Bikers, RUBs, and The Mid-Life Crisis

So, I had a friend of mine whose Beneficiary went out and bought a bike. She was trying to sort out what the deal is with us old guys and bikes. This is not the first time this as come up, so I thought I'd just put the answers out here for everyone:

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"If I gotta explain, you wouldn't understand."



No, trite, too easy.



OK, fine. Here we go. There are (generally) three types of riders in my age range. Please feel free to use the following type-summaries to classify YOUR old guy:



[Begin Summary]



1. Midlife crisis. Middle to Upper Middle Class, Age 50 plus or minus 5 years.



These are the motorcycle equivalent of the guy you probably know in your neighborhood who suddenly started working out, getting a tan, capped teeth, and hair-plugs, and followed it up by buying a penis- shaped red car with a really big engine which he used to attract 20- year-old bimbos with self-esteem/father-figure issues.



These guys never look like they fit in wherever they are, because where they are is where a young dude ought to be, and with all the best intent and finest tanning booths in the world, they're not. Think Don Knotts in leathers, or the dickhead that graduated in '73 as a local football hero who's still hanging out at the raves and high school keggers.



They spend much time styling and profiling to the best of their ability, and wind up fitting in about as well as the geekboy white kid emulating Slim Shady and wearing the Tupac tshirt.



They almost never go on individual/loner runs (just to ride) 'cause there's no one to watch them. In fact, they tend to "hang out" at the clubs and other age-inappropriate places more than ride. If they get with a crew, it'll be a crew who mainly puts up with them for the amusement factor plus the fact that in order to fit in with their new "buds" they're always the one who buys a round, gets the keg, pays the bar tab, comes up with bail money, or whatever.



He's the only one who doesn't know he's the butt of the joke.



This category of rider is usually relatively short-lived in The Life, even more so than the penis-car guy 'cause being a serious biker is a tough lifestyle, and the "wannabes" go belly-up and float to the surface of the pot pretty quickly.



Return to normalcy nearly always involves some inevitable and catastrophic event which reminds him that his real life is not all that bad after all and managing to have a "meaningful relationship" with some 20-year-old airhead does not suddenly nullify the fact that he'll die soon anyway and may in fact have actually cut the time he has left, what with her ex getting out of prison next month and all.



Since the biker version of this type is usually hanging out with a pretty hard crew, this realization may be precipitated by or include an ass-beating when he finally wears out his welcome and/or wanders around with his head up his ass and steps knee-deep into a biker- protocol issue, or accidentally "disrespects" someone. Further it is often accompanied by a real-world bitchslap, e.g., discovering that "Easy Rider" didn't mention anything about sleeping in the mud in a tent at rallies and parties nor that your 50 year-old kidneys get pounded right out of your poop-chute when you ride further than about 200 miles at a stretch.



This guy may come home with his ass dragging a rut in the sand, sell or box up all his biker shit, and be a depressed pain in the ass for months till he comes to terms with his age/life and/or finds another project which may make him immortal.



Alternately, he may convert to RUB status (see #2 below).



2. RUBs (Rich Urban Bikers): Upper Middle Class to Wealthy, Age 40- 60.



This is the guy who's been curious about bikes, thinks he might like them, spends a lot of time talking about them, watches chopper TV on Discovery Channel, reads the magazines, and intently stares at every bike that comes past -- all preparatory to convincing himself to do it.



One day he suddenly realizes that a confluence of events has occurred:

1. he has enough disposable income to make it happen, combined with
   
   





2. a dramatic reduction in the numbers of personal responsibilities which require rigid common sense and constantly being someone's role model (possession of and responsibility for juvenile children, for example).

Once he buys a bike, which is often, but not always, a fairly high- dollar version, he will spend inordinate amounts of time swapping stories and hanging out with other RUBs at relatively high-end bars and the above noted dealerships which may cater to "bikers" once or twice a week ("Biker Nite!"), as long as no one's wearing club colors or anything.



He may try hanging at a real biker bar, but finds that

1. real biker bars, while a good time, can be tough, dangerous, and dirty and
   
   



2. even though he considers himself a biker now, the phrase “turd in a punchbowl” comes to mind.. He generally retreats to friendlier ground pretty shortly.

The primary function of these little RUB gatherings is to be part of a crowd of similarly fascinated people who are in the same social strata (as other bikers tend to be kinda low-class) and also to compare dick length as estimated by who has the coolest and/or biggest and/or most-shit-stuck-to-it ride.



If he's hanging out with a crew, it's either an informal non-colors group of friends or a "riding club" like "HOG" (Harley Owners Group).



He may or may not put any substantial miles on the bike, but nothing will do but putting more and more junk (usually chrome) on it. In fact, probably the main key to identifying RUBs is their tendency toward continually adding high-dollar/low function junk to their bikes and/or upgrading bikes to fancier and more chrome-intensive versions involving pneumatic seats, satellite radio, lots of lights, GPS, stereo, and saddlebags you could pack a whole 'nother bike in. (These type of operations are known in the hard-core biker world as "garbage wagons").



If he goes somewhere like Sturgis, he is likely to "trailer" the bike to within a hundred miles or so, then ride in from there. RUBs tend to let the dealer handle everything from major work to oil changes and in any event virtually NEVER does any wrench work themselves.



