frame that hold down the fuel tank and the brace for the windshield are 6×40, but I couldn’t get an M6 bolt in there. I ended up cleaning out the thread by tapping it out again and then it went in nicely.
***
Rubber parts are particularly hard to find on this kind of bike – it’s just old enough for existing stock to be gone and just young enough not to have a classic aftermarket parts ecosystem.
The cracked airbox rubber connector to the carbs is nearly impossible to find. The only
online place I can find them is for a full set of four plus shipping from Europe is over 70 Euro ($110CAD)… and I only need one of the damned things.
I’m looking into some cunning fabrication options. Some people have tried plumbing PBC couplings as a kind of secure bandage over the original rubber tube. Though if I can find one that is the right diameter and well put together I might simply be able to trim it and substitute it.
Others have tried various fixes like heat shrink or inner tubes. I’ll do some more research and figure out next steps…
These guys suggest silicon hose as a temporary measure. Since what I need is on the airbox side (I was easily able to get carb side rubber replacements), it shouldn’t see too much gasoline so the silicon fix might be the quickest way forward.
These guys suggest a sealant. Again, because it’s not on the carb side this might do the trick. In terms of cost this is the cheapest fix, so I’ll probably start there and see how it goes.
I got a copy of The Greasy Hands Preachers through Vimeo the other day. I enjoyed Long Live The Kings, though the hipster meter got pegged a couple of times, TGHP was similar. The Greasy Hands Preachers interviews builders in the current custom motorcycle scene under the pretext of emphasizing the value of skilled manual labour. The movie is nicely shot (though sometimes gratuitously hand held and pull zoomed). By using off-the-cuff interviews you get glimpses into the deeper motivations of these custom builders, most of whom have more in common with sculptures than mechanics. I’ve spent most of my life in an orbit back to valuing my smart hands. In my late teens I was apprenticing as a millwright and struggling with the idea that I was undervaluing my mind. The thought of decades of repetitive, menial work drove me to eventually quit and go to university where I could finally prove to myself that I’m smarter than people told me I was. But smart hands don’t like inactivity. The intimate act of dismantling, understanding and healing a machine stays with you, and your hands itch to make things work again. Cars had devolved from a special interest to a utilitarian necessity for me. Working on them was menial rather than scratching an infatuation. It wasn’t until I started riding a couple of years ago that I found a machine that fostered a sufficiently intimate relationship to warrant infatuation. The ability to express my smart hands on a motorbike and heal the machine is half the thrill of riding.
The Greasy Hands Preachers are preaching to the converted with me. The
arc from white to blue collar work experienced by several of the people in the film is one familiar to me. But rather than pierce the veil and coherently express the underlying urges behind the resurging DIY ethos, GHP only hints at it. I think this is a result of their unscripted interview approach. Asking an artist to spontaneously and coherently express their process is unlikely to produce a clear view of what they do. Expecting them to be able to do so while on camera isn’t going to lead the viewer to a deep, nuanced understanding of how a mechanical artist values their hands. Were it me, I would have started with the interviews and then had a scripted followup that clarified and deepened the narrative. I can’t help but think GHP is an opportunity lost. If you want to look right into the heart of the DIY resurgence pick up Shopclass As Soulcraft and discover an intelligent explanation of the value of skilled labour. I was hoping that Greasy Hands Preachers would approach Crawford’s brilliant little book in terms of realizing the value of hands-on work, but instead it’s a pretty, sometimes banal film that hints at deeper ideas. Would I recommend The Greasy Hands Preachers? Certainly. It’s a beautifully filmed opportunity to consider an important part of being human. If you read Shopclass As Soulcraft first (as I’m guessing the makers of GHP didn’t) you’d be ready to create your own meaning, which is probably better than being spoon fed anyway.
