Letters
LETTERS
A COP-OUT
Your Round Up column in the February issue struck me close to my heart for I am one of those pseudo policemen that scare people. When I have to stand in the middle of an intersection, stop cars, reposition cars and prevent people from breaking in the middle of a procession, it makes an irate motorist out of even the best of them. With my uniform and a black and white Harley, I think I get just a little more respect and a better chance of coming out alive. (!!?? Ed.).
In answer to the man who slows down like all innocent people when they see an escort officer, he must have been going well over the speed limit to have to slow down in the first place. I know that when I am in a car turning 100 mph plus, I'll slow down like the rest of the innocent people, EVEN FOR A FUNERAL ESCORT OFFICER!
The person who doesn't like to slow down for any other except a police officer seems to me to be the type of person that goes back to a, high rate of speed when the officer goes by and will soon be a client for me. It would seem that slowing down is in the best interest of safety, so if an escort officer slows him down on sight, more power to him.
As for yellow lights, I have a headlight, tail light, and two yellow lights. The yellow lights are important in escort work to keep from being sideswiped due to being seen better. So thanks to all that "junk" on my machine and my pseudo police uniform, I will be alive to escort the funeral of the innocent motorist that has to slow down because he sees a black and white motor in his mirror. We take the fun out of what?
R.G.
North Hollywood, Calif. Well, R.G., you take the fun out of something even such a so-called safety conscious driver like yourself seems to enjoy; driving, or riding, fast! If I am not mistaken the State of California requires you to wear either light blue or grey uniforms, not black. Funeral escort riders have not the slightest right to impersonate a police officer, this is not part of the job they are hired to do. Granted they perform a necessary task; no one has claimed otherwise. Yellow lights are also just dandy. You are fooling no one but yourself if you actually think that pseudo police uniform is what is saving you from being involved in an accident. It is the plain and simple sight of you on the bike, lights ablaze, standing in the middle of the road, blowing a whistle, with your gloved hand raised. You could perform the same function wearing a bathing suit! We still resent the sham you perpetrate and will never like being jolted into acting like a kid caught with jam on his face when you show up in our rear view mirror on your way down to buy a pack of cigarettes. Ed.
THE WAR AGAINST WOOSE FISHER
We are all the guys from Bethlehem who work at The Steel and ride real machines and think Woose Fisher laid it on the line for you clowns. And you don't even have sense enough to listen. Harleys are the only real cycles and Harley riders are the only real riders, and any clown who says different's either a fool or a Japanese refugee.
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From the way you clowns talk you can tell you never rode your 74 through town with your boys cruising behind you and watch all the people stare at you like you were king. Why not get wise and start writing for us guys who make cycling a sport for men!
J. D. "KING" LEITH Bethlehem, Penna.
Well, your majesty, we have been under the impression for some time that we were men, but if we must prove this by parading a pack of jackals through town 1 think we'll just go on being sissies. Ed.
There is one thing I don't understand about CYCLE WORLD, why don't you print it in Japanese? If you are going to write about those scrawny little motorcycles why don't you sell your magazine where it belongs.
Come on fellows, this is the U.S.A., stick your head out of the sand and look around and see who dominates the highways. You know as well as I do that Harleys, Harleys, and more Harleys, are 90% of the motorcycles around here. But why do you persist in pretending as if they didn't even exist. How about a road test on a big 74 or CH once in a while?
I haven't bought a magazine yet that had a good test on a Harley-Davidson 74. Instead you always pick some unheard of bike way off on the other side of Chinatown. Furthermore, every other article is racing, racing, and more racing. I get sick of it. How about an article on motorcycle trips now and then. It's always some jerk on a Honda running around trying to find his lost head. I may be only sixteen but I've been in the world long enoughJOHN STRICKLAND Hastings, Mich.
Doggone it, everything was just fine until you reached the last line.
