Armed And Dangerous
Armed and dangerous
UP FRONT
David Edwards
As HATCHET-JOBS GO, I’VE SEEN WORSE, but the Los Angeles Times certainly did motorcycling no favors last June when its Orange County edition ran a front-page, above-the-fold story on sportbike riders titled, “Filling the Need for Speed.” The blaring subtitle said it all: “A new breed of bikers is tearing up the roads on machines that easily top 100 mph-and leave police in their dust.” Oh, boy...
I’d hoped for better. In researching the story, Times staff writer Christine Hanley spent a day at the CW offices, talking to myself, Matthew Miles and Don Canet. When too many questions centered on showoff stunt riders, I tried to deflect her, noting that the vast majority of responsible sport riders shunned attention-official or otherwise-and were only interested in an invigorating early-morning fling down a favorite backroad before returning home to complete their weekend list of “honey-doos.” We even offered to suit her up and have Canet show her how much fun nearby Ortega Highway could be.
She never took us up on the offer, and not a single one of our quotes appeared in the article.
Plenty of others did, though, obtained from yahoos apparently high on the ol’ testosterone count but a little lacking in I.Q. and self-preservation skills.
One bright spark, obviously in need of some remedial rider training, seemed rather proud of being “banged up and bruised, tossed over his handlebars, and left unconscious at the bottom of a ravine,” wrote Hanley. Said our stalwart, “At 120 mph, that’s when everything comes alive.” He described his collection of a halfdozen repli-racers as, “Death with keys,” adding that, “as soon as you twist the throttle it’s like putting drugs in your veins.” Very nice, a veritable quote machine.
One imagines Ms. Hanley scribbling this all down with barely controlled glee-and he was only getting warmed up.
Turns out our hero exults in timing his commute to work, dodging cars and splitting lanes at great speed. And lock up the demo bikes when this
cowboy skids up alongside your dealership. He tells of blasting a Ducati test unit past a policeman at 100 mph, then roaring back to the shop, dropping his leathers and scampering to a salesman’s desk all innocent-like by the time the cop-car pulled up. No mention is made of whether the officer thought it a little curious that a grown man should be discussing the finer points of a bike purchase while dressed only in his skivvies and a pair of roadrace boots.
Then there was the time he went off the road at 120 mph (presumably because he’d only just “come alive”) and in the ensuing tumble was knocked silly (I know, that’s redundant) when his Ducati, showing its good taste and fine breeding, landed on top of the guy in an apparent attempt to take him out and be moved on to a better home.
Despite the Duck’s good efforts, he came to some time later, sporting crushed ribs and a collapsed lung. We’re told he then pushed the bike up a hill, cavalierly rode to the nearest coffee shop for a spot of java and only later checked himself into a hospital, where life-saving emergency surgery was performed.
Good God, lock up the movie rights and get Hollywood on the phone! Schwarzenegger’s Terminator has got mithin’ on this superhuman.
Showcasing her skills at ferreting
out facts, Hanley informs readers that Mr. Death With Keys and his ilk ride “a new breed of lightweight, superfast motorcycles and sport flashy leather jumpsuits...” (What, just like Elvis?) Said machines, she claims, “are half as heavy and nearly twice as fast as those produced a decade ago...some are faster out of the box than a NASCAR race car.”
Let’s see, 1992’s Best Superbike was the Honda CBR900RR. It weighed 432 pounds and went 159 mph. Where are these 215-pound, 300-mph, stockcar-eating marvels, then, Christine?
Next up, readers were treated to another paragon of motorcycling PR, a self-proclaimed “canyon racer and stunt rider” so skilled in the fine art of motorcycle control he has crashed every bike he’s ever owned. Between rides, the man runs a physical therapy office, which must come in handy.
“If you’re going to be afraid of doing anything because it’s dangerous and you might die, you might as well be dead, you’re wasting your life,” he told Hanley. Reporters love that kind of sophomoric bilge.
His favorite story? We’re supposed to believe that he and some buddies went rocketing up California’s 1-5 at 150 mph, the whole time being tailed by the most understanding CHP officer ever commissioned. Upon catching up at a construction zone, the copper did not draw his weapon, did not impound the bikes, issued no tickets, not even a written warning, but rather politely admonished the boys to keep it under 70, okay?
Speaking from personal experience, do not try this with your local constables. Results may vary.
Then there were the 120-mph midnight wheelies across the Golden Gate Bridge, not to mention the missed left turn at 90 mph, followed forthwith by plowing into the guardrail, the only thing that saved his sorry carcass from a 100-foot plunge into the Pacific. “He was bloodied and dazed,” readers were told. “His bike, one week old, was totaled.”
Well, at least his record remained intact.
In the end, maybe this wasn’t a journalistic hatchet-job. The L.A. Times had a gun. These idiots provided the bullets.
