I just got back from a few days at bike week, and boy, there was not alot of diversity there. I saw thousands of motorcycles over 52 hours and 620 miles, and almost all of them were H/D baggers. I mean, my guess is 80%.
A few sport bikes, a few sportsters, a few English or Austrian bikes, but baggers were predominant.
I ride a bagger myself (Honda, not H/D), and love the fit, power and storage. So I am not ragging on baggers. Just noting the homogeneousness of it all this year.
For those of us familiar with the Laconia Bike Week but not the terminology, what’s a bagger?
Touring bike with hard saddlebags(bolt-on) and fairing. Factory built or aftermarket.
Generic term for a motorcycle with hard bags attached. Also usually has a windshield or fairing, and rides 2 up with a passanger backrest. Think Road King, or Electra Glide.
I just finished re-reading HST’s Hell’s Angels last night - thank your lucky stars that Laconia didn’t turn into a giant riot from those Harley boys. 
Secondary and slightly derogatory definition is a bike that has been “customized” with off-the-shelf parts you carried out of a dealership in a shopping bag. Easy install with a couple screws type stuff. Last bike event I was at, me and another “silvertip” complained to each other for an hour because the entire Sporster class were nothing but a bunch of “baggers”. Over 50 bikes and not a single “one-off” part.
I assume you mean not a H-D part?
I hate bike week.
Lots and lots of useless noise.
Sorry, sparky!, the combined noise of those thousands of motorcycles is one of my favorite parts of bike week
Almost. “One of a kind”. That little hand-made touch that can be copied but not really duplicated. Some stuff that started “one-off” can basically be bought off the wall of some shop now, but props to the first dude who actually dreamed or made one.
A real common “one-off” back in the day was taking a belt buckle from your job or other hobby and turning it into a decoration on your air cleaner cover. Some of the ones I remember seeing done that way are now standard air cleaner designs from the MotherCompany. (HD)
I’ll be up north hiking on Sunday so we’ll be seeing and hearing lots of bikes. I don’t really care about the noise when hiking - you generally can hear highway traffic on a lot of trails - but it’s the traffic on the way home Sunday evening that’s going to bother me.
Thanks. I used to ride but it was strictly transportation.
I didn’t get into the culture side of it.
Me too. I see sound (synesthesia) and motorcycles sound purple. I live just a few hundred feet from one of the more popular routes to Laconia and purple flashes plus noisy motorcycles keep me awake during bike week almost every year.
I find it funny how many bikes I see on trailers travelling up the highway.
I mean, they do know they can ride the bike to the destination, right?
But anyway, I wish the police would start handing out tickets to the idiots with straight, no baffle exhausts.
As a rider myself, it annoys the hell out of me the amount of unnecessary noise that gets pumped into the air all summer long here in NH.
Out in my area we have a classic car event and also a “bike week” every year. I get what you’re saying. Rows and rows of the same damn thing. At the car event, its pastel Chevys. Acres of them. At the motorcycle event, its custom-painted baggers. Acres of them.
Never heard this before.
However, I remember getting all kinds of grief when I worked at a Biker’s Dream store and had my RZ350 parked out front. Grizzled biker-types would insult me as I rang up hundreds of dollars of “Made In China” chromed plastic crap that they would festoon on their “custom” Harleys. :rolleyes:
I was pleasantly surprised to see that you didn’t mean bagger as a derogatory term for an ugly woman - as in “she’s so ugly you have to put a bag over her head before you fuck her.” Of course, a double-bagger is a woman so ugly that you need to put two bags over her head in case the first one breaks.
I know it’s awful, but I find “double-bagger” hilarious as an insult.
I thought a “double-bagger” was when you put one on her and wore one yourself in case hers fell off.
I haven’t been to Laconia in years since the AMA superbike series stopped racing at Loudin.
I could almost bet that I’d not see another big Triumph Tiger duel sport like mine anywhere. I try very hard not to be a snob looking at all the H-D’s painted black with bolt on chrome “custom” bits and bobs screaming ‘I’m a rebel,…just like everybody else.’ So much sameness as far as the eye can see.
But if you ride it and have the Og given sense to leave the baffles in the pipe alone then Good on you, I’ll buy the first beer when we park for the night. Trailer queens and open pipes deserve all the contempt and scorn I can muster.