Poker Run or V Twin Lemmings

It's lemming weekend in Key West:

I find, thanks to the abundance of information on the Internet, that in real life lemmings do not actually throw themselves into the ocean, en masse, off cliffs. However in popular imagination the label "lemming" carries a negative connotation, and like 'em or not, the lemmings have been massing in Key West this weekend. For merchants, who are the backbone of our tired tourist economy, Poker Run is an economic boost at a time of year when visitors are flagging and hurricanes are strengthening. So the residents of the city suffer hundreds, perhaps thousands of motorcycles to come roaring onto the island and make noise, clog streets and allow their riders to strut their lack of imagination.

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In labeling these poseurs as lemmings I know I am denigrating them and I find myself doing that not because they are unworthy tourists, or feeble spenders, but because they aren't motorcyclists worthy of the name. And that's a minefield I have laid out for myself, sure, but "lemming" is a label that just won't get out of my head as I watch them rumble around town in our blinding white sunshine.

They ride large bright expensive machines, almost all of them Harleys, many many of them too impractical to ride to Key West, and the big v-twins come to the Keys on trailers so their owners can rumble down the Overseas Highway at 40 mph free from the cares of road grime, road dirt or road aches. And to my purist "motorcyclist" way of thinking that is pretty feeble.

As the rider of a modest Vespa (pictured here: my wife's even more modest 150), I am not exactly in a position to put myself at the head of a pack of "motorcyclists" but I ride a lot. I fear I ride many more miles than most of the lemmings. I know this because mileage is not something one covers wobbling around on a showroom clean motorcycle, daily riders need to know how to ride, turn, deal with traffic, slow down, stop and start without wobbling stalling and generally riding like a putz, to use a term my Jewish wife would understand. Key West downtown looks like a carnival ride, not a gathering of road-hardened motorcyclists.

Many people who don't ride Harleys despise the machines themselves but don't count me among their number. The Harley Davidsons that come out of the factory are fine machines and I've tried my hand at riding them, and propose to rent them again in the future as they are quite enjoyable and surprisingly fast. However to see them kept and polished as toys instead of a means of getting around, or even as a way of life, is a shame to me. Harleys don't light my inner fire as other machines do ( Vespas, Moto Guzzis, Triumphs for example) but they do the mundane job of transporting people very well and with flair too.

I wish Poker Run (a worthy fund raiser by the way) attracted a real variety of riders, people with motorcycles that are truly interesting, unusual machines ( I saw one classic Triumph all weekend), machines worthy of inspection that would turn Duval Street into an outdoor bike show, not a backdrop for some gruesome Urban Cowboy leatherette backdrop.

I guess watching these weekend warriors dress up in fancy dress and ponce about on the Highway abusing these thoroughbreds and treating them like lap dogs, plain pisses me off. Hell, I need to find something more worthwhile for my ire!