In Defense of Trailering

Us ‘hardcore’ bikers love to make fun of people who trailer their bikes to bike rallies. We love to look down our noses at them. We love to proclaim (as loudly as possible) that we are not one of them. Oh, no. Not us. We ain’t one of them.

Yeah, them. Those guys. Those OTHER guys. Those dad-blamed, consarned RUB rascals. What a buncha imbeciles…what a buncha ultra-maroons. The nerve o’ those guys…trailering their upscale bikes to the rally and then sporting their expensive, new, barely broken-in leathers as if…as if…(outraged splutter) they were real bikers.

Now I could go off on those who trailer (and just might, in some future blog), but instead I want to take a moment to, well, uh, to…try to understand them. Yeah. To try to comprehend them. To (call me crazy) defend them.

Look, there’s few enough bikers in the world as it is. No need to make that number less by dividing bikers into sub-groups. We need unity, not division. So let’s look more closely at this trailering phenomenon.

We (I, at least) tend to think of it as indolence, as the laziness of the rich. We (I again) think of it as fronting, trying to be something one is not. Maybe think is not the right word. If we don’t think and just rely on vague impressions, this is maybe the result…an impression of lazy, indolent, rich fronters, trying to play like they are real bikers.

But the reality may be much different, if examined more closely, and if (God forbid) we actually think about it a bit.

Why, there could be a million reasons why someone would trailer a bike to a rally:

-Maybe they have excruciating back pain, and can barely ride a half hour at a time. Perhaps trailering is the only way they can still ride a bit, enjoying some time with other bikers. Perhaps riding their bike across country is a physical impossibility.

-Maybe their partner (from whom they are inseparable) cannot ride for long, and the only way they can come is if they ride in the comfort of a car or truck. Maybe they won’t come if they have to drive alone while their partner rides, thus they both drive, and trailer the bike for the few hours one or both of them can stand to ride.

-Maybe they are too old to ride for long distances, but can tolerate a few hours a day putting around the rally area, remembering those days when they could ride all day long.

-Maybe …

-Maybe …

-Maybe …

-Maybe we don’t know the reason or reasons, but they are actually sane bikers with a good reason we cannot imagine or know.

Maybe there are as many reasons as there are bikers with trailers.

Maybe they don’t even need a reason, since this is a free country (or was) and people don’t need a reason to do whatever they want, as long as it ain’t hurting someone else.

Now, I’m not making excuses here. I’m just trying to imagine some instances where it might make sense to trailer, where it might even be okay to trailer. Maybe I’m trying to imagine some bikers I could like and get along with instead of looking down my nose at.

See, to me, riding my bike is all about freedom (or the illusion thereof). I want a lot of freedom for myself, so I must be prepared to grant a lot of freedom to others. That freedom includes when and where they want to ride, what type of bike they want to ride, and how they want to ride…or not ride.

After all, who the fuck am I to judge anyone for taking the easy way? I can recall plenty of times when I was riding through the rain on my way to Sturgis, soaked to the gills and chilled to the bone, when a nice comfortable truck and trailer (with covered, protected bike) passed me by, and…you know what? For a moment at least, I’d have liked to have been sitting inside that warm, dry cab.

I can think of plenty of times when I was camped by the side of my bike in the cold or wet (or bug-infested hell) and would have loved sleeping inside one of those nice, dry, warm trailers. So I have to be careful not to judge, not to denigrate or mock. Hell, I have actually envied those trailer-toting varmints at times.

Hell, let’s be glad there are people who trailer their bikes there and sleep in hotels. Imagine what it would be like if all of us rode there from afar, camping each night beside our bikes. Why, we’d all be a grimy filthy bunch of stinky bikers, on mud-splattered and road-worn rides. Thousands of us. Man, the stink alone is enough to kill that idea. Besides, we want to look at some shiny bikes while we are there, talk to beautiful women who don’t smell of oil and grease, dirt and sweat and…the Road. We’re dang glad the rest of the rally doesn’t look as threadbare and road-worn as we do.

So, in the end, I guess I not only defend those who trailer their bikes, I outright celebrate them.Who cares if they’re breathing up all the good air? Who cares if they crowd Lazelle Street, the bars, and the canyons? Who cares if they front or if they make a caricature of, a travesty of the image of a real biker?

