IMA asked me if I would do a bit of a scoop on dykes, sorry bikes in the USA and the general attitude to bikers in the States.
Well to start off, if you don't ride a Hardley then you are not considered a biker. There are millions of them. Fat hairy bastards sitting on their huge 1500cc Hogs and that’s just the women. Leather chaps, leather waist coat and a do rag round their head. A "Do Rag" is basically a head scarf for men, hahahaha, that catches all the dew. They all get pissed as rats and then ride back to their tents or where ever they stop during a rally. I will come to drinking and driving a little later as this is a BIGGY. Speaking of rallies you don't think they actually ride there Oh No. They put there beloved on the back of a trailer and tow it thousands of miles just to ride it to the bar and back. I think it was DP who told me the story of a guy who won first price at a rally for furthest travelled and he pulled his bike all the way on a trailer, FUBAR. None Harley riders are pretty few and far between, they don't ride in the rain. AT this very moment they are probably packing it in cotton wool for the winter. I know people who have a few bikes, a K100, an XR650 and even a sport bike but do they ride them, no, they say it’s too cold or it’s too hot. Anyway enough of my bitching, which I am pretty good at I may add, and lets get down to some facts concerning our Trans-Atlantic buddies.

In pursuit of there hobbies the average American has every toy you can buy. A high percentage of them have at least 2 cars ( His and Hers), a nice speed boat down on the lake. The guy usually has a bike of some sort, usually a HOG and or a dirt bike. A quid bike is sometimes stuffed into the garage along with all the latest health toys like a multi-gym, Bowflex and the like. Now all this comes at a price, and a big price it is. The average American has $35,000 credit card debt. I know people who are up to almost $80,000 and it isn't easy to get a credit card over here either I know. It took me 18 months to get one but once you get the one, sh!t it’s like a snowball. I bet I get $250,000 worth of credit card applications a month and I am not joking.

Bike are sooooooo cheap over here it is not funny. I can only quote exact figures on a Yamaha R6 as that’s what I have got. I paid $6,999 for a 2001 R6. That is 4191 quid for a brand new bike OTR, I could walk into my local Yam dealer tomorrow and buy a 2003 for the same price. An 04 would be 600 quid more.

Insurance was costing me $29 a month until I got 2 tickets for speeding. One was a fair shout. The other one, I wasn't even moving, just sitting at some temp lights in a roadwork’s zone. I had been there for a good 3 minutes and the cop drives passed, turns round and stops me for doing 52 in a 35. Double fines cos I was in a work zone. @#$%#$$@#$%$#@ Bastard. Anyhow you get your insurance loaded for every ticket so now it is about $50 which is still sh!t loads better than the UK. Over here you get 2 sets of points. Insurance points and licence points. After so many licence points you have to do a defensive driving coarris and then they will nock 3 off. Insurance points is just a money making scam for the cops and insurance companies. The insurance companies give money and radar equipment to the cops increasing the captures and so increasing the premiums and more equipment to the cops. @%^%$#

You don't pay road tax you pay property tax and in North Carolina it is 3% of the value. This goes down every year as your bike is worth less. That’s why a lot of people have 5 year old cars, they are classed as worth nothing so they don't pay tax

As you all know petrol is cheap over here. At the moment it is $1.46 a gallon which is about 87p. We won't linger on that point as I don't want to be responsible for a number of suicides.

DRINKING AND DRIVING.
This bit really pisses me off. Everyone drinks and drives over here. They all say " The cops won't catch me". Screw the cops, what about the poor bastard who is walking his dog and you go and flatten him against a tree leaving his wife and kids all alone. How do they think they will sleep at night. If they do get caught, it takes months to get to court and all the time they can drive. When it eventually does get to court, if the officer doesn't show up it gets thrown out.

For all the cheap bikes and cheap fuel, I for one would prefer to live back in the UK where the weather is crappy, you get shafted left right and centre by the government with taxes and I am 3400 miles closer to my mother-in-law. Why ??? Because the people are the finest in the world bar none. We may complain about things and never do anything about it. We may go and sit on Blackpool beach with a knotted hanky on our head. We might even eat too many meat pies for our own good (Sorry Wigan), but I know that I can rely on each and everyone of my mates back home to do what he says he is going to do, not like this shower of sh*te who I wouldn't even trust to look after my Goldfish that was already dead.


All opinions expressed here are mine. If you don't like them bite me !!!

Interesting Nick. Defo sounds like a strange country in many ways. When you say that the folks are putting away their bikes for the winter, how bad are the winters over there?

From my limited experience of our cousins over the other side of the pond through the FJR owners forum, I'd say every word of this is true . I'm surprised though that Nick didn't mention 'farkles', the endless discussions about which oil (synth, semi-synth or dino as well as which brand) and tyres (sorry tires) to use and how to break in your new machine. The one good difference between us is that we wait two to three weeks to get an FJR, they order them in Feb and they get them in August if they are lucky, if you don't order by April you either have to wait for next year or try to find one that someone else has pulled out of buying and they only come in one colour . As for the weather it can be a bit more extreme over there depending on where you live with several feet of snow rather than the couple of inches it takes to bring the whole of the UK to a standstill .

Superb rant Nick - Ranting is perfected to an art by us brits and I for one will rant at the drop of a hat, but, may i say, without the comedic eloquence that you seem to posess.



brilliant!