It’s just past 8am on day one of the ride. Even this early in the morning it’s already in the mid-twenties and the sun is relentless. The padding I thought I’d try in my helmet was a bad idea, and by the time I reach Creemore I’m working on a full scale headache. Thirty seconds after we stop the Roof lid is back to normal and it works like a champ for the rest of the trip. Motorcycle gear is an ongoing process of fine tuning, especially when you mess around with something that already works.
This trip grew out of a friend’s cross country anniversary ride with his wife on his new-to-him Goldwing. We were originally going to drop down to the ferry on Manitoulin Island for the ride home after day one, but the ferry is booked solid during the day so I started looking at another way home. Having never been to Northern Michigan, it seemed like a good idea to wrap around Lake Huron. It’s just over 1500kms of wilderness riding with few people in between.
The goodbye in Creemore went long as we’d been accompanied by friends out that far, so we got back on the road just as the sun was going fully nuclear. Day One was the longest of our trip, five hundred kilometres around Georgian Bay up to the small town of Massey, Ontario. A gas and lunch stop in Perry Sound followed by a couple of road side stops along the way made the heat bearable with lots of consuming of liquids at each stop. You know it’s hot when you’re sweating freely at highway speeds.
Mohawk Motel: clean, cheap & odd!
We rolled into the Mohawk Motel in Massey just past 4pm. The grass was brown and crisp, just like us. The motel was basic but clean with air conditioning. Everyone cold showered and relaxed for a while before we wandered out into town only to discover that the only restaurant was closed early due to it being hot. We were told to walk down the street to a variety store that also doubled as the local fast food joint. Forty five minutes of waiting in forty degree heat later I’d paid forty bucks for a cheeseburger, fries and a couple of slices of pizza. We staggered back to the hotel and called it a day. The next morning Massey totally redeemed itself with a fantastic breakfast at the Back Home Bistro. As we finished up the eggs and bacon, rain moved in. It was still in the mid-twenties, but humid and wet. We rode into heavier and heavier rain as we traveled west over the top of Georgian Bay. A brief stop in Blind River to check on my stoic pillion had us bump into a couple doing a similar route to our Huron circumnavigation; it wasn’t the last time we’d meet them. The rain came and went before finally relenting as we rode into Sault Ste. Marie. We parted ways after a surprisingly excellent and cost effective lunch at Pino’s Supermarket where you can get a brick oven baked pizza and amazing sausage on a bun for next to nothing.
Jeff & MA were on their way to Wawa up on Lake Superior, while Max and I were headed over to the border crossing into Northern Michigan. After a day and half together we’d made good time, covered a lot of ground in all sorts of weather and everyone still had smiles on their faces (a good Italian lunch helped there). After a quick goodbye we saddled up and headed over to the bridge only to bump into the couple from Blind River again. We followed them up onto the bridge to discover a massive line up. Inching a fully loaded two-up bike five feet at a time up the side of a suspension bridge is about as much fun as it gets. Fortunately we had a great view of the river beneath us. Sault Ste Marie is one of those places that reminds you just how big the great lakes are. In the hour plus we were inching our way over that bridge I tried to imagine the tons and tons of water that rushed beneath us out of Superior and into Huron, it feels very powerful and boggles the mind. A highlight of the interminable wait was getting to the peak of the bridge. From that point up until the customs gates we were going downhill, so the bikes stayed off and in neutral as we glided forward, inches at a time. As I said to our doppelgangers, ‘at least it isn’t yesterday!’ That bridge on a forty degree sunny day would be unhealthy. My magic power kicked in at the split into lines for each gate. Which ever one I pick will immediately stop, and of course it did. The couple ahead of us were down the interstate a good fifteen minutes ahead of us while we sat there pondering karma, or just plain old bad luck.
Once finally freed into Michigan we headed south into the tail end of some very violent
thunderstorms. The mist became rain, and then strong winds came up out of west. It was an hour of tacking against the wind down i75 to St. Ignace and The Breaker’s Resort. We got in about 4pm drenched and weary after a long day in the rain broken up by the better part of two hours crossing the border in five foot increments. Java Joes provided a first class milkshake and coffee before we headed over to check in. They weren’t ready for us, but housekeeping did back flips to get us into the room ASAP.
