Motorcycle and Scooter appreciation

Beat me to it. I believe those are the models of jean I have too.

Might be better to wear something like this under normal jeans, or bike jeans without armour. At least that's the conclusion I've come to after years of wearing bike based jeans with armour in.

https://www.planet-knox.com/product/action-pro-unisex-trousers/

In general the Knox under armour stuff works well for more casual short trip outfits.

My Rokker Revolutions are great. So good that they're my default gear, for everything. And they look like real jeans. Eye watering price, but there are lightly used ones on ebay.

I bought some cheap jeans from xl oto.co.uk, they were mentioned on this thread;

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16439012/

Tbh for me they’re just for occasional riding to work through town on scooters and they seem fine. Feel quite tough, got armour, not had to test them as yet thankfully.

If I was doing more mileage or on a faster bike I’d probably buy something more expensive (who am I kidding, I’d still go for the cheap option).

Richa Original 2, the cordura denim is pretty much like normal jeans but something like 4x the abrasion resistance.

Or I use merlin Kevlar leggings quite a bit, but it is a bit of a pain for short errands

If I was doing more mileage or on a faster bike I’d probably buy something more expensive (who am I kidding, I’d still go for the cheap option).

I’m ashamed to admit that I spend most of my rides in the Bull-It jeans, and hit speeds that would give leather a fairly hard test.

Check out hood. Triple aaa lined but comfy and excellent value for money

Brow-furrowing article from advrider. Apparently most American bikers are obnoxious shitheads! What does the panel think? I've spent a couple of years travelling around the US, and it's certainly jam-packed with cretins...are the bikers any worse than the rest? I eavesdropped on a bunch of them on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the stupidity was priceless. And I went to a biker meetup in Miami, which was so soul-destroying I wanted to burn everything in sight. But it's the same at the Ace Cafe or the Hog's Back.

"I pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant that sits at the very end of one the best riding roads within 300 miles of my home. I entered the restaurant and waited for a server to seat me. The restaurant was empty. I waited a very long time. Eventually, a man walked up to greet me. It was not the greeting I expected. He looked at me and then at my helmet that I’d rested on a nearby table. “Restrooms are for customers,” he said tersely. I told him I was looking for lunch. His look turned to one of surprise. “Oh, yes, of course,” he said, “sit anywhere you like.”

The man returned to the kitchen and a woman surfaced to take my order. She, too, looked at me oddly, in the way bartenders in westerns look at men whose faces are plastered on WANTED posters nailed to the outside of the saloon. I imagined myself the man in the Johnny Cash song, the one who shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I began to feel like a badass, which was entirely undeserved, as all I’d done was order an egg sandwich on rye.

After lunch, after I squared-up with the server, the man approached the table. I learned he was the owner and cook, and he apologized for his initial gruffness. He’d bought the restaurant, he said, because he was a motorcyclist who’d often ridden the region, and he envisioned he could fashion a motorcyclist mecca, like California’s Alice’s Restaurant or The Rock Store. I asked how it was going. “It’s been a disaster,” he said. “Motorcyclists, and it pains me to say this, are my worst customers. They’ve nearly destroyed this business.”

I didn’t know what to say, and that’s not usually an ailment that strikes me. The man went on to list a litany of grievances he had with motorcyclists. Firstly, he said, they used restrooms reserved for customers. But that was just the beginning. They’d also patronize a nearly food truck then use his outdoor seating. And because they couldn’t use his restrooms, motorcyclists began to urinate on the side of the restaurant. To stop them, he built a fence. And then motorcyclists circled around to the other side of the restaurant and began to urinate on the side of his house out back. Up went another fence. But that wasn’t the end of it.

The man walked me outside to my bike. Again, he gave me an odd look. I’d parked against the façade of the building, backed in, rear tire against the curb, next to the steps. “No other motorcyclists park like that,” he said. “They usually just stop in the middle of the lot and block access for cars.” And then the most shocking admission of all: “I had the pavement in the parking lot torn up and the coarse gravel put down to keep motorcyclists away,” he said. “If I could stick a ‘No Motorcycles’ sign out front and get away with it, I’d do it.”

