Electric Scooters For Kids

Scooter Monkey

Pounding On Your Harley-Davidson Chest

The Harley people have a little ritual almost to the man - and the woman - that they all go through whenever they roll through the streets where people are present. My guess is that this is not done in the middle of Utah where you can look in all directions and not see a soul. Nope. You gotta have an audience. Harley people are virtually the only ones who do it too. You won't hear the Beemer people do it. You won't hear a GoldWinger do it. And for sure, you won't hear a leisure rider, like a scooter, do it. But I must include in this category several bikes in the metric cruiser tradition. Not all of them. Just a few. For many of them to try and do this sounds just plain lame.

It goes like this. You are rolling along down the street at about 45 mph and you begin to approach a light or stop sign. In case you hadn't already taken note of a bike in your rearview, you suddenly become aware, like you just stepped within warning range of a rattlesnake, that a Harley is in the vicinity. When they get to about 30 mph or less as they are slowing down, the Harley people start feeling familiar convulsions in their right hands. Once they pull in on that clutch, an automatic twitch comes down their right arms  and through their hand with quick snaps of the wrist on the throttle. This spasm suddenly and unexpectedly occurs every few seconds. It is amazing how timely it is. Just as you lose interest or start to think of something else, something like the sound of somebody sitting on a whoopee cushion makes a noise with an involuntary fasciculation of the throttle hand, and you are aware once again that the Harley guy is still there. Whether coasting to a stop or sitting there idling away, you will hear a chorus of little spurts of thunder popping away all around you. Even If it is only one man, there he is alerting everyone around him that he is present. If you have a pack behind you, all of them are filling the air with staccato blurts of low C on the piano.

I have often wondered about this little exercise. A guy who has never ridden a Harley in his life will soon learn the little tuba blast on his engine and start in with his gas paw. Fuel is outrageously expensive, but it matters not. Without moving a single inch, they work their right hands like they have a tic and continually pull your attention back to them, in case you started to stray. This has probably been an unconscious, long-term sales technique that eventually worked its way into the mind of many a man who one day starts to imagine himself sitting there very soon at a light surrounded by an army of like-minded iron horse owners and clicking off a choir of little annoying grunts to all the cagers around them.

Now what is going on here? Are they trying to keep their engines going? Is the idle so slow that at any moment the bike could quit on them? No. This is the same thing as a gorilla standing in his own tree and jumping up and down on a limb with his chimpanzee grin like Clint Eastwood's sidekick, Clyde the Orangutan, and pounding away on his chest. He is saying, "HEY...here I am. It's ME. The KING. Everybody look over here. Take note. I am trying to give the impression that I am taking crap from nobody. I spent $20,000 on this thing to get out here and do this. So look over here. THERE...TAKE ANOTHER LOOK. I looked at them when they did this throttle thing; now look at ME. I don't have enough quiet self-confidence of my own to just sit here and be ignored like the other cars around me. I want everybody to know that I am on a Harley, and you are not. I am somebody. HEY...I said LOOK OVER HERE...NOW, LOOK AGAIN." It is the Harley-Davidson man and woman pounding their chests and letting all the other monkeys around them know that for some reason they are significant because they are on a motorcycle. That is all it is.

Now think about it for a moment. Do any of the other riding styles have something similar to this? I don't know what it would be. But it is not quite like this if they do. I have no idea how the leisure rider could convey this same attitude, but if he tried something like this at a light, he would look like a complete moron. It would be as if he had between his legs a balsa wood airplane and propeller wound with a rubber band while standing next to a Harrier jet and trying to impress the pilot. The Beemer rider has no need to do this. The image he portrays is not macho man but a man who is oblivious to the fools who ride in cars. He lives secure in his own world. It would make any difference anyway because no one really cares about the Beemer guy. He is mystical simply because he does not follow the pack of leathered-loons who are drowning out the car radios around them with their chorus of Harley snorts. Beemer guys just don't look like someone most people would want to be if they had to ride a motorcycle. GoldWingers don't do this either. In fact, I have never seen an attitude on any GoldWinger unless it is one of smugness. Of course, they can't emulate the Harley style anyway. It is almost as if they are trying to be the exact opposite of the Harley guy. They are like enormous, silent ghosts floating down the highways, whisper-quiet.

Once in a while the sport biker will give it a shot, however. But it just isn't the same. Listening to a sport biker or his group around you at the light all racing their engines makes little sense. It is probably not something recommended either. To get that Phantom jet sound, you have to blow some serious gas out the back end and almost redline the engine. It is a big deal when sport bikers want to exhale some testosterone in a stationary position. The sport biker has to wind her up pretty tight to pound on his chest. It is as if he climbs to the top of the Empire State Building in skylights for all the world to see him and holds on to the spike and the girl at the top while swatting at biplanes that buzz around his head. It is a spectacular sensation. At the same time, it is almost irrelevant when he does this. He WILL turn heads. But when he does, everyone cranes his neck and says, " Who the #&$%! is that !#%$&?@! who is acting like a %#$&! idiot?" Unlike the Harley rider, he isn't giving that little insignificant, intermittent, bass burp that murmurs every few seconds and just gives you a brief reminder like someone grabbing your chin and gently tilting your head and eyes in his direction. No. He is winding up that irritating sound of a dentist sitting at a light firing up his oversized drill for some serious cavity work. It just isn't the same thing. But I guess that is the point. The Harley-Davidson chest pounding is just a little blip. A low note chirp. Almost ready to blend into the background except for the occasional sound of a platoon of porkers in a pig pen (hogs) emitting gas through their stainless steel exhausts just after they have feasted on a trough of slop loaded with a lot of baked beans left over from a mega-church picnic. It doesn't require an entire stadium of people to take notice as if a monster truck is getting ready to jump over a sand dune and ten GreyHound buses through a wall of fire into a lake of gasoline. Like the sport bike rider does. Nope. The Harley people are only interested in those around them at that light. At every light. Just a few cars. All day long. Not much gas. No one goes deaf. Everybody looks. That's sufficient.

 

 

About the Author

Dale lives in the Western part of the US and is a motorcycle rider, a writer of humorous articles, caricatures, features, and theological studies that help people make sense of the most popular book in the world. His articles and writings may be seen at the web page below:

http://www.born2razehell.com

 

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