We enjoyed the hot tub and pool, but Breakers is a family resort, kind of like Disney World but with a great lake instead of mice. If you like screaming, unmanaged children and drunk, indifferent parents on smartphones, this place is for you. Max and I vacated the pool in a flurry of OCD after a kid pretended to be vomiting water out over and over again. Dinner was takeout pizza from Java Joes, and it was exceptional. With everything scattered around the room in a vain attempt to dry it out, we crashed on the beds and watched Seth Macfarlane cartoons as the fog rolled in outside. After two days and the better part of a thousand kilometres on the road, we were both pretty knackered. We woke up early in backwards world to blue skies and the sun rising out of Lake Huron (the sun goes to sleep in Huron where we’re from). A savoury breakfast of heavily processed meat pucks and bad coffee with large Americans eating all they could while watching Trump speeches on FoxTV (we are far from home my son), had us ready to hit the road. I wiped down the trusty Tiger and we loaded up for a day that was more about exploring than making distance (though it eventually turned into both – you’re always making distance if you’re trying to get around a great lake). After a quick fill up and a slow ride around St. Ignace’s lovely harbour, we got onto the interstate and headed for the Mackinac Bridge, it was spectacular:
The Mackinac Bridge is worth the ride!
We took our border-buddies’ advice and headed over to the Tunnel of Trees. This put us on the shore of yet another Great Lake (Lake Michigan). The micro-climate on the west shore of Michigan’s northern peninsula produces fast growth. As you ride onto that side of the peninsula everything is super green and the trees get Pandora big. The M-119 is a twisty little blacktop that runs through those forests along the shore. It’s barely two lanes wide with no curbs or runoff. You need to keep your eyes on the narrow lane, but you’re never moving that quickly. Surrounded by a sea of green, you quickly get into a meditative mood. The Tiger can be whisper quiet when it wants to be, and we purred through that green cathedral in near silence.
You can’t help but get that look on your face on the M-119.
We ended up getting redirected off the tunnel road due to construction and never found our way back. We eventually got to Petoskey, which I was interested in seeing because it was where Earnest Hemingway used to spend his summers as a child. It’s box stores and hotels bent under the weight of lots of tourists nowadays. If Hemingway were to return, I’m not sure much of it would ring a bell. Out of the heat in a McDonalds at lunch we ran into our doppelgangers again. They suggested an alternate route out of Petoskey and we wished each other a safe trip once again. A short time later one of the retirees working there walked up to chat about bikes, he had a big old Harley in the lot and couldn’t identify the Tiger. When I told him it was a Triumph he got the same happy, nostalgic expression that a lot of people did when I told them what we were riding. There is a lot of good will and nostalgia around the marquee in the States. On the road again we struck east across the peninsula aiming for Alpena on the Huron coast, but between the heat, increasing traffic and the strong westerly winds, we were both losing the will to get there. We turned south on 65 and wound our way through Huron National Forest, stopping for an ice cream in Glennie. The lovely young lady who served us told of her hours spent horseback riding the day before, then three local farmers came in for a cone and were curious about the Triumph. It was all very nice. When we left she came out to her car that had a big ‘Vote Trump’ bumper sticker on it. I found it hard to reconcile how nice Americans were with the insane politics they practice.
Old Detroit charm – built back in the day when the motor city was a world traveller destination, the Bay Valley Resort reminds of the golden years.
