• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

Bikers or motorcyclists?

Biker or Motorcyclist? Be careful with polarizing and trying to set yourself apart. After all, Harley Davidson still has the largest market share in the U.S. and still represents the majority of bikes on the road. They still have the largest number of doctors, lawyers and other affluent people as customers, compensating for mid-life crisis and trying to express a life-style. These people may have a lot of influence in the socio-political arena and may be the ones who carry enough weight to keep riding motorcycles a legal activity in this country.

Excellent Observation! :clap


And by the above description of Bikers and Motorcyclists - what are those with orange, spiky hairdos, earrings and other metal pieces pierced into facial areas who ride plastic-covered two-wheelers and pop wheelies all the time??? What category do they fit in?
Food for thought!

Kids. I call them kids. They belong in the "Under 30" category. They are, no doubt, doing stuff equally stupid to the stuff I was doing when I was their age- and I'm sure I got spoken about in much the same manner, by those who were older than I at the time.... :D

It does crack me up, tho, that society has to pigeon-hole us into separate categories. Strip everyone naked, and we are much more the same. Then, we simply fall into the "human" category.
 
LFP's......

great discussion...entertaining as always......I pretty much call myself a motorcyclist...but that's jus' me........

Me and my buddies have an acronym that might apply to some 2 wheel riders...although we use it to descibe the bikes also....it's:

LFP: "Loud effen pipes" often associated with "Loud effen People":D
 
Some people who ride motorcycles have beards and long hair. They may be among the kindest soles on earth (or not) but you can guess how they are perceived by the general public. Riders with loud pipes are hated by everyone except those in their own group. It is also no secret that there are motorcycle gangs - and I"ve never understood why they wish to tell the public and the cops that they are criminals by wearing their "colors."

I believe all of the above "poison the well" for the majority of folk who don't ride and don't think about these clear distinctions between "us and them."

I'd like to think by our good behaviour we can turn this perception around. The bad asses on bikes is likely no greater than the percentage in cars, and it is a small percentage.
 
bikers

I had a similar situation as Paul F once, as the desk clerk was sputtering, I asked her to look up my Hotel Mar---- rewards number , which i know by heart because i use it 200 days a year for the last 33 years, and it wasn't a problem, being double, triple dog Platinum.
 
Don't blame it all on us Harley riders.

Owning a Harley and a BMW let me tell you about another group that in my opinion is far worse than us Harley riders.

We used to go to Myrtle Beach Bike Week and stay at a very nice hotel on the North end. The owners and management were very nice to us and there was never any problem with all the Harley folks that stayed at that location.

The last year we went I was making reservations over the phone and was told we could not have our Harleys on the property. I was shocked and asked why not, I was told that there was a group that followed us the week after our event and someone had ridden their motorcycle through the big plate glass window in the front of the hotel. They banned them from having their bikes on the property. So to be fair no bikes were allowed on their property. She was doing everything she could to be politically correct and not mentioning the group. I knew who it was; it was the Sport bike group.

So you see all it takes is ÔÇ£ONEÔÇØ bad apple no matter what they are riding and we are all in the same basket. So be nice and show the citizens that whether you are a Harley, Beemer or crotch rocket rider you are not the bad apple. Then it might be easier for me to stay in a nice hotel with my bike on the property.
 
I have to wonder...

If a car came through their window, would they ban cars from the parking lot?
 
Possible. Say a Mustang club was there and someone did a burnout that went wrong, they could possibly ban that Mustang club from coming back. It is their property and they can do whatever they want. But the unmentioned reason for the ban I think was the owners did not want it to turn into a racial problem so they banned all bikes. I agree that it was wrong to put us Harley riders in the same boat with the sport bike riderÔÇÖs because we had never caused any problems for them to dislike us and were always welcomed back with open arms. It was unlikely they would ban all cars because one car driver did something stupid. However, banning a select group, now that is a definite possibility!!
 
license plate

Saw a woman on a Harley with a decorative license plate holder that said.. Loud Pipes make little Dicks.... Had to be a woman that would have that. A guy would be killed.
 