They dress in clean, creaking new leathers maintained just so. I actually saw the female passenger that belonged to one of these -- a frosted-spiky-hair 40ish, she was dressed in brand new leathers with "Harley" logos splattered all over them, sunglasses that cost more than my chaps and boots combined, and (this is the part that made everyone's jaw drop) HD-brand black jeans that had a crease pressed into them. Looked like she was fresh back from The Ritchbitch Country Club where she'd made quite the splash with her daring outfit.



In short, the RUB is usually not all that serious a biker, but has a new hobby which, depending on the specific individual, will either fade as bike popularity fades, or become something he's quite devoted to, in a hobby sense. If it weren't this, it would have been something else.



3. Biker:



This is the guy who either has been riding since Christ was a Corporal and has managed to live this long against all odds, or who was taken off his sled earlier in his career for one reason or another (prison, raising kids, etc.), and has now resumed his ride.



He truthfully and no BS doesn't give a rat's kidney what anyone else thinks about his riding, his bike, or how he looks. That, incidentally, is not just an attitude – hardcore bikers really don't care, as most "citizens" are beneath their notice in any event.



Often a borderline (or more) criminal in an incidental sense, as his lifestyle tends toward the anarchic/sociopathic; e.g., the only thing he cares about is his bike and riding hard, and partying hard; everything else is secondary including any piss-ant little laws that happen to get in the way.



KEY INDICATOR: This guy will ride a LOT, generally 1000 - 2000 miles per month, rain, shine, snow, or whatever. The photo of the biker above was taken during a nutsack-freezing cold rain. The bike is his primary mode of transportation. He calls cars "cages" which has leaked over into the slang of non-bikers, but he is deadly serious -- he feels like a trapped animal when he's not on his bike.



Politically, probably closest to radical right-wing libertarians. In fact, most of these guys can fairly be called no-BS rednecks on bikes.

[Side Note]

This proved to be very confusing to the hippies in the 60's. They cuddled the bikers to their flower-powered li'l hearts, mostly because of movies like "The Wild One" and "Easy Rider". You know, anti-establishment, battling The Man, freedom, wind in your long hair, and like that. The hippies thought these guys were the new cowboys, hippies on wheels.The bikers, for their part, thought the hippies were a bunch of fucking morons, but since they'd buy all the dope that the bikers could manufacture or import AND share it with the bikers AND were always partying AND had a place to crash AND there were lots of little hippie girls to bang, everyone got along.



It was not uncommon during this period to find a batch of Hells Angels or Straight Satans or whoever ripped to the tits, having consumed three or four times the regular dose of LSD and the best part of a bottle of whiskey (they tended toward extremes), and being taken care of by the hippies at a crash pad.



As a result, it was an enormous shock to the hippies when a bunch of Hells Angels (whom the hippies to this point considered to be big ol' cuddly growly bears) waded in with pipes, clubs, and pool-cues and kicked the

!holydogshit!out of a wad of peace protesters in San Francisco for disrespecting the troops in VietNam, and followed that up by killing some dickweed at the Stones concert in Altamont in '69, partially because he was a black guy dating a white girl, but mostly just 'cause he needed killing. To say that the peace-and-love, we're-all-playing-in-the-same-band hippies were appalled was a huge understatement -- their love affair with the bikers was over.



[End Sidenote]

Generally a biker thinks the other two categories are pretty funny when he bothers to notice them at all. His main annoyance at RUBs in particular is that they don't know biker protocol AND the influx of their money into what used to be a pretty exclusive Thing is driving the price of Harley parts to stratospheric heights.



A biker usually parties a lot with other bikers, but at the end of the day is often a loner. "Brotherhood" with other bikers is intensely strong, but heavily predicated on individual responsibility -- they back each other to the death, particularly in incidents involving "citizens", but if you step on your own dick somehow, you're usually left to swing unless you're part of a formal crew.



When hanging with or joining a particular crew, they will usually pick a three-patch outfit (very hard core bikers -- usually extremely rigid organizational structure).



Leathers usually show heavy wear, are often (but not always) pretty nasty, and colors/rags may be nearly unreadable due to road grease, spilled beer, etc.



This is not the guy who is constantly looking around trying to make sure everyone notices him. They usually will, but he doesn't give a shit.



[End Summary]

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Now, these three types are not exclusive...they are on a continuum- type scale. Very few are 100% any of these -- they tend to slop over borders. One way to look at it is:



MIDLIFE-----------------------RUB------------------------------BIKER



and then place the subject on the scale where he seems to belong based on the above summaries.



On that scale, I'd probably fall about half or three quarters of the way up the scale between RUB and BIKER. I ride with a three patch club, I party hard, I put about 17K - 18K miles per year on the bike, it's usually my primary mode of transportation, I don't care about decorating the bike other than with what amuses ME, I ride alone a lot (usually 500-700 miles per month) just because I like riding, and I've put up with a lot of crap about it 'cause I just don't give a shit what anyone else thinks about it.



On the other hand, there are things that have priority over the bike in my life -- family and job for example -- I believe in (most of) society's rules, and I am a so- called 99%er (e.g., not an "outlaw" biker). See how it works?



In Our Next Episode: Beats me, I didn't even know I was writing THIS one...