Fear Masquerading as Wisdom

As our generation ages off this mortal coil there seems to be a strong conservative trend among motorcyclists. By conservative I don’t mean politically, although most of my rowdy friends have settled on the putative conservative party. I mean in their actions and words.

Post a video of kids popping wheelies or burning up motorcycles and the comment section rapidly fills with sour, tsk-tsk and rote complaints about using proper riding gear, safe riding practices or endangering others. Quite a few commenters will wish death upon anyone not head-to-toe in safety gear. Organ Donors, an insult once used by straight citizens to describe motorcyclists in general, has been co-opted by ourselves and liberally used to describe riders not wearing hi-vis green, stifling gloves, helmets, boots and one of those silver blood-type/medication allergy bracelets sold in high schools throughout the mid-1970’s.

Realizing that the depressing safety-crats were doing the exact same wheelies when they were under 100 years old you have to wonder what changed. Responsibility to the group, to all road users or the prospect of injuring an innocent bystander is regularly trotted out by safety mongers. They sound like lower case communists instead of riders living free like it says on their belt buckles and t-shirts.

So is it fear or wisdom? With death imminent, I suspect fear. Our motorcycles are becoming sodden with anti-lock braking systems, rev limiters (God forbid we blow an engine!), traction control and power management systems. The price we are willing to pay for a motorcycle less inclined to kill us is in the tens of thousands of dollars. If we are so concerned about staying alive to drag down future economies with our failing bodies why not forgo motorcycles and drive a truck?

Our generation believes, as have previous generations, that we know best for the next guys. A do-as-I-say, not-as-I-did type of thing that must drive the young ones insane. We think a motorcycle with less than 100 horsepower is unrideable yet we expect others tap into maybe 50% of that power. If they actually twist the throttle then they become the irresponsible ones.

We are, in a nutshell, full of baloney. We rode without helmets, we rode in shorts and t-shirts, we popped wheelies on public roads, we drank and took drugs and then got on our motorcycles and crashed. We died and we were injured. We cost society money way beyond our true dollar value. And now like bit players in the song “Cats in the Cradle,” we sit behind our screens scolding others for being just like we were.