Archive for October, 2014

Stupid Questions People Ask

Thursday, October 2nd, 2014

I was looking around on Adventure Rider and ran across a thread titled “Stupid questions people ask you when stopped.” Some of them were pretty good so I figured I’d pass a few along here.

dirt bikes in Dinosaur National Monument

Did you guys ride those here?

The guy starting the thread rides a BMW and he offered several:
Sir, is that a real BMW or it’s just the badge?
Duuuuude, does your bike has two engines?! (asked a number of times, I usually try to explain the boxer design, but if all fails I tell them the right one is the turbocharger)
Since when does BMW make motorcycles?

Then this one is from a woman rider:
Is that your motorcycle? Did you ride that here all by yourself?

How about this:
I stopped at an intersection and a teenager walked up to me and said, “Can I take it around the block?”
My response.” What?? No way.”
His response, “Hey, I’m not playin”
I just laughed and rode off. People are insane.

Here is, as the fellow says, a Ural specific one:
Is that real?

And in the category of “you just don’t get it”:
As I was pulling my helmet on a dude walked up and asked ‘What kind of bike is that?’ I looked down at the tank on my Commando that has large gold letters saying ‘Norton’ and said, ‘it’s a Norton.’ He looked it over once again and asked ‘Is that made by Harley or Honda?’

And this:
The dumbest thing I ever got asked is, “Can you pull a wheelie on that thing or are you too scared?”

This hasn’t happened to me, at least not yet, but I guess it could:
I had a 9 or 10 year old boy ask me if I “get a lot of chicks with that.” This while on my Vstrom with my wife on the back!

Of course we’ve all heard this one:
Aren’t motorcycles dangerous?

Sometimes it’s the responses that are good:
I walk into Starbucks (my regular one) this afternoon, helmet in hand.
“Do you ride a bike?” asks the fine young man.
“No, I’m just very clumsy” I reply.

And this:
I suppose this is a somewhat reasonable question, but someone once asked me what kept me from flying off the bike when I hit a bump. My reply?
“Gravity.”

On another note:
When are you getting some pipes? I could barely hear ya pull up.

And another in the response category:
My new response when I get to school wearing ATGATT:
“You ride today?”
“No, I took the jet.

OK, enough for today. We’ll come back for some more some other time.

Biker Quote for Today

“That’s all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.” — Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance