I do a lot of thinking when I’m on my Dyna. Whether I’m cruising across the city or enjoying the open road of some highway, I find my mind wanders over a bunch of different topics. I’m sure many of you can relate. Usually my riding time is when I decompress. I allow myself to think through a situation and then I feel it slide off me as I open the throttle a little wider and hear the roar of my wonderful pipes.
This morning, my ride was short. Twenty minutes across town. Still, I found myself thinking.
It hit me this morning. Bikers are a dying breed. 
Like the cowboy, the gladiator, and the viking of the past, bikers will soon be part of our folklore. In many ways, that makes me sad. Because along with the death of the biker, I fear we may lose what the biker stood for.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe this is going to happen in the next few years. It will take another generation or two before bikers are fully extinct, but we are already an endangered species. Fewer and fewer motorcyclists understands the biker attitude and code. Fewer appreciate or even care about what it means to be part of a lifestyle.
I want to be careful in how I say this, because I get very tired of the magazines and blogs that are always talking about the way it was and dismissing everything about they way it is now. However, there is a little truth in some of those observations.
There was a time when you truly felt you were connected to everyone else who rode on two wheels. If you saw another bike, you knew you were among family. Even if you were total strangers, there was a bond that brought you together. You simply got it. And you knew that they did to.
Today, many ride motorcycles because it’s the “in thing.” Or they ride them because it’s practical. They’ve thought through the reasons for owning a motorcycle and in the end, there were more “pluses” than “minuses” on the page, so they went to their local dealership and purchased a new toy. The same dealership takes care of all the maintenance on their machine, and if a newer model becomes available, they quickly upgrade to have the latest and greatest.
A biker is different. Their machine is an extension of who they are. They want to know their ride intimately. That doesn’t mean they necessarily do all their own maintenance, but they are familiar enough to know when something just doesn’t “feel right.”
A biker doesn’t ride because it’s “practical.” They ride because they have no other choice. They cannot not ride. It’s in their blood. It’s how they live. For many, it’s how they want to die … on their machine.
I wish I knew how to say what I feel today, but I’m scrambling for the right words. I guess I just sense that this culture will soon pass. People will talk about bikers they way they talk about the Wild West.
You may argue that we’ve seen this before. After the rise of the biker culture in the 60’s through late 70’s there was a season when it seemed like the biker culture was on it’s last leg. Then came the television shows of the late 90’s and 2000’s. Suddenly it was cool again. Suddenly every dealership in town was expanding. Everyone was buying a motorcycle.
But the culture didn’t really revive along with the new found interest in motorcycles. It saw a small blip as a few of those purchasing machines actually fell in love with the lifestyle. But it was a small number. We’re seeing it now. As the craze comes to an end, and those same people begin selling their bikes in order to purchase the next toy, we are discovering that those who truly became bikers were few.
Yeah, we’re a dying breed. I’m just grateful I got to experience a taste of it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