When we finally turned onto 23 heading back out to the interstate I gave a barbaric yawp in my helmet, as it felt like we’d never get there. The final blast down the interstate in 60km/hr cross winds was performed using shear will power. We staggered in to the Bay Valley Resort after nine hours and over 450kms on the road in strong winds and relentless heat. Bay Valley Resort was a real treat. Cheaper than Breakers, but better in every way. If you like modern hotels, this isn’t for you, but if you like character, Bay Valley has oodles. The doors are made out of wood (!), and the entire resort is situated in the middle of a golf course. It’s much more adult orientated, but it had all the accoutrements my son loves. The pool is an indoor/outdoor design with a river between them, and the spa was a hard hitting jet affair with strong bubbles perfect for loosening up sore muscles after a long day in the wind. The whole thing was set into patterned concrete. The on-site restaurant was swathed in dark wood and was both classy and dated, I loved it! The food was chef prepared but priced very reasonably. We fell asleep feeling well cared for in the silence of a golf course at night – no sounds of screaming children anywhere. We woke up the next morning and hit the pool one last time. Max wasn’t keen to mount up for yet another day on the road. Day one had been a high mileage sweat box, day 2 a rainy, windy ride with an interminable border wait, and day 3 was a high mileage meander across the peninsula in heat and high winds. We were both tired, and having to get my pillion in motion made it even heavier. After a late breakfast we finally got on the road just before 11am and I made a command decision to take the Interstate rather than head over to the coast on another back road ride. No wind and less heat made our interstate jaunt through poor, old Flint, Michigan a relatively painless affair. Flint feels like a ghost town at the best of times, but this year it felt abandoned. We stopped at a rest stop on the i69 on the way to the Canadian border when Max got a leg cramp, but otherwise high-tailed it home.
Distracted Stratford drivers put that look on my face.
It took all of five minutes to line up and cross the border back into Sarnia. Heading into The States was misery, coming home was a dream. We stopped in Sarnia for lunch and then hit the bricks for the final ride home. We thundered up the 402 on the long legged Tiger before angling off toward Stratford on back roads. After over sixteen hundred kilometres of riding, much of it through wilderness, it was the ride through Stratford and its dithering, well dressed theatre patrons that was the most dangerous. We were cut off and almost run over by people less worried about killing us than they were making their curtain call. It was the only moment on the trip that I was tempted to chase someone down in order to thump them.
Back in the stable after a flawless 1600+kms ride, what a champ!
We finally pulled into the driveway just before 6pm, sore but elated. The ride had its challenges, but the memories made were keepers. The road into Sault Ste. Marie is lovely and surprisingly mountainous. The Mackinac Bridge is a must-do experience, and riding down the tunnel of trees is like attending the best church ever. Java Joes makes a good food stop and Bay Valley Resort is a forgotten gem worth staying at if you’re in the area. All in all it was a great adventure, albeit a trying one. Sometimes, usually when it’s least comfortable, I wonder why I’m doing this to myself, but the memories sort out the discomfort from the awesome, and the awesome always wins.
Riding the Tunnel of Trees road in northern Michigan http://www.motorcycleroads.com/75/309/Michigan/Tunnel-of-Trees-Road.html#sthash.BxFBBpqw.dpbs – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
I’m back at school this week and getting to know my new students. In our grade nine introduction to computers class they’re putting together tech-resumes so I can see what their background in tech is. One of the nines has a prezi covered in pictures of Ferraris. I asked him what that was all about and he said, “I love cars!” I was surprised by my response, “they’re appliances dude!”
Some of them even look like fridges! Guess what the most popular car colours are… just like appliances!