I ain’t no biker cop, or biker judge, so who am I to judge? If anything, maybe I should be thankful for them. The less people who actually ride to Sturgis or Daytona or wherever, the cooler it is when people actually do ride. All those new biker outfits provide a nice perspective in which to view my cruddy ole duds. All them ostensibly fake bikers make authentic ones seem even cooler (as if that means anything, lol).

The point is, the trailering bikers have a place in the biker world; they are undeniably part of it. In the end, they are trailering a motorcycle, not a horse or a Bobcat. Sure, they may be trailering bikers, but in the final analysis, the operative word is biker.

Whether often or just after trailering, these people share the same thrills and dangers, the same joys and challenges all bikers face. Maybe they are rich old farts who work all week, and barely get time to polish their bikes at night. Maybe they are ham-and-eggers (nine to fivers) who only manage to fit in a few hours riding on odd weekends. Maybe the one time in the year they have to ride and be among fellow bikers is during the rally, and they want to save all their riding time at the destination, not just getting there.

Either way, they choose to spend their free time as we do…riding when they can. Hell, that’s enough to qualify as a biker in my book. Maybe I’m easy. Maybe I have low standards. Call me a softie for having some space in my cold heart for these quasi-bikers, but there it is.

God bless them trailering rascals.

I say welcome to Sturgis (or wherever). Party. Have fun. Buy me a beer. Just act with respect, and I’ll probably respect you. Act in a manner that deserves respect, and I’ll surely respect you. It’s really quite simple.

Ride.

Respect.

Repeat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scary Zombies of the Deep South

America has had a seeming fascination with zombies. We have zombie books, zombie movies, zombie costumes. Eventually we discovered zombies weren’t real, so we made some…out of ourselves.

It’s pretty damn scary. These self-made zombies are everywhere…staring mindlessly into their phones, slavering over Facebook, walking blindly down city streets under the eerie light of video screens.

Their spines twisting into blossoming hunchbacks, their smooth, pale-white hands clutch their mystery boxes, staring into them as if they contained the face of the Zombie Oracle. Their dead-eyed, empty-souled stares rarely look up to the sun and sky. In fact, they seem to prefer the fiendish light of their phones, or the flickering hell-lights of fluorescent lights to natural lighting. Sweet Zombie Jesus! It’s enough to scare a real person to death.

All over America, these zombies reign. Single-mindedly focused on their devilish feast of memes and videos, they wander our streets. Every waiting room is filled with them, every apartment and tenement. They stare blankly, awaiting their hellish orders from Facebook and You Tube. Tweeting, texting, typing. They exist not in real time, but in some strange zombie time, measured in ‘likes’and memes.

Passing cars (even police and firemen) are filled with people texting. In fact, the lone texting driver is predominant. The number of wrecks initiated by these texting zombie car drivers has skyrocketed, to the point many state legislatures have created laws against it, accompanied by stiff penalties. Yet the zombies persevere. The roads are filled with them, each occasionally looking back to the road to ensure they are still on it.

These zombies don’t really talk. They communicate and express themselves via memes…small, mindless pictures that reduce the real world into trite sayings, pithy phrases, and a horrible, hellish common denominator of thoughtlessness, mindlessness.

You can communicate with them…if you dare. But the zombies are clannish. You must first develop a meme-fueled alliance with them, open the cavernous spaces where their brains once were with ‘likes’ and memes they respond to. Eventually, they might admit you to their closed groups, or invite you to their zombie bashes, where they all sit around taking selfies and staring into screens.

It’s damn scary.

They mostly haven’t done anything, been anywhere. Few have read a book unless forced to. Even fewer have carried a weighty thought through to its conclusion. Most cannot think their way out of a paper bag. Their smooth zombie hands are unlined by work. Their creepy faces are pale, washed-out, rarely feeling the sun, unless they are on a mission outdoors to gain more selfies to post, in hopes of more likes from their zombie compatriots.

They’ve penetrated into the deepest reaches of our society. Soldiers and politicians stare into their mind-control screens. Mothers and daughters do it, too. Even bikers (or at least people who look like bikers) stop to post a picture, send a few likes, and ‘check in’ with their zombie masters. During rest breaks, they don’t look about at the scenery…they log on. They post. They tweet. They get ‘up to date.’ They ‘stay in touch’.

It’s enough to scare the crap out of Van Helsing, the vampire slayer.

Almost every car carries a zombie, posting, texting, typing. The danger from inattentive zombies has eclipsed the dangers of mere drunk drivers from the days of yore, the good ole days B.Z., or Before Zombies.

