No-brainer

Who can afford a $30,000 motorcycle? The answer to this question holds the end of the biker myth inside it. Don't you know there are still motorcycle gangs roaming our country, terrorizing good folks like you and me, and disrespecting the law wherever it shows its pudgy, pasty face? What are they rebelling against? Whaddaya got?

Yeah, right. Find a guy on a bike and ask him what he does for a living. 10-to-1 he holds a 40-hour job doing something completely mundane. Some kind of work, in fact, that threatens his masculinity so much that he had to purchase and display a Harley-Davidson, a bike that is not, has not been since the 1980s, and never again will be cheap to own. So the question is, who can afford a $30,000 motorcycle?

The usual suspects can, of course! Bankers. Lawyers. Brokers. Managers. Real dangerous fellows, you'll agree. But once you rip the fountain pen from between their flabby fingers, they're really pussycats. Put 'em on a bike, and they're true comedy.

My uncle Richard, who is lost somewhere in New York City and may never resurface, calls those guys the Heck's Angels. I like to imagine them trying to call themselves "Hell's Angels" in front of friends but being shushed by their wives because the kids are nearby. Remember the motto of the Heck's Angel: Live to Ride, Ride to Old Navy.