Cycle World Editorial

CYCLE WORLD EDITORIAL

PAUL DEAN

But seriously, folks...

“When are you going to grow up and get a real job?”

My highly successful and learned uncle had asked me that question before, but this time was different. The last time he had made that inquiry, some 18 years ago, I was a $1.75-an-hour Honda mechanic and probably deserved to have my maturity and choice of occupations challenged. But this time, just a few months ago, I didn’t.

This time it hurt.

See, back when I first stumbled into the motorcycle business almost by accident, the height of my ambition was eventually to become the service manager at one of the better dealerships in western Pennsylvania. That was my idea •of really “making it.” Not even in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that someday I’d be the Editor of one of the world’s largest motorcycle magazines.

Now, I realize that what I do at this publication isn’t exactly on par with being Secretary of State or Chairman of General Motors. But neither does it rank down there with armed robbery or kid»die-porn film-making as a means of earning a living; it’s an honorable profession, one that I’m proud to have. So I looked forward to seeing my uncle for the first time in more than a dozen years, figuring that he, too, would be proud that I had made something of myself since we Jast had talked.

I figured wrong. He allowed as how I was—just as I always had been—not such a bad sort for a motorcycle loony, but that I really ought to do something meaningful with my life before it’s too late. Never mind that without ever having seen the inside of a journalism classroom I had become a legitimate journalist, with hundreds of magazine articles published over more than 1 1 years. Never mind that in addition to learning „the motorcycle business inside and out, I had also developed a respectable level of competence in the fields of photography, ’art direction, magazine production and circulation, business management, advertising, sales promotion and finance. As far as he was concerned, I had done /all of that while somehow affiliated with motorcycles, so none of it really counted.

For a brief moment, I considered telling good old Une where to insert his opinion, but decided against it. He was family, after all; anyway, since he already rated motorcycle riders just slightly above pond scum in the social order of things, I didn’t want to reinforce the image. So I said nice to see you again, he said don’t make it another 12 years between visits, we shook hands and I was out of there.

As I rode away from that encounter I was so outraged, so utterly infuriated, that I must have scared the engine into starting, for I don’t remember ever turning the key or punching the button. As I rode on, however, I gradually regained my composure. And once I was again able to think objectively, I realized that my uncle had more or less given me exactly what I had asked for. Why? Simple. I had forgotten one of motorcycling’s fundamental truths; I had expected a dedicated non-motorcyclist to take a dedicated motorcyclist seriously.

That seldom works, as just about anyone who rides can attest. Most non-riders can’t imagine why any sane person would choose to wobble around on one of those awful contraptions, but whatever the reasons, they can’t have any redeeming qualities. Thankfully, most people no longer look upon all motorcycle riders as raping, pillaging, Hell’s Angels clones, despite filmdom’s never-ending attempts to portray us as such; instead, the reaction usually is to consider any motorcyclist more of an annoyance to society than a threat to it or a blight on it. Occasionally, someone wifi think of you as a ne’erdo-well who’s not to be trusted, but usually you’re just deemed a twit, a person not to be taken seriously.

That’s sad but true. And you don’t have to look very far to see that kind of thinking at work. Walk into a bank and ask for a loan to buy some surplus canisters of nerve gas and you’ll at least be allowed to fill out the application; but let them know that the money is for a bike, and as often as not you’ll get aimed toward the door and told that “we don't make motorcycle loans.” Drive up to the entrance of a posh hotel in a $700 Chevy and someone in a uniform wifi open your door and greet you with a “Good evening, sir.” Do the same thing on a $7000 BMW and the greeting you’re most likely to get is a gruff, “You can’t park that thing here, pal.”

If you’ve been a rider for very long, you undoubtedly have a gaggle of your own don’t-get-no-respect stories, situations in which you suddenly came down with a severe case of unpopular simply because of your involvement with a motorcycle. Maybe it was the over-mydead-body reaction of your parents/ spouse/main squeeze when told of your intentions to buy a motorcycle; maybe it was the sudden cooling of your boss’s attitude toward you once he learned that the bike in the executive parking lot was yours-, maybe it was the seemingly nonchalant way in which the lady in the blue Buick nerfed you and your CB750 onto the shoulder to avoid running over the dead cat laying in the road. Whatever the particular instance, it’s reasonable to assume that you would have been treated with a lot more respect had a motorcycle not been involved.

As I said before, most motorcycle riders already know all of this. And the reason they continue to be motorcycle riders anyway is that they really don’t care about all of this. They wouldn’t trade the excitement, the exhilaration, the sheer pleasure of motorcycle riding for any amount of social acceptance. They’re not about to let a little thing such as being wrongfully treated like second-class citizens stand in the way of their motorcycle-riding enjoyment.

And therein, I think, lies the key to why my uncle, bless his narrow-minded little heart, absolutely refuses to give me my due. I mean, it’s hard enough to get anyone to take you seriously if you merely ride a motorcycle; and you just compound the felony if you have the misfortune, as I have had, to somehow wind up making a living riding motorcycles. Horrors. But as if that weren’t bad enough, I made the grave error somewhere along the line of admitting to my uncle that I ride motorcycles for business, as well as for pleasure -simply because it’s . . . it’s fun, of all things. How insincere, how immature of me. “Fun” is something you have on your own time, not during business hours. Fun is a byproduct of recreation, not a component of business. Between the weekday hours of nine and five, fun is a bad word. The idea of having fun while also competently doing your job is unthinkable. It’s illogical. Why, it may even be un-American. Obviously, I’m a hopeless case, an idiot nephew who, thank God, never writes, lives at the opposite end of the country and only drops in to visit once every dozen years.

Okay, Une, I can live with that quite nicely, thank you. I no longer care what you think of me or the way I earn a living, and I can’t remember why I ever cared in the first place. With a little bit of luck, I’ll never grow up and get a “real” job. I’m having too much fun to do something absurd like that. lei