Truck Overturns, Scooterists Nearly Squashed

This is a great way to showing us the value of waiting behind the lines for a truck to clear the intersection. But I have to commend the riders for staying cool and getting out of the way.

Sharing the Road

Hello Mr. Crotch Rocket D-Bag.

I am soooo happy you blew by me on the highway the other day. I was equally impressed that you were going about 95 mph and felt the need to lane split between the two cars in front of me.

Glad you are so super cool on your hot bike, but did you give a thought to how your d-baggery may affect those who actually share the road with you?

I know, you don't think about us, or anyone else for that matter. Because 99 % of your brain functions are taken up with your total perceived awesomeness. Notice I wrote, "perceived"... not actual.

Because any reasonable person might have realized that blowing by me and through the two cars in front of me, that this type of stunt might cause one of the drivers to react to you sudden appearance and possibly loose control of their car. Possibly veering into the car next to them or even hitting their brakes and nearly crashing into me. I mean it is not like lane splitting is legal here, nor is it common place.

But hey, you are so totally correct to ride how ever you want to ride. I mean, your Ninja HAS to ridden like a rocket. It's a requirement that you go about 30 miles OVER the speed limit through heavy traffic just because you think you should.

Ordinary rules of the road don't apply to you. As long as you get to where ever it is that you are going, that takes precedent.

Maybe you didn't cause an accident today, but I am pretty sure a serious one is in your near future. I just hope I won't be around for it. Your parents and friends may cry, and you may seriously injure, maim or kill and innocent person.

So I hope you think about this, and you get a little maturity and SLOW D-O-W-N. Life is too precious to waste it stunting and speeding.

Open Letter to Motorcycle Magazine Editors

MC First Ride: 2011 Honda PCX 125

Found at beginning of scooter review:

"Even those of you who despise scoots as fruity little girl-mobiles may have asked yourselves this question."

Every time I look for a good review of a new scooter, enviably an American magazine writer decides to be, "cute" and begin an article with some jackass statement. The review typically goes on to exhort the praise of the scooter, but it's as if the reviewer is saying something like the following:

"Look, I am a real macho dude, and I have to begrudgingly admit this scooter is indeed a good ride. Okay, so you know, I really like motorcycles and I am really a macho dude and riding and reviewing this scooter does not make me feminine or gay at all, honest."

Since I have been a female my entire life, I fail to see the negative equation in something, "feminine". As if being a female is negative or weak. Or a machine with weak power or performance is feminine.

To which I say:

I am sure you realize, that a weak woman actually gives birth to an entire person!

Yep, an entire PERSON comes out of a WOMAN.

See, we grow people in our UTERUSES.

PEOPLE!

I fail to see how that is a negative or weak. Could what ever comes out of a penis hold a job, build a bridge, make a BLT? I don't think so.

As for the "Scooters are Gay" attitudes. Gay people can totally kick your A$$. Have you ever watched RuPaul's Drag Race? Do you really want to call those penis-tucking Queens, "Weak"? What type of intestional fortitude does it take to bend your own penis back onto itself and cinch in your waist to 22 inches? ALOT, so SHUT IT!

Okay- that being said, please do not try placate the numbskulls, or your insecure manhood by beginning your scooter reviews with some sort of misogynistic, homophobic retarded statement. It really puts me off and I can't take anything you say after that with any grain of seriousness. When I encounter such reviews I usually fire off a wee letter to the editor which goes something like this:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Since your comment section on your web page is disabled or only goes to 25 comments. I decided to send you this email.

After seeing the Honda PCX 125 scooter at the International Motorcycle show, I wanted to get some information for a friend. So I googled Honda PCX 125 and up popped your review.

And now I ask you, "Why would I even want to read the rest of an article that begins with the following sentence"...

"Even those of you who despise scoots as fruity little girl-mobiles may have asked yourselves this question."

You know what, I don't want to read on. That first sentence clearly demonstrates to me that the reviewer has his head firmly implanted up his own ass.

Would I even care what sort of opinions someone, with clearly some sort of misogynistic-bent, has about scooters. A vehicle that is clearly a respected backbone of transportation in Europe and Asia and other regions of the world.

In the rest of the world, scooters are the work horses. They have toiled in most extreme elements and geography. They have carried the largest of burdens. They break down and through skill and guile, like Frankenstein, they are cobbled back together, to live again. Scooters are loved in Italy, put through their paces in Germany, cherished in England, and utilized to death in Asia and India.

If that seems, "girly" to you so be it.

How about you tell your reviewers to keep their antiquated, low-brow, mislead, misinformed, tired social opinions to themselves and just ride the dang scooter and review it like a professional.

