Last weekend I rode over to Anamosa, IA to visit the motorcycle museum. It was a nice ride on country roads along the Illinois-Wisconsin border and only a couple hundred miles. I rode over Friday afternoon and just had enough time to stop at J&P Cycles to pick up a Mustang seat for the road glide.

Saturday morning I stopped at a local restaurant for breakfast. The food was OK and the people were your typical friendly farm town folk. Nothing like biscuits and sausage gravy with eggs in a small town restaurant! After breakfast I rode a couple blocks down Main Street to the museum, backed the bike to the curb and waited for the place to open. A couple minutes after I arrived the poser pulled up and parked next to me. Now this guy had to be a stud because everything that wasn’t steel on his bike was studded! He’s riding a new Road King Classic. He gets off the bike and looks like he just stepped off a GQ photo shoot set. He’s wearing a Nike baseball cap, black, of course; a Hard Rock Café leather jacket with a Hawaii logo, HD *** less and fringed chaps with western boots. The boots were studded and had that silver toe saver thing. And a white silk scarf. No don’t take me too seriously yet. He was a nice guy, we talked for a couple minutes about the cool weather and what time the place opened.

Aside from the proprietor, he and the two friends he met there and myself were the only people in the place. If you have never been it is an interesting place to visit. It’s not too big and with only 4 people wandering around it’s hard not to hear what other people are saying. I heard one say: “Didn’t Harley just buy a motorcycle company?” Reply: “I think it was a Japanese scooter company.” At that point I knew they didn’t spend any time on this forum. A little while later I heard: “Hey look at the jet bike dragster.” It was a streamliner with two Yamaha engines! They thought the chute opening was the jet engine exhaust. Then they were looking at a steam driven bike and they had no idea how it worked. Then I hear Mr. GQ say the first time he had every been on a bike was in 2003. I heard him say that his CFO may get a bike and if he does they are riding the Dragon next year! The tree of shame is going to have some mighty fine parts added to it!
I could go on and on. These guys had no idea about bikes, mechanical things or the history of bikes, but damn they looked the part! I really wanted to correct them each time I heard some stupid thing said, but I didn’t. I did laugh out loud a couple of times.

So after spending time on this forum and thinking the “poser” thing was a load of crap I now have to say that posers exist because I saw one in the flesh!

 

I'd say that you missed out on a perfectly good chance to do a good deed for the whole community... schooling those guys with the facts, in a museum no less, may have been the best medicine. But hey, I guess laughing at them was fun too...

I'm a fairly new biker, so I'm just a bit put off by the arrogance of your story. I'd love to learn from the older and more experienced riders. I only hope that there are others out there who will stop laughing long enough to correct me when I'm wrong about something I say or do. Now, when it comes to how we dress, I didn't realize that I needed to worry about the f'n HD fashion police...

 

Oh, good grief. Because they don't know anything mechanical and the guy's only been riding for 5 years, he's a poser? How do you know his CFO hasn't been riding his whole life and just is without a bike at the moment?

Sounds like you may be the poser if you have to put people down because of their lack of knowledge about something.

 

I can guarantee you that I could find a subject that I know more about than you. Does that make you a poser? I guess you were born on a motorcycle and were never a beginning rider and just naturally have the whole "what to wear on a motorcycle" style down just right.

 

Was either of these the streamliner you saw?

<EDIT>>>> I found the museum's website and answered my own question - nope - it was Rick Vesco's twin 750cc 4-stroke streamliner. I knew Don though from back when he was the "uniofficial" Yamaha race guy out of his dealership in San Diego in association with Kel Carruthers and Kenny Roberts. Used to race myself (drag race that is) and went to Bonneville in '74. Got lucky too (with Don's help). Now back to the OP's string...

 

It's funny to see another poser thread. What is a biker? What is a poser? I think each of us has a different idea of what motorcycling is to us. I just spent four days in Daytona Beach with some friends, all of which have been riding over 25 years. Two of them wear all the Harley gear; hats,shirts,leather jacket. One wears a vest with a pin from every imaginable place. probably has 6-7 skull rings. They spent 70% of their time at the Ironhorse, Broken Spoke and Froggy's. They look like bikers. Yet when the scoots break guess who they call to help fix them? The guy who dosen't drink, wears whatever discounted t-shirts he can find at WalMart, and has only managed to buy maybe 5 pins from over 50 events. I'd rather walk around all day checking out the venders and of course the other sights.
I love bikes, and ride all that I can as long as it dosen't interfere with family time. I'd rather ride from 35 miles outside of Daytona to town just to spend a little time in the wind. They would rather stay in town so they can party more. But you know what, we all share the common bond of the motorcycle. Just cause they choose not to wrench them doesn't make them posers. Just cause I choose not to look like a Harley ad walking down the street doesn't make me one either. Whether you like bar-hoppin or just pointing the wheel into the wind and going shouldn't matter. You should do it cause you have the right to choose, not because someone might not think you are a true biker, or think you are a poser. As long as you are comfortable in your skin, respect other riders ( no matter what they ride ), and look out for others on two wheels, well you can ride with me anytime.

 

everybody has there own reason they ride.in alot of years that has past it has changed alot.is it bad is it good i'm not the one to say. but i will say this you can't keep the old and that is with anything and i dont know if it is a bad thing. but i think alot of people forget one thing the fact we all was new at one time . and some are lucky enough to get old and some are not.so next time you want to down some body because they are new remember you was there at one time yourself.

 

I guess I don't see how the guy was a poser. He was riding a bike and had been doing so for 5 years. Sure, maybe he was a tacky dresser, but I don't think he was a poser.

 

You forgot to describe for us what you were wearing

 

I didn't realize that there was a specific poser uniform. I love to just wear sneakers and a T shirt and ride to a local biker stop just for the looks I get especially when I am on my Sportser.