Thoughts and Stories from the Road (No clever song lyric yet.)

Good question, especially for someone who wasn't much into doing anything risky as a kid. Part of it goes back to the agreement I made with my wife in 1994. The rest is simply that I like things that are motorized. Driving's always been a ball of fun for me, except that trying to do something recreational in the same car I do my commuting in has become something of a drag. Riding seemed like a natural next step and a nice alternate means of getting around when the weather's nice.

From a very practical standpoint, motorcycling is a risky proposition, even if you're dressed to the teeth in protective gear and keeping your riding skills honed. There's always the chance that some dim bulb will do something that puts you in a bad situation that you just can't get out of and then whammo, you're off the bike and kissing the pavement. Yet we still do it. People do it for lots of reasons. Some are out for a thrill, but in my case it's simply because I enjoy it. My folks still don't believe that the same guy who was scared to death of the vacuum cleaner as a toddler is out doing the motorcycle thing.

The big benefit, at least on days that I'm not commuting, is that after an hour or two out with my knees in the breeze and my mind on my riding, I get off the bike recentered and relaxed. If you ask me, $3.00 for a tank of gas is cheap therapy. Who cares if the HMO won't cover it?

If you can get MSF training, I highly recommend it, even if you have to drive halfway across the state to do it. I've already had a couple of opportunities to use what I learned in Riding and Street Skills to avoid road hazards and potential accidents, making the $85 tuition money well spent. Before I took it, novice and experienced riders alike have had nothing but good to say about it, and I'll join them in recommending it.

One of the things I've discovered about riding is that for every mile of road that passes underneath your wheels, there's a lesson to be learned, even if it's a small one. Anytime I complete a maneuver, even if it's something as simple as turning a corner, there's always a brief moment when I ask myself how I could have done it better. Granted, I'm still a rank amateur at this, but in all the years I've been driving a car, I still find myself doing the same thing. As long as it's not too harsh, self-criticism is a great way to be better aware of your riding and fine tune your skills in the process.

A good set of street skills is nicely complemented by a healthy understanding of and respect for the machine, the pavement, traffic and your limits. I started riding at 30, which, as someone at a local dealer once put it, is old enough to know that the throttle turns both ways. Adolescent Invincibility Syndrome is a powerful ailment, and had I done some of the silly things I did in a car on a motorcycle, there's a good chance I would not have been around to write this.

This is a subject I can't say enough about. Long before I ever swung a leg over my Vulcan, I saw some photos of a riding suit, gloves and full-face helmet which had joined their rider in a 100+ MPH get-off on a racetrack. The gear came out scratched, dinged and otherwise messed up, but the rider walked off without so much as a sprained pinky. Think about what similar gear would do for you at, say, 40.

While attending my niece's birthday party, word got 'round to one of her friends that I'm a biker. One of the questions I got asked was whether or not I wear leather and if I did so to look tough. The answers were yes and no, respectively, and I think Jessica's friend got the point when I asked what she thought it would feel like to put the full weight of her body on one hand and slide it down the street for a few feet. The bottom line is that exposed skin is bad. Avoid it wherever possible, and make sure what you wear will provide adequate protection should you and your scoot become separated.

These, like seat belt laws are a controversial subject, and I have to admit that I'm divided on both issues.

On the one hand, I really don't think the government should be in the business of protecting people from their own foibles by trying to legislate common sense. It doesn't work. Driving and riding are risky activities, and failing to take steps to protect against injury in an accident just adds more chlorine to the gene pool.

There are two things to recommend the government's case, though. The first is a question of resources. Most accidents with injuries consume more tax dollars because they require more services (police, fire and medical crews) than those that don't. The second is a question of balancing your right to ride without safety equipment with everyone else's right to use the road. If an accident with preventable injuries blocks the road and causes a traffic jam, the rights of everyone who wants to use the road are being infringed upon while they wait for the rescue team to do its job.

If you're against mandatory helmet and seat belt laws, that's fine. I encourage you to use every legal avenue available to get them changed. I wear a belt in the car and a full face helmet on the bike not because Virginia requires them but because they both make sense.

If bikedom has an enduring topic for flame wars, this has got to be it. In the short time I've been involved with the sport, I've seen more time and energy expended on the subject than any other.

When a company has been producing motorcycles since 1903 (when they produced three motorcycles, a figure which increased to 105,104 by 1995), it's pretty clear that Harley-Davidson is the world's best-selling brand of motorcycle. That doesn't automatically make them any better or worse in my book, it just makes them more popular. Anybody who knows me well also knows that popularity doesn't carry much weight with me when I'm trying to make my mind up about something. My choice of motorcycle is no exception.

