From: brucer@drutx.ATT.COM (RobinsonB)
Newsgroups: rec.autos,rec.motorcycles,rec.bicycles
Subject: Re: Crossposting
Summary: brucer bashes cross-poster bashers
Date: 14 Apr 92 16:30:27 GMT
Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO


Cross-postings, boon and bane of the net.
I don't want to read anything about "that feller's"
interest, I don't have time for him, he's not in my "group".
I only want to riiiiiiiide on my mo........der...sickle.

So we have a bunch of folks who do things as different
as apples and dildoes, like one dude rides a 125cc ring-ding in
a muddy gulch filled with snakes and rotten leaves, or another
goes zuuuush down highway 101 on (should say "in") a Honda
two-wheeled winnebago with stereo set at nine and Marge on
the back doing needle-point, or another, a beer-gut in a greasy
white tank-top wearing an iron helmet painted with a swastika
riding a chopped hog packing his girl-friend Flower on the
back, a burned-out hippy chick wearing levi shorts and
bare tits.

And some pre-pubescent frog-fucker riding on the latest and
fastest ZXXR1400 rice-rocket saying, "you goddamned bicyclists
(or cager) stay the hell out of rec.motorcycles,
we don't want YOUR kind in OUR group".

Well, thanks, squid, for the help, but I don't have too much
trouble keeping clear in my mind what groups I want to
associate with.  Even the most narrow devotee of the motorcycle,
I venture to guess, has at one time or another in his or her
life, ridden in a car.  I mean, there were recently a couple of
public love affairs pursued in r.m., and I for one would not
have wanted to miss the delicious opportunity to watch; a lot of
flame fests have little to do with two-wheeled machines;
in fact, quite a lot of what goes on in r.m. has more to do
with people that with motorcycles, and, hard as this is to
believe, automobile drivers, almost without exception, are
people.  So are bicyclists.  (Of course, the jury is still
out about drivers/riders in New Jersey.)

I lived in New Jersey for, oh, about seven years.  It was a
great experience; some of the finest motorcycling country in
the whole US of A.  But, I got sucked into driving my car like
those folks out there do.  When I came back to Colorado I had
to go into therapy to re-learn how to be a human being on the
highway.  I mean, I was running through rain puddles to splash
the bicyclists, I was cutting people off on the highway, just
an all-around bounder.  But I'm feeling much better now.  :-)
Now I'm real careful of my fellow rider/driver; we have one
thing in common, more in common than "it's a motorcycle/bike/car",
and that is, we are people, getting out on the road, enjoying
our schtick, enjoying each other and the passing scene.

If you'll forgive a couple of re-posts from January of 1990,
I'll provide some illustration of my point.  Back when I still
had a Norton, Spring stirred forgotten urges to life, started the
blood flowing, and moved me to post the following:

>The arid bitter grip of winter has iced Norton to silence.

>(God, what a pretentious thing to say; winter stranges me, I work at
>Chopin, watch a lot of box, and code at terminal 'til I get hemorrhoids.
>And, of course, eat, drink, and ski excessively.  I am uncertain
>that I like to ski.  Skiing, hiking with a heavy pack, riding a
>motorcycle in a snow-storm, these belong to that set of activities
>more enjoyable in the retrospect.)

>I've read with great and avid interest the postings on preparation of
>the bike for Winter, vowed diligently to drain tanks of gas and oil,
>store battery in cozy warmth, deal technically with carburetors,
>and so forth and so on.  But then, when the time finally comes, when
>blood thickens, breath fogs, mind fogs, piano beckons, then the old
>Brit sits, forlorn and abandoned to the freeze.  Oh well, it's a Brit,
>right?  If it can't stand the cold it should have been born Japanese.

>Winter is most important in the cycle of seasons.  Summer is far
>too easy, so characterless, a perpetual creamy dedication to growth and
>self-indulgence (I was born and raised in California; I left, bored).
>Success in Summer is to be taken for granted, like throwing a ball and
>hitting the ground.  Good boy!  Star!  Winter, though, is the time
>for inner growth, a time to learn style and grace, taste wine, music,
>appreciate the inexorable tick of the clock, to worship subtlety,
>darkness, death, and the yan.

>A few weeks ago I roused Norton from hibernation, kicked the reluctant
>beast to cranky life and rode.  Some dusty snow lingered at the edges of
>the world, reflecting the painfully blue and cloudless sky.  The icy bone-
>dry air, laden with pre-winter fertilizer odors, whipped and scoured
>my face (there is pride, life, in small sufferings, comfort in the grave.)
>Sand on the roads, patches of black ice in the shadows, the fingers of
>chill seeking entry through the armour, leather and levi armour, these
>diversities demand alert participation, attentiveness.  Easy throttle,
>smooth clutch, practicing perfection every instant, the mind works,
>the heart flies.  Sliding through the crisp wind, in subliminal big-twin
>thunder, I pass a pack of bicyclists stroking in unison, brothers in
>the wind.  And on and on we ride.