You know what, why doesn't your reviewer come along with me on my commute on my Piaggio BV 500 up I-55 to Midway in Chicago? If he wants to see how a "girl" rides a scooter on the tollway. Then he can tell me how, "fruity" I look.

Until then, suck it losers.

SKULLS on Gear - What Lies Beneath

I am still searching for the perfect pink helmet. Alas, the perfect combination of fit, function and form has eluded me. Because no matter how much I like the helmet, it is usually covered with...Skulls.

Skulls and flowers. Skulls and flames. Skulls and seashells. Skulls and baby birds, Skulls and Jolly Ranchers, etc...

When I was much younger, I thought Skulls were pretty cool. I wasn't afraid of death. The most suffering I had endured were cramps and hangovers.

I even used skulls in my own designs, and still I own a carved skull & owl mask from Mexico. Back then, death was just a concept and a skull was just another interesting design element with some crazy history.

Aztecs built pyramids of carved skulls, Pirates flew the "Jolly Roger" skull and cross bones, so when you saw it, you knew it was your A$$. Several cultures made drinking cups out of enemies skulls or mounted them to their tents or shelters as trophies. There are so many skulls on motorcycle gear, it is like part of a uniform. I used to think this was interesting.

Years later, after losing many friends to AIDS, cancer, car accidents, and finally, watching my own mother waste away before passing on, skulls as a design element have no appeal to me. Death and suffering are no longer just concepts. They are a very hard reality.

I don't ride to defy Death, I ride because I enjoy Life. I know riding is dangerous and this is always on my mind. But riding is also mind expanding and life expanding.

It is not that I am afraid of death, I am more afraid of disrespecting life. And the best way to disrespect life is to squander it.

Now you can do that by stunting, speeding and taking stupid chances. But you can also squander your life by making it all about your job, or your appearance, or what possessions you acquire, or avoiding your fears, making excuses, and denying yourself joy and freedom or never facing a true challange head-on.

So my search for a skull-free pink helmet continues.

Gremlin Bells - Load of Crap or REAL?????

IIf you ride or even if you don’t, you may have seen some tiny bells hanging off a motorcycles handlebars. These are known as a “Gremlin Bells”, and they can’t be bought, they have to be GIVEN to you in order to work.

“Gremlin” or “Ride Bells” are supposed to protect riders from evil spirits or road gremlins. You know, it’s not the minivan driver’s fault when they run you down because they are talking on their cell phone, it is the GREMLINS!

I am not too superstitious, (except when it comes to wearing a pink helmet), so I don’t really care for them. I have enough crazy crap hanging off my scooter.

I was wondering how this bell craze started, so I googled it and started researching. The best explanation was posted on a biker forum. Very nicely done too.

A long, long time ago, before the motorcycle, or the horseless carriage, or the steam-engine railway, “roads” were tracks through the woods cleared of trees wide enough to get a wagon or carriage through, and “highways” were roads that stayed mostly to the ridges to keep away from soggy ground in the valleys. “Wagoner” or “driver” was a skilled profession attracting the likes of Daniel Boone, someone who could master a whole team of horses at once, and professional drivers generally had bells on their horse’s harnesses to alert people that they were coming, so that they could make way and stay out of danger. We think of them mostly as “sleigh bells” today because they were especially important during the winter when snow muffled the sound of hoofbeats coming, but cross-country carriages and any team that kept up a good pace would wear them year-round.

In those days, any wagon coming across another that had gotten stuck would help out, if only because they needed to move it to get by themselves. If it was really stuck, they’d hook up both teams to one wagon to pull it out. This was an embarrassment to a professional driver, and the custom was that the driver that needed to be rescued would surrender his harness bells to the rescuer. This led to the old-fashioned saying you might have even heard from your grandparents’ generation “I’ll be there with bells on”, meaning they’d not only be there, but they were confident of it not being a problem.

I don’t know for sure that there’s any connection with the modern superstition, but I like to think that there might be the vestige of an old tradition there.

There are other possible connections. I’ve heard the “demons” called “gremlins” as often as not, and that word goes back to WWII aviator use. Gremlins were mischievous (and dangerous) imps that caused unpredictable mechanical problems on aircraft.

Bomber crews during the war were sometimes sent for R&R to the island of Capri in Italy, in 1944 and 1945, and while there often picked up small “good luck” bells, a local tradition, as souvenirs that they wore on the throat-latch hooks of their leather flight jackets.

That ex-aviator crowd in those same jackets, used to a little more excitement than civilian life typically offered, made up a large part of early motorcycle clubs after the war ended, so it’s not hard to envision the first “anti-gremlin” bells being the ones that they picked up in Capri, originally worn on the jackets and later transferred to the bikes themselves. Maybe, just maybe, one of those guys had the old wagoner’s tradition in mind when he did it.