Boy is Fisher right about a lot of people kissing the public's behind trying to apologize for the cycle rider. If he is talking about boys who go to cycle races and raise a little hell this is what makes the crowd come, the people who don't like this extra added attraction are in the minority and believe me I know, I have been to just about every national race in North America and this is the reason I go. Just about everybody enjoys this because they can't help themselves, my father is almost 50 years old and enjoys this extra excitement right now.
I've been to Laconia a number of times, the guys really do the number up there and the place they do it is 10 miles from Laconia and the public so why run the majority down in your fine magazine. Because any time you got 20,000 people together something got to give this is the situation with any kind of people doing anything. I just came from California and the Rose Bowl, the cars were dragging Colorado Blvd. This is just one true example, the people who like this kind of stuff don't have to knock the others because Woose and me are in the majority and you can't tell me different because I've seen it happen besides what could the riders tell about when they go back home if this didn't go on.
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J. C. LITTLE
Lynchburg, Va.
Shall we take it from the top; if you go to public gatherings, such as motorcycle races, to see fights, you need help badly, and your father is no better and might help explain why you feel this way. If 20,000 people go to Laconia to see 200 slobs fight and act like animals, why do we no longer have Laconia, or didn't you know the race will not be run again due primarily to people like yourself and the ones you admire. We have checked with the Pasadena Police Department and they did indeed arrest three cars for dragging on Colorado Blvd. that day. If our figures serve us correctly, about 100,000 saw the Rose Bowl game; if ten people in these cars constitute a majority of 100,000, we have been miscalculating. As for what to talk about after returning home, how about the race you went to so much trouble to attend? Ed.
...BUT, ALL IS NOT LOST
I found Woose Fisher most amusing. Most of us riders are aware of the certain undesirables that happen to prefer motorcycles. Economy is probably one reason they ride, but I prefer to think that their reason is mere need of recognition. This recognition is obtained because of the warped reputation given to motorcyclists by these hoods who run in groups for their own protection. And this is fine that they receive their recognition, and become happy, but I, for one, don't like being associated with these slovenly pigs.
Motor vehicles usually bring out the worst in people, and it is too bad that the least socially acceptable group happened to choose motorcycles. Woose's impression of motorcycling is probably that of the majority, but we know that most of us are not out looking for trouble. In the years that I have been riding I personally have never seen one of these hoods, which helps to disprove the theory held by Woose regarding the number of hoods that ride. If he has been in his present state for 20 years he certainly has not contributed very much to this country which is good enough to let him run around making trouble.
Furthermore, I am a skinny kid and I ride a BMW that will outperform his 74 as shown in CW's road test. Motorcycles are clean until dirty people get onto them.
STEVE NIELSEN
Omaha, Nebraska
Like I'm one of those guys who rides lightweights and would like to say that your (Woose's) letter was grossly inaccurate and typical of his type of people. I have been around cycles most of my life, and I have been constantly repelled by these arrogant individuals who make noise, get drunk and create a general disturbance. I was present at Watkins Glen and understand why there are no more races there.
GIL TAYLOR
Revere, Penna.
Woose's nick-name is very appropriate; no doubt it was acquired from the noise of the wind whistling through the empty head of this boulevard big-shot as he blasts along the highways, making a jack-ass of himself. His self-admitted attitude of "we don't care about the 'public' or the 'industry' or the 'racing scene' " has made the Laconia motorcycle week just a memory. It was the event of the year for us here in the east; many planned their vacations around it. Laconia was synonymous with motorcycling, but now it is no more, due to a small minority of hoodlums, selfstyled "big boys," and the ilk of "Woose" Fisher causing destruction and danger at an event which could have been completely enjoyable to all.
I have never raced, I realize my capabilities and limitations, but put this "guy with the big machine" and who "knows what's going on since before these kids been born" on the race track with some of these same kids who really know how to ride and the poor jerk would kill himself or else the balloon of his ego would be burst by these same kids as he pulled into the pits dead last.
Contrary to his remark, he is the one whose head is in the sand if he thinks his type is the bulk of cyclists. Instead of charging around the neighborhood creating a nuisance, he should go out and take a thousand mile jaunt and get to know what motorcycling is really like. If he has been riding for 20 years as he claims, which I doubt, he doesn't impress me as having learned very much in that space of time.
