If you guys get the chance, go read the editorial on Page 8 in the November 2011 issue of "Cycle Source." The author discusses some of the very questions we ask each other here frequently.
Since most of us here are seeking the same things in motorcycles, but we are only a handful, it's easy to think that our opinions are in the minority or are simply outdated. What I find intereseting is that my wife has espoused many of those same observations in the children she has taught, and now a biker magazine openly comments in kind.
While I also feel we don't "own the road" or can dictate the natural course of how things evolve, it is clear that many in our society fear a sad dichotomy is appearing. My wife just chalks it up to society becoming socially awkward. Odd, in a new world that tosses around the concept of "social networking" as a buzzword. Twenty-somethings all bitching about life, pizza rolls, Facebook and their mom's basement is hardly "society." And when that whiny flotsam crawls atop the bikes I love it's not a "natural course of evolution."
At various times we have all commented on the dismal products MoCo presents every year. Clearly they are only paint, chrome and slick marketing. No serious R/D, no simple advances easily hatched by every metric bike company, and all foisted off with a custom parts catalog more akin to a boutique. In the movie "Psycho" Norman Bates opines that a man should love his mother. A unique plot twist for a Hitchcock thriller, and now sadly the theme for a biceps tattoo in a Harley shop. We get what we deserve and permit.
"Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn't that be a sight?" Brad Pitt as Achilles in the movie 'Troy'
|