BOGUS BULLSHIT REVIEW

by James MacLaren

The Attendees of Bike Week in Daytona

Thousands of rich knuckleheads, Every March, Daytona Beach FL</b>

Ok sports fans, it’s time to call a resounding BULLSHIT on Bike Week, ok?

The monied interests and marketing mavens have successfully co-opted what was

once a hard core revel, unique in all the world, and it’s not a pretty sight.

At work, they tell me to drive to the panhandle and back in less than a day. Ok,

fine. 900 miles in 22 hours. Can do. But on the way back…

Enter I-95 from the I-295 bypass around Jacksonsludge.

WHAM!

Instant gridlock.

It’s Friday morning, on the eve of Bike Week.

Fucking I-95 is an incredible mess of vehicles, outstanding among which was a

peculiar plethora of those small U-Haul kinda trailers, pulled by every

imaginable type of underpowered motorcar, straining just to keep from getting

rear-ended by the rest of us.

Hmm… what’s up with that?

Hmm number two… where’s all the bikers?

Finally, somewhere between St. Augustine and Daytona, it struck me like a

thunderbolt! There ARE no bikers. No siree. In that near hundred mile stretch of

wretched pavement I saw a TOTAL of less than a mere dozen people actually

perched atop a motorscooter. And those trailers, AHA! Not all of them were fully

enclosed. And, on the open ones, there were the bikes. Of course!

The fucking bikes have become worth more than most people’s condos, and can’t be

just PUT OUT THERE ON THE ROAD for heaven’s sake. No way! Might get a love bug

splat on your precious front fender. Can’t be having any of that, can we? Of

course not.

The real population of bikers has dropped Bike Week like a bad habit, leaving it

to the rich asshole posers with the forty-thousand dollar bikes that can’t be

allowed out on the fucking road. These jerks are playing dress up and the

Halloween costume of choice is black leather.

These idiots spend the last week before the Big Event letting their beards

become scruffy, and explaining to their partners in the law firm or fellow

physicians in the HMO that they’re gonna take a week off down in Florida and

everything will be back to it’s most very Republican state of well manicured

form over function just as soon as they return.

And so they go.

By the tens of thousands.

Driving a pick up truck with a hundred grand worth of cycles in a trailer

behind, trying desperately to pass one of their poser brethren at a speed

differential of a tenth of a mile an hour, clogging I-95 for twenty miles behind

with those of us so unfortunate as to have an actual life and perhaps a need to

get somewhere before the sun explodes.

My favorite posermobile was a bloated Winnebago, with a pick up truck bolted to

the tow bar. Inside the bed, under the cap on the pickup were the bikes! Think

of it! No, I can’t drive the bike. Might get it dirty. No, I can’t drive the

pickup, it’s too small and the drive’s too long. I know, I’ll bolt the whole

wazoo to the Winnebago and drive THAT! What a great idea!

Finally, I reached the I-4 junction and the whole sorry mess was in my rear view

mirror, getting smaller with each passing mile. Thank god.

Somebody needs to do something about Bike Week. Perhaps the real bikers oughtta

make a surprise return sometime and just start kicking ass and wiping the floor

with it. I dunno.

What I do know is that NONE of these dorks are real bikers. Maybe we all just

oughtta show up and steal all their expensive toys. It’s for sure that if

anybody so much as flicked a switchblade in the direction of these drongos that

they’d need to be revived with smelling salts after fainting dead away.

Where are the Hell’s Angles when you really need ‘em?