[motorcycle.com] - Skidmarks – Moto-Grunts

[Ninjette Newsbot]

Lead photo: Jeff, a software engineer from Oakland, California, rode this Brammo Empulse R hoverbike 35 miles to work and back daily until it was taken out by a wayward taxicab. He is now “suffering the indignities of internal combustion on an MV Agusta Dragster.” Photo by Joe Sala, 4theriders.com.
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
-Thucydides
Burke: He can’t make that kind of decision. He’s just a grunt! Uh, no offense.
Hicks: None taken.
-Dialogue from 1986 science-fiction epic Aliens.
Monday the 16th was the 24th annual Ride to Work Day, so let’s talk about the unsung heroes of motorcycling: the daily commuters. What makes them so heroic? Just the fact that they ride daily is enough for me. Out of the eight million or so registered motorcycles in the USA, just 294,000 of them – less than four percent – are used for a daily commute, according to 2009 U.S. Census data.

Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, moto-commuting is a blessing – but maybe it’s also a curse. Even in idyllic Nor Cal, where it infrequently rains and average temperatures stay between 50 and 70 degrees year round, conditions are still punishing for motorcyclists. Pollution, debris, cigarette butts and various noxious fluids present dangers to human and mechanical equipment alike. In fact, year-round commuting is probably harder on (hu)man and machine than seasonal riding – there’s no time to take a break, to get the bike ready for the season. In fact, there are no seasons, just the unending cycles of rain, sun, fog, sun, rain … the miles pile up, riding gear gets dirty, frayed, tattered and then replaced. And the band plays on until you just can’t ride any more.

Here, there are two kinds of commuters – local riders and the bridge-and-tunnel brigade. The former ride locally, just a few miles each way, which means there’s no need to get on the freeways or cross a bridge. They tend to wear less protective gear – if they wear any at all beside the legally required helmet.

Oh, Aerostich suit, where would daily riders be without ye?


The latter group is more serious. They gear up from head to toe – all the gear, all the time, ATGATT for short – and put a lot of thought into their rides. The bikes range from sportbikes, to serious long-distance performance, to the severely practical. Honda‘s VFR is heavily represented, as are various BMW GS models and battle-scarred KLRs and KTMs, motorcycles known for racking up six digits (not counting decimals) on the odometers. If you’re stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge (which is kind of a redundant statement during commute hours), you’ll see these men – mostly men, though you will see the occasional pony tail bobbing behind a full-face lid – rapidly but safely traversing the narrow space between lanes one and two, filthy Aerostich Roadcrafters faded to pink or gray, motorcycles grimy and scuffed.

Students of motorcycle safety will know that it’s actually the intra-city commuters that incur more risk per mile travelled. But they don’t travel very far, which limits their time at the roulette table, so to speak, and when their number does come up, they’re usually not going too fast. I’ve seen two unfortunate souls on sportbikes low-side on slippery train tracks, just in the past couple of months. Both of them got up, restarted their bikes and rode away before the traffic signal turned red.

Author on his commute-o-cycle in his mandatory faded Aerostich, c. 2005.


The stakes are higher for the intercity commuter. Lanesplitting is in fact safer than riding in a straight line, but when things go bad, they can be really bad, stopping traffic and making the radio reports (and you can almost hear the judgmental glee when the traffic reporters say, “there’s a motorcycle down on 880, three lanes blocked while the CHP investigates…”).

These guys are motorcycling’s equivalent of the grunt, a term used to describe combat infantry in both the Army and Marine Corps. Like similar appellations for ethnic groups, it’s disparaging if you’re not one, a badge of honor if you are.

Confession to make – unlike staffer motojournalists, I work from home, and don’t really spend a lot of time commuting by motorcycle. In fact, unless you call shuffling in worn-out Crocs from the bathroom to my computer desk “commuting,” I don’t really commute at all. I’ll actually make up excuses to brave the Bay Bridge and ride to San Francisco so I can be in the club. Even when I was commuting, it was mostly the intra-city type, with most of my travel under 30 or 40 mph.

But I did spend 18 months commuting by Triumph Speed Four across the Bay Bridge to a Berkeley car dealership until Maximum MOron Alexander saved me from the drudgery of selling Cadillacs by hiring me to work here at MO. It was about a 35-mile round trip, a trip I did rain or shine five days a week.

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