Hanging out with motorcycle riders is like hanging out with carpenters: the crux is in the jokes. A sidebar on last year's Turkey Pro National flyer proclaimed "Pray for rain: the sissies will stay home." The jokes are gentle, goofy, and make light of a tremendous amount of fanaticism.

After having been to several rallies on my small Suzuki bike, I will attempt to describe the etiquette here. Here's what happens at a rally: 1) You ride there. 2) You park. 3) You stand around, look at all the bikes, meet friends, and employ the following conversational tools. That's pretty much it.

Mileage is King. Make Miles, Talk About Mileage.
Lots of people have bikes in their garages, but very few people take their bikes out every weekend. I remember an article my dad wrote about skiing in the Italian Alps, where he quoted a French instructor: "Skiing is like sex: everyone is thinking about it, everyone is talking about it, but very few people are actually doing it." Which makes you wonder about that skiing instructor, but the point is to share exactly how many miles you went on your bike on the weekend. 35 miles on a nice weekend, and you're a poser: 100 miles on a cold February morning, and you're one step closer to Valhalla. Also, you get extra points for stories about dogs.

Kate's dad, who in my opinion is so cool that he should be in the Shazam! Council of Elders, never fails to put in 100 miles on his bike every weekend. 100 miles seems to be the magic number, the quota that the elect must fulfill.

Invent Connubial Restrictions
This part I don't like that much. After swapping mileage numbers, everyone stands around and tells stories about how mad their wife was she discovered the $15,000.00 bike in the garage. Or, tells stories about all the rallies he would be visiting if the wife weren't demanding that he fix the screen door. Every single fellow at a rally in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, one Sunday would be going to Daytona every year if it weren't for their wives. How many actually went? One.

My liberal-arts-college fighting blood started to get up the first time I heard this exchange. "Good gracious, these men are lying to their wives! They're calumniating their domestic partner in a way that denigrates her partner-icity! How awful!" But then I realized that the wife is just a shill in these stories: none of these men really want to dedicate their entire lives to purchasing motorcycles and riding around to fire company breakfasts. (I think the ones that did that all died of liver damage.) They want homes, wives and families, and they're happy with them. They just like to, you know, allow to what they could be doing, given the chance. Just like Mark Twain's keelboatmen in Life on the Mississippi:

'Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!'

Feigning Weakness, and the Cowboy Code
Grumbling is also an important part of rally culture. "Snuffy" Smith is part of an important motorcycle triumvirate in Philadelphia. I've had the privilege of going on breakfast rides with him and hooking up with his riding buddies, all looking grizzled on a Sunday morning, all of them complaining about arthritis, all of them bemoaning how old and fat they are, all of them talking about the undignified accessories they use now that they never would have dreamed of using in their youth, viz. taxi-style beaded seats.

They then proceed to climb on their bikes and dust all pretenders, whupping even the rice-rocket riders in their tailored leather suits.

In an email exchange, one of the triumvirate's wives said of her husband, "...as for the old fart biker boys, thank God they have competence to make up for their other limitations, plus the humility and humor to get us all thru and have a bit of fun w/ it." She called it the Cowboy Code: grumble when off the bike, suck it up and keep your mouth shut when riding. Jeez, now that's something to aspire to. Forget about being "all hat and no cattle", these guys are "all cattle and no hat."

So now that I've tried to set the stage some, please have a look at the pictures from the 2001 Turkey Pro National. Standing around looking at bikes, the reverse-cool Slow Race, the grizzled old-timers squaring off against the aspiring, goofy carpenter jokes, it's all there.