This past fall I was in the truck on my way home from running some errands when I saw a fellow biker stranded off the exit ramp near my home. Instinctively I pulled over to ask him if he was okay and he told me he had run out of gas. I told him I only live a few blocks away, and I had a fuel bottle in my garage I would put some fuel in and bring it back to him in about five minutes. When I got back the guy was still there he put the fuel in the tank, thanked me, and tried to pay me. I told him “We are bikers, that’s what we do; we look out for each other.” We shook hands
and went on with our day, to me that is an example of the biker code in its simplest form we are bikers and we look out for each other.
When I got back into riding a couple guys that lived down the block from me had bikes and were seasoned riders, these are some pretty cool dudes, they knew that I hadn’t been on a motorcycle in many years (since I was a teen and would sneak over to my buddy’s house and ride one of his two motorcycles) and was rusty. They took me out to some of the low traffic roads in our neighborhood and would hang with me while I got used to riding again, that was my first real exposure to the code.
Since then I’ve had many opportunities to practice that code myself, whether it be going on a charity ride, lending a kind word to one of my biker family members, dropping what I’m doing when I hear one of my brothers or sisters has gone down, or running home to grab a fuel bottle for biker brother I’ve never met before. I don’t bring this up to toot my own horn but to bring attention to all the non-bikers out there who don’t understand what the code is about. It’s about doing the right thing, not expecting to get anything in return, and family.
What I saw in the news this week regarding the shooting at the Colorado motorcycle Expo upset me. That’s not what the code is about, all it does is paint a bad picture of bikers and takes the spotlight away from all the good that we do, the charity, the giving, and the brotherhood. Hopefully, this incident does not cast a long dark cloud over the lifestyle we enjoy and love.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that once riding season is in full swing throughout the country that this incident is just another bleep on the news cycle and that another Kardashian or ridiculous media driven scandal takes the headlines away from anything negative regarding bikers. We are great people, we are the ones that wave to each other as we pass on the road, buy each other a cold beverage at a watering hole during a day of riding, and will pull over on the side of the road to help a biker we’ve never met before.
Ride or Die,
The V-Twin Blogger
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