The single biggest reason I don't ride a Harley is that I don't buy into the whole motorcycle-as-lifestyle thing that goes along with them. Riding a Harley makes a statement, and even the manufacturer markets its products toward people who want to make the same statement. I don't blame them for it. After all, they're in business to make money, and to make money you've got to sell your product. The thing is, I'm just not the statement-making type. I ride motorcycles because I enjoy them. Period. I also prefer a quiet, reliable, shaft-driven scoot that doesn't require a lot of wrenching and doesn't immediately conjure up a preconceived notion of what I'm like based on the logo on my gas tank. My Vulcan delivers that in spades.

Now before all of you HD fans warm up your flamethrowers, let me point out that I'm not here to rag on you or your scoots. I've never had a Harley out for a spin, but I'm looking forward to doing it one of these days. If the ride changes my mind, I'll take back everything I've said here. Honest.

I've run into scads of former, current and wanna-be Hog owners and lots of them are as into the whole Harley thing as the day is long. Most fall into one of two categories:

• Type I: Those who don't care what you ride so long as you ride.
• Type II: Those who think anything that didn't roll out of Milwaukee should be immediately melted down and recycled into something more 'murican, like Budweiser cans.

The bottom line for the Type IIs is that the border between what's domestic and what's foreign continues to blur. Lots of Hondas come out of Marysville, Ohio these days and bits and pieces of Harleys are coming from overseas. Now that Polaris is trying to become the second mainstream American manufacturer, I'll be interested to see whether the if-it-ain't-American-it's-crap crowd puts its money where their mouths are and starts buying Victory V92Cs.

Will I ever own a Harley? I might. I could certainly see my wife and I astride a fully-decked Ultra Classic Electra-Glide on a long trip. The problem is, I find the $18,000+ retail price and the wait to get one a little hard to swallow when I can walk into a local dealer and plunk down $2,000 less on a comarably-equipped Yamaha Venture.

We'll see...

August 6. Last night a dear friend of mine was struck by a motorcycle while on the streets of Amsterdam. The good news is that Carl survived the incident, but he came out of it with a femur broken in two places and a shattered arm. He was taken into surgery the next day, and right now I have no idea how he's doing.

Carl wasn't just struck by a motorcycle, he was run over. On purpose. From what I've been able to find out, a couple of bikers decided that wherever Carl was standing was "in their way," and they nailed him. Then, to add insult to injury, one of them gave Carl a good kick to the head while he was down on the street. The only good thing that's happened so far is that the two dim bulbs responsible for this were promptly arrested and hauled off to jail. I just hope the Dutch judicial system takes as dim a view of this sort of thing as ours does.

Needless to say, I'm pretty upset about the whole thing for two reasons. The first is that a close friend was seriously injured for no good reason. The fact that it was a close friend is really immaterial; it just makes the whole thing hit a little closer to home. The second is that all of this happened at the hands of another biker, and it wasn't an accident. I know that just like any other group, this sport has a lot of good people and some real ratbags. Heck, Carl probably knows that as well. He's a smart guy. But for some reason I feel the need to apologize to him on behalf of the rest of us who don't make a habit of mowing down pedestrians on a stupid whim. I'll probably do that next time I get to talk to him, and I just know it's going to be awkward as hell.

The point of this whole diatribe is that the incident gave me pause to think long and hard about our image and why we're sometimes treated like second-class citizens on the road. I can't help but think that by some measure we bring it on ourselves. Before getting the bug a year or so ago, I didn't pay much attention to motorcycles, except, of course when one did something stupid in front of me. Now every time I see some potential organ donor on a YZX9RRR in shorts and a tee shirt weaving in and out of traffic at high speed, I always think to myself, "jeez, this guy makes us all look bad." I'm also finding that I have a lot of conversations with non-bikers that include an exchange where they say, "I saw some nut on a bike doing xyz" and I say "well, we're not all that stupid."

So for Carl's sake I'd like to ask that next time you're on the road, do something that makes you and your fellow riders look good. Today it seems like we need it.

August 15. Carl was flown back in the UK on Thursday. I spoke to him Friday afternoon, and to listen to him you'd never know he was even in the hospital. He's in good spirits and would be chasing the nurses around if he could keep up with them. The whole story is that he and someone else had attempted to get on a tram, which turned out to be full. While returning to the sidewalk, the two bikers came down the bicycle lane and hit him. Carl was thrown about 15 feet by the impact, and after landing one of the bikers proceded to beat the heck out of him. The police in Amsterdam took statements from more than a half-dozen people, and according to Carl the bikers will be charged with attempted murder.