On my ride home, I couldn’t get this man or his story out of my head. And don’t be tempted to think his clientele is an endless stream of outlaw bikers. The roads that lead from his restaurant are a mecca for sport and adventure tourers—off road trails abound. The riders this man spoke of disparagingly are the people we see every day in the mirror as we brush our teeth. I began to wonder if I, too, have been the kind of man who took advantage of my hallowed status as a motorcyclist. Yes, hallowed.

There was a time, as recently as the mid-’90s, when motorcyclists were thought of as bad news. On a trip with a friend down into the Ohio Valley, the three or four times we rode through small towns and met police cruisers we were trailed to the edge of town. And lest you think we looked like biker trash, my friend had a beautifully restored—and stock—BSA and I had my dad’s old Triumph. And we were both clean shaven.

We were refused accommodation at some motels, and, as a precaution, I took to parking out on the road and approaching motel offices without my helmet or leather jacket. At one motel, after a very long, wet day on the road, a woman told us she was sorry, but that they had a no-motorcycle policy. My traveling companion was a quirky man who was perpetually chilled—if the sun went behind a cloud on an 80-degree day, he began to shiver—and who was on the verge of hypothermia. The woman, who wasn’t without compassion, offered a compromise. If we squeezed our bikes behind the dumpster and covered them with a tarp, we could stay. I was beyond thankful. How times have changed.

Today, motorcyclists are seen as an economic driver for regional development. Local governments try to outdo each other to lure us to their roads or trails. A dozen straight-piped Harleys can rattle the windows of small-town middle America as policemen wave and moteliers plump pillows in gleeful anticipation. But which version is true? Is the tale of the man who ripped up his parking lot to discourage motorcyclists the real story? Or are motorcyclists stocking small-town coffers?

It depends, isn’t a satisfying answer, but it’s an honest one. I spoke to a woman in a tourist town on the US east coast that hosts an annual bike rally. She runs a store that sells beach umbrellas and ice cream and t-shirts and snow globes. When the rally was first announced, she was thrilled. Town officials had convinced local businesses that an influx of 3,000 motorcyclists was all upside and no downside. The reality, she told me, was far less appealing.

It killed her weekend business, she said. “Unless you serve beer or sell gas or rent hotel rooms, motorcyclists are a liability.” The town’s sidewalks were so jammed real customers couldn’t get in her store, she said. Now, on the rally weekend, she closes up shop. As do many other businesses in the town. The experience has left her with a bitter aftertaste. “In the northeast we only have a limited number of summer weekends to make money. To lose an entire weekend is a huge blow.”

The problem, perhaps, is the mentality that can overtake us when we’re in a group. I rarely ride with others, and when I do, it’s unusual for our number to exceed two or three. But this summer I was at a coffee haunt and a group of a dozen or so rode in on cruisers. Portly middle-aged folks who proceeded to park as if they all had diarrhea and that if they didn’t make it inside, this instant, they’d explode. They parked in traffic lanes, in permit-only handicapped-parking, and one brave soul even blocked in a Hummer. Has the time come for us to release the ratchet strap on our entitlement? Has the time come for us to just simply behave?

Brow-furrowing article from advrider. Apparently most American bikers are obnoxious shitheads! What does the panel think? I've spent a couple of years travelling around the US, and it's certainly jam-packed with cretins...are the bikers any worse than the rest? I eavesdropped on a bunch of them on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the stupidity was priceless. And I went to a biker meetup in Miami, which was so soul-destroying I wanted to burn everything in sight. But it's the same at the Ace Cafe or the Hog's Back.

That’s pretty much the opinion I get when I look on any American motorbike forum.
They seem to be a rather odd, tribal bunch across the pond.
As you say though, nights at The Ace are just as bad, at least they were last time I went there about 15 years back.

Interesting anecdotes. It certainly plays out both sides of the coin that Hollywood has been shoving out for years.

It also seems in direct contrast to, say, the ‘new generation’ (of which I could be classed) that Itchy Boots is a figurehead. Those videos across the States didn’t seem to once have any issues like that. Maybe because of convenient editing, or people’s immediate careful treading from seeing all the GoPros …or dare I say it, the rider’s gender.

