Hello... My name is Fred W and I have recently come to realize that I am a motorcycle bigot.
I've been lusting after (and riding) motorbikes since long before I had a driver's license. The lure of two wheels is something that my parents never understood back then, and my mother (still living) still does not fully, but has finally come to accept now that I qualify for AARP. The desire for two wheeled conveyances has pretty much run the full spectrum, from mini bikes with lawnmower engines, to cheap Italian tiddlers, to not-so-cheap but way-more-sexy Italian bikes, Dirt bikes, dirt Bikes, Dirt Bikes, ADV tourers, and everyone here's favorite sport tourers and SuperSport Tourers like the FJR. It's a freaking cornucopia of motorcycles I tell ya.
Through it all, and to this day, I have never had the slightest desire to own or even ride an "American Cruiser." I am probably as guilty of extreme over-generalization as the 'tards that dress up in leather and pretend to be bad-*****, but to me, the entire Bad Boy image these folks are striving for is the antithesis of what I seek. Call me snobby. Call me a North-Eastern Elitist (thanks for the useful term, Greg). Call me what you will.. But it is what it is. And I have an inkling I am not completely alone.
The realization was brought front and center recently when flipping through a series of stacked up moto mags and I realized that any articles about American Cruisers, or the copy-cat Asian versions of American Cruisers had me flipping the pages before I had digested the first line.
Another tip off is that I (quite willingly) subscribe to a particular local used bike dealers email spam. In each edition there are a nearly endless list of low mile, super clean bikes made by the US company that starts with "H" and ends in "arley Davidson", and try as I might, even with the series of letters that make up the (ridiculous) model names, I cannot differentiate one of those friggen models from another. That's when I knew... "Those bikes all look the same to me"
Oh my gawd! I'm a bike biggot!
I mean, I can tell every series of BMW GS apart easily, every generation of VFR, every model year of FJR apart, and most other bike models apart just by a glance, some just by the exhaust tone...
But I'll be damned if I know what makes a FLSTFI FAT BOY different from a FXDL DYNA LOW RIDER or a FXSTSI SOFTAIL SPRINGER without some one hanging name tags on every one of them.
Now don't get me wrong here. It's not like I lose a lot of sleep over my newly realized biggotry. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to live with these shortcomings. But hey it is a Friday in January, and it's been totally freaking un-rideable weather for at least the past month after all, and this is what I was thinking.
I know. Pretty deep thoughts, huh?
I've been lusting after (and riding) motorbikes since long before I had a driver's license. The lure of two wheels is something that my parents never understood back then, and my mother (still living) still does not fully, but has finally come to accept now that I qualify for AARP. The desire for two wheeled conveyances has pretty much run the full spectrum, from mini bikes with lawnmower engines, to cheap Italian tiddlers, to not-so-cheap but way-more-sexy Italian bikes, Dirt bikes, dirt Bikes, Dirt Bikes, ADV tourers, and everyone here's favorite sport tourers and SuperSport Tourers like the FJR. It's a freaking cornucopia of motorcycles I tell ya.
Through it all, and to this day, I have never had the slightest desire to own or even ride an "American Cruiser." I am probably as guilty of extreme over-generalization as the 'tards that dress up in leather and pretend to be bad-*****, but to me, the entire Bad Boy image these folks are striving for is the antithesis of what I seek. Call me snobby. Call me a North-Eastern Elitist (thanks for the useful term, Greg). Call me what you will.. But it is what it is. And I have an inkling I am not completely alone.
The realization was brought front and center recently when flipping through a series of stacked up moto mags and I realized that any articles about American Cruisers, or the copy-cat Asian versions of American Cruisers had me flipping the pages before I had digested the first line.
Another tip off is that I (quite willingly) subscribe to a particular local used bike dealers email spam. In each edition there are a nearly endless list of low mile, super clean bikes made by the US company that starts with "H" and ends in "arley Davidson", and try as I might, even with the series of letters that make up the (ridiculous) model names, I cannot differentiate one of those friggen models from another. That's when I knew... "Those bikes all look the same to me"
Oh my gawd! I'm a bike biggot!
I mean, I can tell every series of BMW GS apart easily, every generation of VFR, every model year of FJR apart, and most other bike models apart just by a glance, some just by the exhaust tone...
But I'll be damned if I know what makes a FLSTFI FAT BOY different from a FXDL DYNA LOW RIDER or a FXSTSI SOFTAIL SPRINGER without some one hanging name tags on every one of them.
Now don't get me wrong here. It's not like I lose a lot of sleep over my newly realized biggotry. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to live with these shortcomings. But hey it is a Friday in January, and it's been totally freaking un-rideable weather for at least the past month after all, and this is what I was thinking.
I know. Pretty deep thoughts, huh?
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