Making Waves

MAKING WAVES

UP FRONT

Riding to work this morning I came up on a full dress Gold Wing; barndoor airing, extra lights, teardrop saddlebags, he works. The rider wore a pea-soup green rain suit and an open helmet, inside of which was a man of my father’s generation. I was your basic cafe commando crouched over the tank bag on the CJPZ.1100, red paint matching my red fullface helmet, silver stripes keyed to the silver riding suit. Two schools of motorcycling as it were, so as I drew abreast I tapped the horn and he gave the thumbsup salute. On an average morning we might have seen each other but neither would have done more than look.

The difference?

It was raining.

In most parts of the country that would be an obscure remark. But in most places it rains and it snows. Rain is routine but snow is beyond the skill of the average efriver so they plow into banks and get stuck on hills and so forth.

Here in Southern California it never snows. Our average drivers have to settle for being hopeless in rain. They swerve, skid, spin and smash into walls, dividers, each other and innocent passersby. Us, for ^stance. One of the side observations of the Hurt Report was that when it rains here, motorcycles vanish faster than in a Joan Claybrook dream.

So. Here we were on a workday morning, in the rain. The dresser rider and I recognized kindred spirits in each other. We were both beyond the call of practical transportation and we figured we'd be the t*fily other bikes on the highway that morning so without consultation or conscious thought, we waved.

For several years now' there’s been a series of questions and theories about bikers who do (or don’t) wave or otherwise acknowledge each other, and about how,

when, where, why and why not.

The rain gave me a clue.

A reminder came from a keen old almanac our library got from a veteran bike nut. Printed during World War II, the book contained a fact that gave me pause. In July 1940, it said, there w'ere 98,061 motorcycles registered in the United States.

Things begin to fall into perspective. Obviously life was always rougher in our youth, and my youth occurred well after 1940 but even so, I know this was a bigger country then because there were fewer people and fewer towns. We were still working on a national system of numbered highways and you couldn't count on pavement between here and there. Plus, although a 1940 motorcycle surely was plush when compared with a 1920 motorcycle, the flathead Indian 80 or Harley 61 Knuckle was no FLT.

My guess therefore is that when any one of those 98.061 riders was on a trip he had to be prepared for nearly anything and he'd better be ready to do it himself.

Unless he met another biker. Together they could patch a tube, grind an old bolt into a jackleg valve lifter. One might know where to get 70-wt. oil, the other could

advise on roads.

Ueave out practicality. We were even less popular then than we are now. This was a country of small towns and the people in them spent their lives within a few miles of where they were born. Radio had just begun its homogenization process. People from other places looked different and dressed different, that is, wrong.

I magine the welcome given to some grimy, noisy motorcycle ridden by an obviously rootless and reckless stranger.

Here you are, then, three states and two weeks away from home, when coming toward you is the first other bike you’ve seen on the trip. What do you do?

You wave.

And that’s where it came from.

Forty-two years later it’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and I am riding along the coast highway in the middle of a tourist tow n. Bikes? Millions of’em, well scores or maybe hundreds, but everywhere you look there are motorcycles of all ages and sizes, ridden by people of all sorts. I am not w aving, first because if I waved to every scooter on the road I'd fall dow n as a result of riding for miles with one hand off the controls. Second, we don't have enough in common.

That’s not quite right. We have too much in common. If you and 1 lived in Chicago and our paths crossed as we walked across a street, we wouldn't so much as nod. All we’d be is two people in a crowd. But if we sat next to each other in, say, a cafe in Greece we’d instantly spot each other as Americans and we'd talk and exchange mutual friends. It’s a social thing and one we get to understand without ever thinking about it. Just as first thing in the morning 1 say “Hi Pete" or “Good morning Dee” or “Gee, Gayle, you had your hair done" and get replies in kind.

If every time I walked past John's desk during the day I said “Hi John.” he’d fi-> gure my battery was running on maybe eight volts. One greeting per day, a casual mark if we don't see the other person more than two or three times a day, cheerful silence if we see each other all day lont| Those are the rules, even if nobody wrotl them out.

Allan Girdler

Back (at last) to how and why we biker do or don't wave at each other:

There is sort of the same ratio for rider as there is for co-workers, fellow tourist! and the like. Another biker going the othej way in heavy urban traffic, nothing. Am other biker in the same lane, stopped at a light, a nod. If I’m sauntering through th<j mountains on my XL and am passed by £ scratch of street racers or a thunder ol choppers, nothing. If we all park at the restaurant or the scenic view, we talk bikes.

One day I was visting the folks at another magazine and they were talking about testing another old tradition, the one that says a helmet on the road shoulder is a sign of distress. They were planning a test, as in park on the shoulder, place helmet in position and see who stop*.

Being a guest (and I guess a business rival) I didn't mention the main qualifier, namely, where is the bike parked? If it’s or a city or residential street during rush hour, no way. Let those who run out of gas hike to the nearest station, I am airead) late. But if it’s out on a lonely highway without a sign of life, most of us would stop with or without the helmet.

That’s the good side of the ratio postulated above. When I am on the road I aír on an adventure. I am also vulnerable When it's one passing vehicle per hour anc I see another bike, I wave, and so I bet dc you. It’s part of our shared heritage, part of the culture. There may be six millionsus now and not one of us can fix a CX500T using street smarts and a rat-tail file, but we’re still the favored few and our own best hope.

And if you're out there and some dolt doesn’t wave back, just wait until I've got the bugs out of my time machine. Oi¿£ 1940 winter day in New Mexico with a burned-out magneto will teach him the value of the bike-to-bike salute. S