I think doing a burnout in front of the building that went wrong might have had something to do with it.

I would think even if nothing wen't wrong just a burnout would be enough. loud, smelly, leaves marks on the owners pavement. I can't see how a burnout would endear anyone to the owner.
 
Possible. Say a Mustang club was there and someone did a burnout that went wrong, they could possibly ban that Mustang club from coming back. It is their property and they can do whatever they want. But the unmentioned reason for the ban I think was the owners did not want it to turn into a racial problem so they banned all bikes. I agree that it was wrong to put us Harley riders in the same boat with the sport bike riderÔÇÖs because we had never caused any problems for them to dislike us and were always welcomed back with open arms. It was unlikely they would ban all cars because one car driver did something stupid. However, banning a select group, now that is a definite possibility!!

"ban that Mustang club" that would be analogous with banning the person or persons present when the burn out happened. That would be reasonable I would think, Banning all bikes I think to be unreasonable. I am not sure about the racial thing, to my knowledge all races ride all types of bikes. It may be that there is a lopsided distribution in a given city, town or reagin.

In either case unreasonable or not it is up to the owners. They have the right to do that so more power to them. I can say that even if I where not a rider and I had discovered that attitude I would think it unreasonable and not give them my business. I have freedom to speak back to them with my dollars.
 
My guess is that they really didn't like ANY large groups of bikes, so when this happened it gave them a convenient out.

Lets face it, even up tight BMW riders tend to linger in the parking lot and socialize, after all you came with a group for a reason, to interact with that group. We also hang out, check tires, play with our GPS, lube chains, show off our new farkels, and check stuff in general. And most looks like homeless bums that lost their shopping cart, and are carrying all our worldly possessions with us as we trudge through the lobby to our rooms, tired dirty and maybe wet.

To Mr and Mrs Minivan and their 2.3 kids, this could be a reason to drive to the next hotel, they don't want to be woken up by the loud pipes, boisterous laughter and the general hog calling communication we use, "HEY FRED, OVER HERE!" (not a Harley reference).

So if the motel has plenty of clients, and doesn't need a large group to fill its rooms, why bother.

My bet is if 2 bikes showed up, and the riders asked for rooms, there would be no issue.
 
" . I am not sure about the racial thing, to my knowledge all races ride all types of bikes. .

Not the right place here to elaborate about this, but there was indeed something like this a while ago in Myrtle Beach. There was a particular event after the regular bike week that triggered some reaction among the local authorities and business-people.
 
more thoughts

I prefer "motorcyclist". It generally gets a better response out of people, due to pre-conceived notions, however it really shouldn't matter.

I used to ride a 2005 Honda Shadow 750, with after-market pipes. Gave it a deep, throaty sound and it approached the decibel level of your average Harley. I was headed into work one summer morning, doing about 25mph in 4th gear trying to keep the bike as quiet as I could so as not to disturb the slumbering masses in the neighborhood, when I came upon an elderly couple walking along the sidewalk. The lady looked at me, and with a scowl put her finger up to her lips in a "shuuush" motion. She actually "shushed" me! Because I was already attempting to be as quiet as possible, loafing along at near idle, it triggered a nerve. I pulled the clutch, and with as much zeal as I could muster I revved that engine to the point where anyone within a 1/2 mile would have heard... The look on the her husband's face was priceless, he couldn't stop laughing :)

Should I have kept the throttle low and ignored her? Possibly. I doubt that I helped our cause by making her mad and waking up 1/2 the neighborhood. But at that moment in time I wanted to make a point.

The lack of understanding or the lack of any desire to understand where "the other guy" is coming from doesn't play well with concepts like "freedom". When you are doing everything in your power to be considerate and someone else just isn't getting it, it gets frustrating and you get to the point where you just don't care about what they think anymore. They have made up their minds and there is no way you are going to change what they think. As such, I prefer "motorcyclist", because certain people see the term as being more friendly & intelligent, and it generally makes life move along a bit more smoothly.
 
Back
Top