And the next plane leaves when?

23rd August 2004... Yipeeeeeeeeeeeee

Well actually 19th December but thats only for 2 weeks. August is the return date.

Nick

Just to add a bit of balance - if you look at theMotorcycle Tourers Forum you'll find that some yanks do travel! And when they travel, they really travel!

A lot of what I said is particular to the SE USA. If you go to Colorado or California it is a different story. But as a whole they are so insular and choose to recognize that anything exists outside of the US. My dentist told me that he travels all over the world and the best holiday he had was up in the hills of Portugal. Why... because it was out of the way and hadn't been spoiled by obnoxious American tourists. They were his exact words.

Pick that f8cking hat up you litter bug

i have a picture of the winner of the 2003 miss harley comp
& I guess you are right about them nick

"Fat hairy bastards sitting on their huge 1500cc Hogs and that’s just the women. "

Don't you play any golf, I'm sure you'd get on better.

Womble, she's a looker, you haven'y got a phone number by any chance.

I know quite a few Americans. Most are quite arrogant but I have met a few good uns.

Good article nick cheers m8 bit of a bugger about the drink drivers though

I have tried all ways to integrate with these people. You can't organize anything with them because they are so unreliable. They are as shallow as a race. Example... We invited our next door but one neighbors round for a few scoops. We ran out of beer and only had wine left cos they didn't bring anything so he trundles off home for supplies. Bearing in mind I started with a 24 pack and only myself and him were on the beer. We are well pissed by now. 30 minutes later we ask his wife what is keeping him. She disappears to find him and returns a couple of minutes later to inform us he is in the guys garage across the street drinking brandy. What kind of people up and leave when the beers out and whore them selves across the street rather than breaking out there own beer. The only way I can describe it is like being a dog living in a world of cats. You exist with them, occasionally you interact and socialize but there is always the feeling that you just don't belong, that you are not the same. You will either totally understand what I mean or you just won't get it. Anyway... I joined this board to get away form them and have spent a week doing nothing but talk about them. You have my permission to give me grief if I mention them again. Unless provoked.

S'alright m8 we all got to gripe sometime.
It seems the whole world is anti british at the moment a case in point being suki went on a NZ site tonight and was chatting with this guy ok till he finds out she came from england then he says F**K off back to your own country TOSSER serves em right for losing at rugby today

Nick you better stop talking about the yanks or they will find you & say you are a iraq spy & make you watch american reruns of i love lucy till you crack

Any of you guys been watching "biker chicks usa" on men and motors, Harley only program with some scarey bitches the most feminin one was a cop.

Dave, id leave that one mate, i heard she's a bit of a dog

Nick, howdya hear about Ukbikeforum? Have you got any pics of you and your bike? I reckon we should pin a rogues gallery of all members stupid - er - brave enough to put up picks, we already have a motley assortment in the mugg shots thread . What dya reckon? When we're feeling down wee could bring up the pictures of me and cheer ourselves up that we' arent quite so bald - well, you lot could I spose if i did that it would just tip me over the edge!

Nick, been considering this one and I reckon if he'd ran out of beer so decided it was alright to leave your place and go to his other neighbour for drink then as his wife was still there,....if your missus didnt fancy it....then surely by his logic you could have given his wife one? Or was she a bit ?

Itried to put a pic up in the gallery but it keeps telling me that I can't attach this type of file (Jpeg)

email it to me and ill get it up ( ooeer missus). Is it a size problem ( oh dear) as there is a size limit?

Yep, 60Kb if I remember correctly.

You should be able to upload images of the following extentions. gif,jpeg,jpg,png

They're probably case sensitive because we run on a Unix server.

Being born and raised American I found some of the things you say to be true but other stuff you said was a little stereotypical. I've owned and ridden Kawasaki's and Honda's on long crosscountry trips for the past 15 years of my life. These bikes have actually been ridden on the road not hauled in the back of some pick up truck. I don't own a speed boat nor do I have a credit card addiction. I've never owned a "Hardley" because the technology on these bikes is about twenty-five years behind the Japanese and there's about a five thousand dollar mark up on these agricultural machines if you want to buy them from a dealer. Any Japanese 600 sport bike and most 500's will outrun a "Hardley". The vibration on Harley's is so bad that the bolts around the engines are required to be retorqued every two thousand miles or so. There is definitely an "antijapanese" chauvinism among some Harley owners. If you go to a biker bar on a japanese bike and park it next to a bunch of Harleys you may find a little vandalism on your bike when you come back out to the parking lot. If you take a trip to Sturgis during biker week on a Japanese bike, you might as well put a sign on your back that says "Kick My Ass". You certainly don't see this kind of hostility among people who ride Honda's, Suzuki's, Kawasaki's, Yamaha's, BMW's or any other brands. I guess brand loyalty can be a strange thing sometimes.

I did go back and say that alot of what I said was more typical to the SE. You have got to bare in mind that what you see is reactions to and perceptions of an American guy. I am English and get treated as an Englishman. If you look at the board I go on "Cycleforum.com" I can end any thread just by posting to it and I am sick to death of being treated like a nobody. If this was the other way round you would be welcomed with open arms and people would be interested in the scene on the other side of the pond. I can only comments on the way I am treated as so can you.