I’m bikers not a gengster!

I scoured the net to try and see if my search could give me a precise definition of a biker. I found not one but many tweets that hand-held me and lead me right to the centre of a biker’s mind and life. In fact, it is the text of one of these tweets that I ultimately selected for this post that has given me the title that you now read!

Who cares for grammar if I can
Go from here to there and scan,
Taste and feel
While the wheel
Takes me everywhere and where I began!

The tweet that I read before I could read others did give me a fair insight into the truth of a biker… no, it has nothing to do with literacy or education, but everything to do with an indomitable will to go where no ordinary mortal ever dares to go! Yes, bikers, I found during this search, are a brave lot who have the courage to stand before you without resorting to subterfuge and ask you to accept them as they are.

A fine emotion, I said to myself. I love it.

The twitter world was again spun like a Buddhist prayer wheel and, as prayer wheels always do, came up with yet another insight. This time it was from castrolbiking:

Bikers, I knew, were always reaching out to seen and yet unseen corners of the planet and were almost like the explorers who wanted to be there to later tell us all, the ordinary mortals, of the safety of going into the heart of the unknown!

Tweets like this one tell us that bikers are down-to-earth about their interactions with all things tangible and intangible… and they love the food that has a local flavour. No fuss there at all. I’d say there is an intrepid scientist within each genuine biker who spurs him to go ahead and seek out the truth everywhere, on every turn.

And as they move from one place to another, the bikers are surely never averse to lending a helping hand.

Every biker knows how hurting a PMS or a Parked Motorcycle Syndrome can be, so they rally around and make sure that even a stranded stranger is able to get going as fast as possible. Bikers know that it is never the terrain inconsistencies, that is, an unhelpful geography that can debilitate, but a human overlooking the dilemmas of another can quite break the toughest!

Bikers, of course, face all sorts of complaining rants with a lot of stoicism and despite such obvious stances move to win hearts by their spirit of adventure that meanders through an always-ready-to-help attitude. Some of the tweets that went on and on and on about real or imagined inconveniences that the non-biking populace continually imagines and links up with the biking community can cover aspects from a simple ‘noise pollution’ and ‘traffic hazard’ to ‘odd sense of dress’ and an ‘unwholesome arrogance’!

I remember an interesting conversation I once had with a friend from Delhi Police who said, ‘There a lot of misconceptions about bikers in the public.’

‘What sort of misconceptions?’ I asked.

‘You know, that they’re rowdy and that they create a nuisance on the road and also that they are responsible for a lot of crimes.’

‘Well, what do you have to say?’

‘I too ride a bullet. I too ride when I’m not in my uniform. I too have a small group of my own and we go out on long biking trips whenever we are able to plan one,’ he replied with a smile, ‘and I work against the criminals. I am there to help when I see trouble anywhere. I have no arrogance about the powerful bike that I love controlling!’

‘So I know,’ I replied, for I knew this friend and this friend’s friends and I knew that they were excellent and warm-hearted bikers.

No wonder then that I found a lot of tweets sent by bikers attempting to wipe the kind of stigma we’re talking of here. Which, incidentally, also means that bikers are not quite techno-challenged though sometimes their expression may allow you to presume that they are. But that probably is because they are a carefree lot and hardly try to edit their visible selves and always present themselves as they are. What you see is what they are, so to say… no subterfuge or camouflage there!

While analysing these tweets I realised how much perception has to with opinions generated, expressed, and shared. Just look at the unreasonableness of even the basis of tweets like these:

However, just read this tweet and you’ll know what sort of friendliness stays put inside a biker’s heart…

There is love and romance
And a lot of happiness
That will come and dance
If you un-stress
And go and feel the breeze
Play with your hair
It lets you unfreeze
Making life so fair! 

Bikers are certainly a careful, intelligent, self-learning, self-correcting, friendly, and carefree lot and a lot amongst them have written witty one-liners that most other bikers the world over read and decide on their own code of existence. Of all the one-line witticisms that I came across on the net, I’ve selected ten of them and present them as the 10 commandments that even non-bikers can pay heed to:

1. Bikes parked out front mean good chicken-fried steak inside.
2. A good rider has balance, judgment, and good timing. So does a good lover.
3. Routine maintenance should never be neglected.
4. It takes more love to share the saddle than it does to share the bed.
5. Don’t ride so late into the night that you sleep through the sunrise.
6. A bike on the road is worth two in the shed.
7. Well-trained reflexes are quicker than luck.
8. The twisties, not the superslabs, separate the riders from the squids.
9. It didn’t look that far on the map.
10. Don’t argue with an 18-wheeler.