Fools Not Like Us

FOOLS NOT LIKE US

UP FRONT

Allan Girdler

Because I am devoted to happy endings, the sad part comes first: I was on the way home and stopped at a light next to a Harley Sportster. I nodded in a friendly way. The woman on the back of the Sportster looked at my machine, then at me and said in the sweetest possible voice “Your bike sucks.”

I didn’t know what to say. Millions of answers crossed my mind. I could have begun with a rational defense. The Yamaha 920 is an excellent bike. It has character and has given me good service, but this wasn’t a rational incident. I could have countered with equal emotion. Give me 10 min. of your time, I might have argued, and I’ll prove that my Harley is more of a Harley than your Harley is. But that wouldn’t prove anything either. I could have preached philosophy, perhaps argued the illogic of thinking that when you see what I’m riding you know anything about me.

I did none of the above. Just sat until the light changed, stunned and angry and more than a little hurt.

This was a first. Never before had I ever been judged, criticized, reviled or insulted ... by another biker. The non-riding public, sure. I’ve been cursed and lectured by the government, the school system, neighbors, my elders, hotel clerks, the entire gamut. It’s never bothered me one bit. I even enjoy it. But all the while it’s been a point of pride that when I’ve been around racers, dressers, choppers, outlaws, sports, touring, antique or commuter, I’ve been among friends.

Now this. A stranger sees me as a symbol of some sort of threat and I’m robbed of something I didn’t fully appreciate until I lost it.

I say this because of a secondary guilt. A few days before this happened I got a letter from a man who’d just bought a sports 550. He went riding and met some guys on the other brand of sports 550. They mocked him, called his bike names and questioned his choice. He wrote to ask, is this what motorcycling is? Where’s the fellowship you’re always talking about? I replied in a brisk manner; find a better class of friends and what’s the big deal? Sticks and stones, as my mom used to say.

Well. Now I knew better.

So I went on home and wrapped myself around a hot dinner, which always cheers me up under any circumstances, and I began thinking.

I thought about the Saturday several weeks before this. My son-in-law and I rode the Phantom Duck of the Desert’s Annual Barstow-to-Vegas Unofficial Trail Ride. It was bitter cold at the start, then it began to rain and the rain turned to snow in the mountains. When we couldn’t get colder or wetter, Mike’s RM sheared its sprocket bolts. I left him standing in the snow while I headed for the next gas stop.

On the way back in the truck, headed upstream, half the oncoming riders waved us down. Were we the guys with Mike? They had stopped, couldn’t help but wanted us to know he was okay.

My worries about getting the truck up the trail were invalid. Before we got to the tricky part, here came Mike and his RM. The first guys there with a rope were towing him in. They hadn’t mentioned brand name. They weren’t critical of having a motocross bike in the mountains. He was in need, that made him a friend.

Later, at the truck stop across from the finish line, I got talking with a woman who’d crewed her two teenage sons. She’d been worried because the ride isn’t organized. What if the kids had had trouble, she said, there wouldn’t have been anybody to help them.

The reverse, I said. Because there is no organization, there is nobody to say that’s not my table. I’ve done B to V six times. I’ve been a helper and I’ve been a helpee, but I’ve never seen anybody who didn’t get whatever he needed from the first group that found him. The two-stroke vs four, Japanese vs European stuff is fun in the letters column but out in the desert, it’s nothing. And I haven’t even gotten around to mentioning that B-to-V is a dirt event so there were a couple of hundred road bikes on a poker run that day, same start and finish area. Nobody rides 500 miles in the rain and snow for a T-shirt or a case of oil. They were there because they are motorcyclists.

One week later. It’s the Modified Motorcycle Association’s annual toy run. CW carried the announcement but I found the notice for my local get-together point in the daily paper. I rode up at the appointed time and found a score of bikes—all brands, all types —getting into formation. We lined up and rode to a larger meeting place and joined a few thousand bikes there. The MMA is chopper oriented (is that a pun or a contradiction?) so the road captain, Chubasco, said there was only one rule of the road: “All Harleys in front, all the Commie pinko fag bikes in back”. The Harley riders laughed and the rest of us looked sheepish. No offense was meant and none was taken, as we all knew we were making jokes about each other.

Off we went, a parade beyond the line of sight. There were MMA marshals and' even a police escort, so we breezed across Los Angeles, stopping traffic.

The official count was 30,000 bikes. Right, three-oh, oh oh oh. The sport arena’s parking lot was filled to overflowing and the pile of toys, one or two per bike, was literally two stories high. Th£' TV cameras were there, I suspect because they like the quaint native costumes but never mind that, the home viewers got to see and hear that the terrible two-wheel marauders pitched in for kids at Christmas.

Which is where toy runs began, ofV. course. The outlaws started it but because it’s great public relations and because all the biker groups share the image problem, anything on two wheels is welcome. And everybody attends. There was a selection not only of trikes but of trikes decorated as Santa’s sleigh. With a paper mache rein^f, deer on the front, in one case. Thousands of choppers and customs, restored Britbikes, thousands of Stockers and even XLs and XTs, the owners of which carried their toys in backpacks. Once again, there wasn’t one discouraging word. The Black touring club interleafed with the white^ run-for-bucks drag contingent, a guy on a*' 74 Knucklehead asked how I like the GPz750, etc. Shared enthusiasm, common cause, I don’t know the exact formula for this magic, but it was there.

Here’s the first happy ending. While I was mulling all this I heard again from the guy who’d been insulted by riders he expected to meet as friends. He had followed^ my advice, plus. He went to the Superbike School. Not only did he have fun riding fast around a track, not only did he learn more about motorcycles and racing than he expected, he also got some tuning help from his fellow students and he was able to help several of them. His faith was restored and he dropped me a note to say rdf1* been right all the time.

So I have been, I guess.

I think I’ll chalk it up to maturity. I’m not too happy to learn this, but we motorcycle nuts aren't all perfect. There are a few, no matter which brand or why they, feel the need to down the other guy’s bikei* who get all carried away and hit back first.

They are in the minority. I have not been living a charmed life. Rather, I’ve been hanging around motorcycle people. The sport lives.

They are paying a higher price than I did, because they’re missing the best** part and they’ll never know what they’re missing._BÍ