I’ve been a car-guy for a long time (since I got one when I was seventeen because my parents ponied up the difference between a car and the motorcycle I was going to get). On the list of things I thought I’d never say, calling cars appliances is near the top, yet out it came. Appliances are used to make domestic chores easier, things like commuting, or going shopping. They keep you dry when it’s wet, keep you cool when it’s hot, and warm when it’s cold, and they get you where you need to go. They’re so easy to operate that most people who use them have no idea how they work and don’t care. The vast majority of people on the road last focused on how to drive when they were getting their license, once they have it they simply operate their vehicles on habit for decades. Cars are a necessary appliance for modern life, and that’s how people use them. Fetishizing cars is where I found an odd resonance. As engineering and design efforts, I can still appreciate the mechanical and design elements some cars display (one of the reasons I still look forward to watching Top Gear who focus on those things), but when I see someone driving down the street in a pimped out Pontiac Sunfire I have to wonder what is wrong with them. It’s like putting a wing on an oven. What kind of license do you need to drive a car? In Ontario it’s a G-general license, good for cars and light trucks. Two-thirds of Canadians have a driver’s license. Older drivers who probably shouldn’t be on the road keep general licenses active, we hand out automotive licenses to children before we allow them to vote. Driving a car offers access to an appliance that the majority of people feel they need. When I have to take a car to work it’s for appliance like reasons (I need to pick up equipment or move stuff around), it’s never an enjoyable experience in and of itself. I want the car to work, to be efficient, and to last a long time… like any other appliance. I drive very well. I’ve spent time and money improving my ability to handle a four wheeled vehicle in advanced driving schools and on the track and I’ve driven on both sides of the road on opposite sides of the world, but the thought of hauling tons of seats and dashboard around a track seems absurd to me now. I’ll make an exception for racing vehicles stripped to the essentials, but my interest there is mainly in the engineering rather than the driving. The complex, raw interaction between rider and machine on two wheels is much more interesting to me now. I have been drifting away from driving as a ecologically irresponsible means of recreation for a while, though the years I’ve spent getting familiar with internal combustion engines has made me a fan of their engineering. The brutal minimalism and efficiency of a motorcycle allows me to keep that connection alive knowing that I’m burning as little gas as possible to carry the least amount of weight in the most entertaining fashion. I’ll leave the appliances to the masses. They can get into their refrigerator white or silver vehicles and putter about in a distracted, isolated way, using way more of a diminishing natural resource and producing more waste to support a wasteful, simplistic, accessible means of transport that the majority of people can manage (poorly). I think I’m at peace with what came out of my mouth in class, though it surprised me at the time.
appliance
[uh-plahy-uh ns]
1. an instrument, apparatus, or device for a particular purpose or use.
2. a piece of equipment, usually operated electrically, especially for use in the home or for performance of domestic chores, as a refrigerator, washing machine, or toaster.
After the success of taking Ricoh Theta 360 images on the roll a few weeks ago, I brought it along for a ride over to Erin and the Forks of the Credit on a sunny Saturday.
The embedded full 360° images above you can save on https://theta360.com show you the full range of the camera, but you can also use the desktop editing software to capture the views you like:
If you’re looking for an on bike camera, you’ll be happy with the Ricoh Theta – it’s cheaper than much of the competition and is the easiest to use and most fully 360° camera you’ll find.
The garage is looking pretty spacious this weekend. The Concours sold yesterday so the Tiger is alone in the bike-cave for the first time. I ended up selling it on if I could sell it for what I bought it for, which I did. I owned it for five years, rescued it from retirement, doubled the mileage on it, had some great adventures riding around Georgian Bay and down to the last MotoGP event at Indianapolis in 2015.
I was ready to go in 2016 when the Concours wouldn’t start. With the Canadian motorcycling season agonizingly short I lost my patience, but then a Tiger appeared as if by magic and suddenly the Concours wasn’t a necessity. It’s hard to believe I’ve had the Tiger for three years already; it isn’t going anywhere.
With the money from the Concours set aside, I’m already considering my next project. I’m aiming for a bike that is significantly different from the Tiger, which is a great all purpose machine, but it’s heavy; a lighter specialist is the goal. The guy I sold the Concours to already has one and half a dozen other bikes. Having that many bikes would be a handful, I’ve always been about a functional garage. Jeff, the motorcycle Jedi, has three very different bikes, that’s the direction I’d like to go in.
In a perfect world I’d have the Tiger, a sports bike and a light dual sport. A generalist, a tarmac specialist and an off-road specialist. Time to peruse the Ontario used bike market.