>West, the Rockies are huge and frozen, beckoning massively, but forbidden,
>beyond my will to suffer on an open motorcycle.  So I keep to the plain,
>and rumble through the open empty countryside, valves, rods, pistons,
>wheels, chains, wind, muscles, mind, and soul, wheeling and turning as
>the crow through the many dimensions of wind and world and imagination.
>This short ride at the cusp of Fall-into-Winter captured for me
>the zen of the two-wheeled machine.  And the essence of Winter.

That wasn't about motorcycles at all.  It was about me,
about riding, about being out amongst it, letting it wash through
my rime encrusted soul, cleaning and enlivening the spirit.
On reading the above, one of the my most favorite people,
Laurie Abbot, posted the following response:

>I have not, within remembrance, ridden in the daytime; maybe 15 years
>ago, but lately only at night.  It is always night here, anyway, in
>the wintertime; it is black on the lake, black and cold and glittery,
>and the city sits beside dimly lit, all black shadows and cold steel
>and distant lights.  We fly down Lake Shore Drive, slicing away the
>lake from the land, slipping in and out of the flicker of a headlight;
>I fold myself into a small black shadow behind and hover on the edge
>of a knife.  No, this is not soft snow dusting away as we roar past;
>it is fierce black ice that cracks away, as it shatters over us with
>an angry expulsion of breath-stopping wind.  No brotherhood here; only
>passing dark cars that freeze as quickly as they disappear.

>We dance on the edge of the knife in the wintertime here; we slice
>through that glittering icy darkness on the edge, loving the ride and
>hating the winter.  Between the lake and the land, between the cold
>and the black, there is a fine sliver of motion, as chilled as my
>hands, that you can find if you ride the Drive at night in the
>wintertime.

No mention of "motorcycle" here; she could have been in a car and
felt the same things, or on a bicycle.  Or even on roller-blades!
So, cut the guy some slack; if he feels like cross-posting, welcome
him with open arms as a brother.  If he's scared away by your
hostility, we will all be poorer for his absence.

Enough about that, then.

I can sense in the corridors, on the wind, rumbling in the earth,
the question on everyone's lips.  People gather in the streets,
in coffee-shops, in public places everywhere with but one common
thought, one burning need to know: "where's brucer".

Well, here I am, humble as always, your servant and friend,
back from the dead, with news.  Here's what's been going on with me:

	- "Morgenstern", my Suzuki, was destroyed by a Vandal.

	- My son Jimmy was arrested for car theft; given probation.
	  He's back with his mother now, trying to rebuild his life
	  and the above Suzuki.

	- Jayne and I have sold our truck, camper, and the rabbit.
	  We have bought a 1971 Datsun 240Z (more about which later)
	  and a 1986 Volvo GL(E?) Turbo with "Intercooler", whatever
	  the hell that is.

	- We are planning to sell the house and the hot-tub this Spring.
	  Maybe even the furniture and the cats.

	- We have made an offer on a beach-house near Yachats (pronounced
	  "yahahts") along the central Oregon coast.

	- I have told my boss that I'll work until the end of this
	  contract (December) and then I'm history.

	- Jayne will teach, if possible.  I'm going to try real hard to
	  kick the software habit; perhaps I'll sell used cars or bikes,
	  write a book, paint a picture, who knows.

	- unless of course one of the various job-opportunities in the
	  Commonwealth of Independent States to which I have applied
	  materializes.

Last night I spent three hours under "Mustard" trying to change the
goddamned headlights.  "Mustard" is what my neighbor Bill has nicknamed
my 240Z (it's painted baby-shit yellow).  Bill, with whom r.m. readers
are familiar as one of the neighbors who vastly enjoys standing around
giving advice, drinking my beer, and watching me bash my knuckles and
listening to me curse the various basket-case vehicles that I afflict
upon myself.  As he did last night, while I attempted to cram both my
arms, several tools, and half my body into the space between the tire
and the inside of the wheel well, trying for an hour to unscrew one
single screw.  And at the end of all this, the headlight still didn't
work. "@#$%^&*(&^%$#^_)#&^%)((^%#" was my general opinion on the
situation.

So, with the august wisdom of one as long in the tooth as I,
I've replaced the opportunity for self-abuse through maintenance
of an old British motorcycle with the opportunity for self-abuse through
maintenance of and even older Japanese sports-car.  And instead of
writing endlessly tedious monologues about lying on my back on a
cold concrete floor while Norton drips hot oil in my face, and
posting them to rec.motorcycles, said same monologues will cause
the denizens of rec.autos to run screaming for cover, crying
"Oh God, not another 'brucer' posting."

The question burning in my mind is:

	"should I cross-post to rec.motorcycles?"

-- 
    66
     >
     ^ .................. the edited "brucer" (DoD #0002)
Newsgroups: rec.autos