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I have never actually wanted to strike another biker of any sort until recently.  A few weekends ago we were doing the domestic thing and attending a friend’s son’s fourth birthday party.  That gives you the age bracket.  The oldest kid was probably six with my one-year-old daughter being the youngest.

It was at a place called Pump It Up, which is a place to rent for private parties.  They have the big ‘air-filled toys’ like jungle gyms, slides, basketball, etc.  Anyway, the building is in an off the beaten path strip mall with buildings on each side of the access road / single row parking.

When we were leaving I heard an inline-four fire up across the lane some 100 ft. away.  I looked and it was a newer generation R6 with custom paint (first warning).  He proceeds to do a burnout on the sidewalk where he was parked (second warning) for quite a while.  Afterwards, he then starts doing wheelies up and down the parking lot in between two single rows of cars…say five to six times.

Did anyone get hurt?  Nah.  Am I a safety nazi?  Nah.  I’m 90% pissed because I am absolute that everyone who left there that night had a sour taste in their mouth for sport-bikers.  I am 10% pissed for the ‘what could have happened’ had a kid gotten loose, etc. and ran in between the cars.  It was just stupid. 

I have no doubt in my mind that had there been no crowd, no show would have commenced.  Its a security thing.  My three year-ld sleeps with her ‘dolly’ and my one year-ld sleeps with her ‘blanket’.  In the same vane, this punk needed attention.

As sport bikers, we are often guilty by association.  This is very different than having an asshole for a friend kind of guilt by association as that can be deserved!  In most cases, we are innocent by-standers catching the shrapnel from the nay-sayers who have the limited perspective of seeing the kind of stunts that this particular douche-bag demonstrated.

The stunta crowd often wonders why fellow sport-bikers don’t like them or their riding style as if we are one-in-the-same.  We are not.  While I am hardly immune from passing on the double yellow in the twisties, I have never gotten yelled at from a cager.  I can understand wanting to mess around on an empty road / abandoned area…whatever.  But to pull this crap in as public of a plce with little kids running around was just stupid.

Stupid is as stupid does I guess.