The worrying bit is this guy managed to blow a Honda engine, which are famous for being bulletproof. If it has been abused (the dent in the tank suggests it’s been dropped, though it’s a dualsport that goes off road, so I shouldn’t read too much into that) then the engine could have more major damage and require big end cranks and such, which could make this a money hole.
The fact that it runs is promising and it does sound like a top end issue – but I’m guessing it’s a head replacement or major remachining situation. It’s an air cooled single cylinder, so after the complexity of the water cooled, four cylinder Concours, this’d be lawn mower simple. I’m tempted.
I’ve always had a soft spot for VFR Interceptors, and this lovely example is up for sale at a pretty reasonable price considering how much work has gone into it. Hugo, the editor of BIKE Magazine recently got one of these and went on and on about how bullet proof they were, so even an older machine like this would be readily usable. With this RC-36-2, last gen version you get a VFR at the pinnacle of its Honda evolution. It’s technically considered a sport-touring bike, so you don’t get caned in Ontario’s ridiculous insurance system, and it weighs less than 200 kilos, which would make it the lightest road bike (ignoring the KLX250, which wasn’t really a road bike) I’ve ever owned.
If I could get it for $3500, I’d be able to ride it for years. Rather than depend singularly on the now 16 year old Tiger, I could split duties between a generalist and a road specialist. This too is tempting.
It’d be nice to have both, the XR as a project and the VFR as an immediate gratification machine; they would make for a very diverse garage. I think I could have both on the road for just over six grand CAD.
The other week I posted a discussion on the Concours Owners Group asking how to pass a large group of bikers on the road. That discussion sparked an angry rebuttal condemning me for mocking the happy pirate look that a large portion of the (especially) North American motorcycle community identifies with. Personally, I’d say people can dress however they want and ride whatever they want, but I get the sense that the pirate types don’t feel that way. On COG I was trying to be funny, but with an edge. On the Georgian Bay circumnavigation I ran into some corporately attired Harley riders who wanted to point out how much unlike them I looked. It felt like hazing with the intent of getting me to look like a proper biker. Nothing will get my back up faster than someone telling me I have conform to their standard. The irony wasn’t lost on me that these rebels without a clue whose look is predicated on nonconformity were uncomfortable with a motorcyclist not in proper uniform. One of the reasons I make a point of reading British biking magazines is because they are free of (and willing to make fun of) this dominant North American biking culture. They don’t worship Harley Davidson as the one and only motor company, and they try to look at the breadth of motorbiking rather than forcing a single version of it down everyone’s throats. Had I the boat load of money that they cost I would happily buy an HD V-Rod (not considered a ‘real’ Harley by purists because it’s liquid cooled). It’s a fine machine and I’d get one for that reason, but I don’t think I’d ever buy a motorcycle because of the manufacturer alone, I’m not that politically driven. When I first started riding I was shiny and new about it and told one of my colleagues who rode that I was just starting out. He asked me what I got and when I told him a Ninja he put his nose in the air and said, “hmm, isn’t that like riding tupperware?” Just recently I told him I was thinking about getting a dual sport. He said, “why would you want that? It’d be like riding a toolbox!” In the biker ethos there is only one kind of bike with a single aesthetic. If you don’t conform, expect criticism. In talking to other motorcyclists the non-mainstream/biker crowd sometimes find biker types to be holier-than-thou, not returning a wave or giving you the gears at a stop for not conforming to the dress code. Motorcyclists tend to be iconoclasts, they have to be or they’d be doing what everyone else does riding around in the biggest cage they could afford. Yet the act of riding isn’t enough for some, there are also social expectations that these rebellious non-conformists expect all riders to conform to. At the end of the day I’m a fan of two wheeling. I’d call myself a motorcyclist. I get as excited about looking at historical Harleys as I do at racing tupperware or riding toolboxes. I only wish more bikers would be less critical of anything other than their singular view of the sport. I refuse to conform to their nonconformity.
