AGV Backmarker: Rider’s Journal

Rider’s Journal, Pt. 1—Motorcycles, they’re a riot…

If I’ve learned anything by watching the last thirty years or so of Middle Eastern strife, it’s this: in a time of upheaval or regime change, remain skeptical. So, whenever anyone says, “Well, [insert name of newly empowered political clique or religious sect here] can’t be any worse than [insert name of previous despot here],” I reply, “Wait and see—they usually are worse.”

With that in mind, I don’t really know who to root for in the aftermath of the contentious election recently held in Iran. If you get all your news from motorcycle web sites (a lifestyle I heartily endorse, by the way), you may not know that the self-proclaimed electoral victory of Iran’s incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his reformist opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi triggered riots in Tehran. Although I definitely don’t know what’s actually going on over there, I can tell you that the huge disparity in the vote counts claimed by opposing sides in this election means that someone is lying; it’s not just a misunderstanding or a niggling problem with the count.

Ahmadinejad (sort of rhymes with “ohmigod it’s bad”) has made a career of demonizing the West and appears committed to building up Iran’s nuclear capability (peaceful nuclear capability definitely, weapons program…?). So on the face of it, Mousavi (favored by Iran’s young and/or female population, judging from the protesting crowds) might be an improvement. Then again, all Iranian politicians are manipulated by the Ayatollahs, who really make the country a theocracy masquerading as a democracy.

The relevance to AGV Backmarker in all of this is that I was interested to note that both sides in the riot made extensive use of motorcycles. I came across a striking (no pun intended) video on YouTube which showed charges and counter-charges by Iranian police (backing the incumbent) and rioters (backing the challenger) on motorcycles.

Other video footage from Tehran, shot in more peaceful times, shows lots of mopeds and small motorcycles in the streets. Traffic there appears to be pretty congested and I suppose that clogging the streets with protesters and setting up various flaming barricades only emphasizes the maneuverability advantages of two-wheelers. That ability to negotiate choked streets is always a benefit for commuters, but I don’t think that Andy Goldfine should have counted all those cops as participants in last Monday’s Ride To Work Day.

Rider’s Journal, Pt. 2—another unconventional use

A couple of weeks ago I was exploring the River Arts District in Asheville, North Carolina. As I was passing a huge old warehouse that had been repurposed as a sort of industrial-scale art studio, I spotted a huge Rube Goldberg style contraption that included most of an old Honda CL-450 scrambler.

Needless to say, that piqued my curiosity and I stopped to take a closer look and ended up talking to the artist for about an hour. His name was Sean “Jinx” Pace. He looked and sounded a bit like Nicky Hayden (it occurs to me that Nicky should maybe share that nickname).

He explained that the machine was part sculpture and part performance art. It was comprised of two parts, a gunner’s chair that fired rubber chickens—again, this is why I don’t write fiction; you couldn’t make this $#!+ up—and a sort of target for the flying chickens, which was a huge mobile powered by an old washing machine that swung dozens of boxing gloves around and knocked the chickens out of the air.

The old Honda scrambler had been a running bike when Pace got it. I asked him if he was still a motorcycle rider and he apologetically explained, “I turned my bike into this sculpture after I got my seventh ticket.”

Pace told me that for his next big project, he wants to build a huge self-propelled machine that will use a spinning tire to make vastly over-scale drawings in empty parking lots. By using GPS coordinates, scaled grids, and the like, he’ll be able to make gigantic reproductions of famous works of art. “If you can’t bring rednecks to art, you can at least bring art to rednecks,” he told me.

He was a bit of a hillbilly himself, but one with a real conscience. Besides making art out of found/scavenged/recycled junk, down in the basement of the building he’d built a 1,000 gallon-a-week biodiesel plant. When I mentioned that I’d been focused on zero-emission motorcycles lately, he was totally intrigued—though partly because he’d gotten the mistaken impression that they weren’t legally “vehicles” and as such that cops couldn’t write tickets for traffic violations on them.

The thing is, if this guy who really gets the whole smokin’-tires-is-fun thing is more interested in electric bikes than conventional ones, it suggests the future’s rosy for the zero-emissions bike biz. In fact, I have to say that I left his studio/gallery/welding shop/refinery seriously impressed with what he’s achieved in the few years he’s been out of school. It was one of those chance encounters that makes you think, Okay, maybe we’re not going to hell in a handcart.

Rider’s Journal, Pt. 3—Gas prices climbing again?

Last Monday, the LA Times reported that gasoline prices have increased at an unprecedented pace since the beginning of the year. Industry-watchers apparently disagree on the underlying causes of the increase, from about $1.68 at the beginning of the year (i.e., from a four-year low) to about $2.62 now. That’s a national, weighted-average price; lots of California gas stations have already posted $3-plus prices. The Times cited experts who didn’t feel the increase was the result of simple supply and demand, and who downplayed the probability we’ll see $3 gas nationwide this summer.

Still, it was enough to prompt the Times headline writer to trumpet, “Gas prices may imperil a recovery.” Of course, they could impel, not imperil, a recovery in the motorcycle business. When the economy started to tank last summer, the motorcycle business had a relatively soft landing as long as gas was selling for $4 a gallon. Sales of sport bikes slowed, but scooters and small commuter bikes took off.

I get the feeling that the U.S. subsidiaries of the Big Four are all trolling their catalogs for practical, fuel-efficient small bikes (perhaps like the ones in that Tehran video) that are sold in developing markets, to see which ones might sell here. I have an interesting story in development about one such small bike, but I’ll save that for a future column.