Shut Up and Ride by: Reverend Jon In early April of 2000 I stumbled onto this hardcore web site for chopper aficionados. The pages on this site were riddled with little mottos & sayings alluding to the fact that "real" bikers eat, shit & breathe motorcycles, make their bikes the central objects of their lives & think about nothing else. Both the columnists and the message-posters bitch constantly about the yuppie posers who trailer their $30,000 billet barges to rallies and events.

...Perfect. I put up a post on the message board explaining that I was about to blow off my job to go riding for a couple of months, and that I was looking for some other people to ride with. Imagine my surprise when I didn't even get one reply. ...Well, okay, I got one- from a guy who said that he would love to come along, if only he didn't have to work. You find posers in some pretty unlikely places these days, & it seems that there's plenty of phoniness to go around. Another category of poser is the guy who thinks that it is physically impossible to ride any farther than to the local pub unless you have a Gold Wing or a Geezer Glide. One guy I used to work with would take every opportunity to deride my Sportster and assert the superiority of his Wing, even though the miles were piling up a lot faster on my ticker than on his. A fellow Sporty rider who rode from PA to Sturgis received the same treatment from a geezer on a bagger who exclaimed, "That's a hell of a long way to ride on a dirt bike!" These people are not merely posers, but victims of clever marketing as well. After all, it wasn't that long ago that any bike with a 600cc motor was considered a respectable touring machine- your average around-town bike was more like 300cc. At 1200cc, Harleys were considered absolutely fucking huge. And if you were lucky enough to have a rear suspension, hell, it was time to ride to California. Since then, neither asses nor backs have undergone any physiological change that I'm aware of. So why do all these people think you need a 2-wheeled La-Z-Boy if you want to actually ride? Therefore, if I hear one more debate about what constitutes a "real rider," I think I'm gonna puke, preferably on the debaters. Dennis Leary's advice seems particularly apropos here; "Shut the fuck up!" With one small modification; "Shut the fuck up & ride!" Rev. Jon is 30 years old, hacks code for a living and has recently finished a masters degree in mathematics at Drexel University. He runs the Malcontent Yuppie Biker's Homepage, and is also an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. (Check out the ULC if you too want to become an ordained minister over the web. This is not a joke, and it's perfectly legal). The Reverend's hobbies include dabbling in art, music, winemaking and fiction writing. He rides his ass off on his little black Sportster whenever possible.