The scary part is, they look like you and I. They appear to be mothers and sisters, fathers and brothers and cousins. Yet they have few real relationships. Those have been replaced with zombie ‘friends’ and ‘followers.’ They have few real feelings…those have been replaced by ‘likes’ and (the hellish zombie converse) ‘blocks’ and ‘unfollows’ and (the most horrid of zombie retaliations) ‘unfriends’.

They have no real discourse, discussion, or dialogue. Instead, they communicate via single pictures with catch-phrases under or on them. These are ‘memes’ (from the French word meme, which ironically means the same, for the memes all share one quality). They communicate via ’emoticons’ (little smiley faces depicting various travesties of ’emotions’). Deeper zombie emotions are expressed by GIFs (small files with short clips from their deity Television, or cartoons ad images developed by their programmers).

If pressed, they can communicate in short sentences, at the sixth-grade level of grammar and usage. They cannot discuss any issues requiring real cogitation, logic, or reasoning. Instead, they respond with sophistry, solipsism, outright nonsense, or (at best) echoing the memes of their Interest Groups. All speak a party line, using dumbed-down, lowest common denominator simplifications echoed by all. Zombies don’t have considered opinions, or reasoned viewpoints. They develop and test no hypotheses. They do not observe the world (beyond the one they see in their phone, TV, or computer screens).

Their ‘data’ is typically their vague and inaccurate remembrance of ‘something they’ve ‘read’ (or seen) on the Internet. Data gained by memes, or talking heads. Few have ever read a single book on a particular subject, or taken a class in the area. Instead, most quote memes or echo sentiments and thoughts of others. The most intellectually aspiring ‘do research’ by partially reading (skimming through) a Wikipedia entry, and maybe looking at the first three related items that come up in a Google search.

There is no intelligent life there. Despite the ability to connect to the world’s wisdom, the general level of intelligence has lowered. Yet they feel they are smarter than generations before, simply because they have access to more information. Yet left alone, they can do few things, possess few skills, and seem as unable to reason as they do to act.

Once you begin to notice just how many people are staring into these screens, you pay more attention to the phenomenon, and see how real, ubiquitous, and prevalent it is. You notice more a more how many people are texting or talking or staring into a screen at the supermarket, the restaurant, the gym, the doctor’s office…everywhere.

The information age has arrived, and the Information Superhighway is being crammed into the world’s brain, in glorious 5G and HDTV. All humanity’s knowledge to date is at our fingertips, but the zombies just send pictures of kitties, funny photos of Trump, selfies, or some similarly inane nonsense.

 

It’s at best an eerie phenomenon -America with its nose stuck in a screen. The world with its nose stuck halfway up the Internet’s ass, to the exclusion or minimalization of the real, actual, physical world.

It’s damn dangerous to a biker. Over the years, the average driving skill, knowledge, and ability has decreased, while the performance of vehicles has increased. The current day driver is a poor one at best (or at least poorly trained). When zombified by a phone and trying to drive and ‘interact’ with the zombie phone world, the task is simply beyond the abilities of most zombie drivers. Even when not directly interfaced with their phones, they are often thinking distractedly about their recent interactions on the network, and not on the road ahead.

Zombie drivers are dangerously unpredictable. The times they are not distracted by their network connection, they are racing ahead, driving aggressively in order to be the first one at the next stop sign, where they can again type, talk, and text. They may exhibit road rage, or make any series of dangerous and unreasonable moves.

Under no circumstances can I assume they see me.

 

Well, as I rode through the south last fall, I rode into warmer, more populated regions. I rode into a literal zombie infestation as well, although it took me a while to realize the magnitude of the infestation, the incredible breadth and scope of this pandemic that has eroded our country, turned its once active citizens into screen-gazing zombies.

Behind every bush, there seemed to lurk zombies. At every stop, one could quickly find enclaves of them, or see evident sign of their presence. These zombies seemed even more terrible. With some, it seemed the phone and the drugs (or alcohol) were all they possessed, beyond some ratty clothes and a backpack.

They seemed to live in the backwaters of society, behind the bushes and in the background to every scene. Their demeanor bespoke their drug of choice; the chittering meth heads, nodding heroin junkies,

 

Author’s Note:

I was going to finish this, but the …zombies got me. Uh, the dog ate my homework. Something. It was just too boring and scary to elaborate on.