| Author | Message | ||
     Clutchless |
I have come to terms with me not being a motorcycle rider recently. because of these simple facts. 1. I ride a motorcycle-more than to a bar or motorcycle social event. 2. I dont care what other people ride cause I'm not riding it. Nor do I comment poorly about anyones ride. 3. I wear protective gear for when I fall. 4. I realize that falling is a real possibility because I understand a real life scenerio called "gravity" 5. I dont read motorcycle mags and pimp my ride. 6. I will ride even if no one else is riding because I like it, and thats what matters am I a rider? not by todays standards, which I obviously dont live up to the glory of. disscuss. | ||
| Wolfridgerider |
 Go buy some chrome,get a bar and shield tattoo and you will be good to go!  | ||
| Buellerandy |
Actually, what you just listed is EXACTLY why your a rider (enthusiast) rather than a "biker." Being a biker has a lil more to do with image than being a rider where your more or less enjoying the sport, with or without others.  | ||
| Clutchless |
thanks Wolf. but I got rid of my chrome almost a year ago, and I'm getting my bar and shields on my back covered up, ironic isnt it? I do have a very good reason for having them but they dont deserve to be on my skin anymore. glad to see someone else can see the humor. looking forward to the WV buell rally with ya. clutchless<----admits that he's looking for a pat on the back and a "it's ok" (Message edited by clutchless on February 26, 2008) | ||
| Wolfridgerider |
Glad I could help. Now rub some SYN3 on your forehead, repeat there is no place like chrome 3 times Point at your Buell and say "Nothing from JP cycles shall ye have!" and as soon as this f'ng snow melts go to a ride.... you are now a "RIDER" | ||
| Djkaplan |
You got a bike, you're a rider. I don't care if you just ride it on and off a trailer. We all wear the costume and live in our own fantasies. If your fantasy isn't the same as mine, I could not care less. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Yeah, but Danny, I've seen your "costume". I really don't want any part of your fantasy.  | ||
| Djkaplan |
Hey... just because I look better than you in pink leather hot pants and a purple sweater doesn't mean you got to be a hatin'. Let your freak flags fly, brothers! | ||
| Etennuly |
So, you are having chrome withdrawals. Not a big deal. I have found that tatoo and leather folks are your friends as long as you look like them. Sounds like you dropped that nonsense for common sense. You have found that it is better to do the kind of riding that makes you feel right, rather than having to "fit in" to a stereo-type. Congratulations!  IMO it is now that you have become a rider for the right reasons. Those former biker friends cannot see your permagrin under your full face helmet,  so they will have no clue. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Don't think that the "Adventure Rider" subset doesn't have equally specific dress codes. Somehow dayglow yellow and burnt orange smurf suits are an anomaly among both the HD set and the sport rider set. I'm only hatin' on the hot pants cause you borrowed them and never returned them.  | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Those former biker friends cannot see your permagrin under your full face helmet, so they will have no clue. Sometime the permagrin in your helmet is simply giddiness due to the gasoline vapors. | ||
| Lost_in_ohio |
Warm up? Come on wolf I road Saturday and Sunday both. It ain't that cold ask Thumper. As a matter of fact I met webble at the hooter in Hilliard Sunday afternoon. | ||
| Ratbuell |
I don't know if I'd want borrowed hotpants to be returned. If you don't know where something's been....  | ||
| Etennuly |
Sometime the permagrin in your helmet is simply giddiness due to the gasoline vapors That wasn't a full face, but it did have a full shield, so......it could have been the cause. Elaborating on the 'hot pants' issue cannot be a good thing for those reading this thread. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
I don't know if I'd want borrowed hotpants to be returned. Never mind. Danny probably rides commando. | ||
| Danger_dave |
So it's the high horse that makes a rider? | ||
| Tom_b |
If you ride for the pure enjoyment of riding regardless of make, model, style, attire, or what people think. whether you go to meets, bars, or just hit the road. your a rider. The sun on your back, the cold on your face. Your a rider! | ||
| Jcbikes |
You described me perfectly. You are not alone! I LOVE TO JUST RIDE! | ||
| Hammer71 |
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds. Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets. On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me. A minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb. But now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I've had dozens of bikes over the years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Deciding to live my life on two wheels is one of the best things I've done. Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride. | ||
| Danny_h__jesternut |
Mostly I hate parked motorcycles. | ||
| Iamike |
I drive my car to get to where I am going - I ride my cycle to enjoy the trip. Of all the different bikes I have ridden, the only group that has hasseled me about what I ride is the Harley crowd. Maybe they are the only ones with a self image problem. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
She hates to sit only more than she hates to get washed. Gone riding, that dirty orange bike that left the pavement in front of you, was probably me ;) | ||
| Djkaplan |
Damn, Hammer... that was cool. | ||
| Aesquire |
Hammer, where's that from? I've read it before, great stuff. I've always thought riding at night is like a madman hugging a comet. On a back country road color only appears when there are enough photons to trigger the proper cones & rods in the eye, so grey road fading to black is punctuated by flashes of green & riots of flowers, briefly glimpsed, lingeringly remembered. I often park in the space between the sport bikes & Hogs. A reactor yellow Cyclone seems to confuse them both. Rider is a state of mind, and the sum of actions taken. Biker is a social grouping. (Message edited by aesquire on February 26, 2008) | ||
| Danger_dave |
I'll be over with the Bikers and the dirty girls if you need me. | ||
| Wolfridgerider |
BRING ON THE DIRTY GIRLS!!! | ||
| Hammer71 |
Forget where I got it from but figured it fit here. | ||
| Glitch |
I ride Therefore I am | ||
| Ferrisbuellersdayoff |
I wish I could youtube this old video of me when I was 2. I'm trying to kick start the vaccuum cleaner after watching my dad get on his Panhead. I got the bug really early in life. | ||
| Bad_karma |
You are a rider because no amount of stem cell research can define you/us. Joe |