YouTube is filled with american guys on 1000cc sportbikes riding 120mph in a vest and shorts and probably flip flops or those compilations of them rev bombing and following a family SUV with kids inside because they pulled out Infront of a bike doing 120mph. Supposedly New York is super strict with bikes but I can see why after watching some of the compilations

I felt pretty self concious when out on [my mates new moto cafe's inaugural] a group ride the other week. Mostly it was v well behaved, but bikes all over the pavement outside the cafe while old biddies struggled their way around was not a good look. No moans as far as I'm aware, and lots of positive public attention at the time, but I hope the cafe figure out an alternative system to 'yeah whatever' for the next one

It's a cross section of the population so you can expect a whole spectrum of behavior.

Is there even one general psychological effect that riding any type of motorbike in any condition will routinely cause?

Like cycling, non cyclists just see everyone on a bike jumping red lights.

Is there even one general psychological effect that riding any type of motorbike in any condition will routinely cause?

Trials bikes cause riders to see everything as a potential section.

But that’s not your question.

It's all so different. Different places/bikes/weather. I've been lucky enough to survive a lot of riding all over the place and met a lot of nice people riding bikes.

This made me laugh 😂😂😂😂

I like Rich Larsen, but I like him even more that he tries to convince you that a crosser could be used as an all-around enduro.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WERSjLchSuE

TL:DR I want an RM250

I wonder if there is a cultural difference.

The impression I got from my dad and one of my grandparents parents younger friends who served in the war, was that in this country people originally rode motorcycles because they were cheap and faster/less effort than bicycles. My grandpa was bought a Brough Superior in exchange for his free labour and that was his only mode of transport until he needed car for work much later on.

In the US more people had cars from earlier on, and it always comes across that being a motorcyclist was a lifestyle choice. That has connotations of 1%ers etc.

Hmm maybe.

Everyone in the UK seems to say “bikes are dangerous”, what I gather from these anecdotes is in the States they say “bikers are dangerous”.

My feeling is that a lot of bikers (definitely not all) behave like a dog marking his territory. Sometimes in the UK it's the ones with loud pipes on sports bikes who ride around town wanting to be noticed. I don't think they do much else...no long journeys seeking out twisty roads, no track days, no touring. In the US it's usually Harley riders. They want to feel powerful and be recognised, but they don't have much of a life or a personality. Both the UK and US have produced large numbers of disenfranchised men who like the 'romantic outsider' niche of bikers in the movies. With a helmet on and a noisy bike they can live up to it. But when they are unmasked and talking, there's nothing there.

Oof. Personal attack!

If you have enough insight and emotional intelligence to recognise yourself, I suspect you're more than just a dog cocking its leg!

Anyway, someone's been moving my bike. They knocked off a mirror and broke an indicator and nearly broke a mudguard. I'm thinking this was a recce by a thief. Hopefully he'll steal something more saleable than a scruffy '94 K series. I've always thought they were thief-proof. If I had the patience and energy I'd be waiting all night with a spray and a baseball bat.

Sorry about your bike!

Maybe opportunism knows no lower threshold.

It's the price of the bike overnighting on the pavement in Brixton. Nowhere else for it really. Well, there are, but they're even worse. It's got a Squire sold secure gold lock and chain on the rear wheel, which I hope would need two batteries if someone went at it with a grinder. And it's got a new shitty lock just for the cover, because someone nicked the old cover a couple of weeks ago.

I really don't think a proper thief would ever want a K series, but I'm debating whether to get a second serious lock and chain. With that I could reach the neighbour's big metal fence. I think he'd be OK with it, as it's social housing and the chain would be covered and I'd take care not to chip the paint. And we get on OK. I helped him by writing a letter once.

Or I could put the second lock and chain on the front wheel. I don't know what's best. Am I missing the obvious answer? The more I spend on huge locks and chains, the more the local cunts will want to lift the cover to check out the bike. In doing so they'll eventually break some plastics, knock the bike over, etc etc.