CHARLES F. RUDOLPH
Tuckahoe, New York
Woose's entire thesis about the concept of your head and where it should be in relation to the sand is based upon his point of unselectivity. Why should you keep your head up in the air where you see everything and maintain a perspective? The result is a wide and almost totally unselective audience. You now have a following ranging from high school kids (and younger, like my 9-year old brother), to Ph.D.'s, from pros to dilettantes, from hard core aesthetes of the 50cc bikes to the Harley boys. All avidly read your magazine, so obviously while you may be making friends and selling magazines, you are, in the process, losing artistic concentration.
By a sincere effort, I'm sure that you could artistically narrow your field to the most artistic of all, the ones with the "bulk of the cycles around." Of course such an artistic adventure requires creation of mood. Here, you have the opportunity to gain insight by sticking your head in the sand, preferably sand soaked with crankcase drippings. If you burrow deep enough and concentrate hard, you will see the 74 emerge as an artistic unity symbolic af cycling the whole wide world around.
Rather than tests of foreign products and reports, once having established a classless society of 74's only, the magazine can be devoted to philosophical and truly intellectually significant debates on the relative merits of gray squirrel tails vs brown squirrel tails, blue running lights vs a chrome plated siren, green running lights /s twin chrome plated horns, etc. These relatively minor details, although worthy 3f debate in their own context are mere /apor in the carburetor when compared to the raging arguments to be raised over the color of plastic jewels on the saddle bags and the more basic issues of which saddle bag is most ethnic.
On this point, the Uoose is conservative. He would support the traditional leather, while the more liberal factions would favor fibreglass. Indeed such a problem is so involved and so insoluble that the Goose would have to form his classless society into a limited absolute monarchy and decree that at least one bag must be of leather or a good leather imitation. As editor, your role would be that of a theistic prime minister where you could serve and instruct both the Goose and the people on the implications of any new accessory development. This would certainly offer you an incomparable opportunity for advancing the frontiers of religion and art. Yes, Editor of CYCLE WORLD, put your head in the sand, for the sake of art in America!
PS: Considered graduate level opinion of apehangers; apehangers are for apes.
DALE E. WESTON
Ann Arbor, Mich.
We wish we had space enough to devote to the avalanche of mail we have received in response to Woose Fisher's letter. It is abundantly dear the minority group he represents is growing smaller by the day; oerhaps we can look forward to their ultimate disappearance and an increasingly popular acceptance for our sport. Ed.
HOWZZAT AGAIN?
Their is many foreign advertisers and only one American, of any magnitude. Yes it really shows. But hunger is a terrible thing.
TOM HANNUM
Media, Delaware County, Pa.
Who's hungry? Ed.
CYCLE CLUB NEEDS HELP
We are an incorporated non-profit motorcycle club. We held a scrambles in Delano County and asked for donations of $1.00 per carload for persons, including the riders, entering the race grounds which was on private property. The riders competed for trophies; they were not putting on an exhibition or entertaining anyone, it was strictly a sporting event and we were trying to meet expenses asking for donations.
But — the organization was issued a citation by a County Deputy for conducting a motorcycle race without a business license. We feel we were not operating a business, but we need help. The organization is pleading "not guilty" to the charge, but we are getting no local help. When you mention motorcycles in Delano, everyone thinks of Hell's Angels.
No other cycle group in our area has ever had this trouble, and our club has no objection to obtaining a license, where one is required, but we believe we are not operating a business as we sell no beer or food. This was our first race, and unless we can get help, possibly our last. DELANO CRANKERS CLUB, INC.
Post Office Box 1171 Delano, California
We urge any of our readers who might be able to help the Crankers in any way to contact them. This is an unfortunate situation that if allowed to go unchallenged could bring to a halt virtually all club sporting activities in California, and anywhere else for that matter, if it is not challenged in Delano. Ed.B
