Driving along the outer loop of the Capital Beltway yesterday, I heard a motorcycle coming up behind me and passing me.
As it passed, everyone in the car saw that the motorbike was running on its rear wheel only - the fellow was riding on a 4-lane interstate in wheelie mode.
This was sufficiently startling that the entire carful erupted in a chorus of “WHOA” and “HOLY COW!”.
A few seconds later, the cycle dropped to both wheels as the driver did a few lane changes (not terribly safe ones, from what I could see, but he evidently did them successfully.
We were thinking that riding in wheelie position is something best left to a stunt track… not the Beltway, where the ability to, I dunno, STEER QUICKLY is occasionally useful.
Cool and stupid defy definition. Typically it’s “cool” because it’s a display of prowess–people will pay to see stuff like that at the right venue. That pretty much holds true until the performer demonstrates the limit of his prowess by overestimating his abilities. At that point, the entire act becomes “stupid.”
Now if you want to bring “wisdom” into it then the display was wholly unwise if only because he was creating a potentially dangerous distraction to other motorists and modelling unsafe behavior to future riders.
I don’t object to that kind of thing on one condition - they sign their organ donor card. I may need a liver of something some day.
I ride a motorcycle a lot; have since before I turned 16 on dirt and since on the road. I see other bikers do stupid things all the time. I had a guy beside me riding in shorts, short sleeved shirt, flipflops, no helmet, smoke hanging from the corner of his mouth and talking on a cell phone. When we finally hit a light together, I stuck my hand out to shake his and congratulated him for being the dumbest person I had ever met.
Incredibly stupid. Not just for endangering himself but everyone around him.
He takes a spill and you have a lose bike and a lose body bouncing down the beltway. Mutiple cars breaking and swerving can’t be that cool.
Well, it’s entirely possible the poor thing had gotten ahold of some fermented fruit, which was what led him to stagger across a fairly major road. We didn’t attempt to breathalyze the remains
In addition to “stupid” I have to add “assholish.” I saw a jerk doing this a couple of weeks ago…he was in the middle lane of a three lane highway, popping a wheelie. All three lanes behind him were filled. (I was going the opposite direction.) And I couldn’t help thinking that if he fell, not only would they be scraping him off the highway with a shovel, but some poor innocent driver behind him would forever have to live with the memory of running over his body with their car because they had nowhere else to go. Something like that is a major burden to carry.
It’s one thing to be foolish with your own life. Have some consideration for what you might put others through in the process.
Things quite often can be both incredibly cool and incredibly stupid at the same time. This is one of them. My outward reaction is “jeez, what an idiot,” but at the same time a little part of me is kind of going, “oooh, neat.”
And let’s not forget that people doing that (what the OP said) is one of the main reasons why insurance on sport bikes is sooooo much higher then on cruisers or touring bikes.
