Summer Is Gone – Now Things Get Really Ugly!

Yes, Summer has left us yet again. Summer is the favorite time of year for most bikers I know. It doesn’t matter where you live, Summer has different rewards for many.

If you live up north, Summer is the time when your season of riding is in full bloom! Gone is the cold harsh Winter and the giant question mark of Spring. You never know what kind of weather you’ll get in the Spring. It could be a gorgeously warm one day and blistering cold the next. In the Summer you always know you’ll have great weather for a ride!

If you live in the South, it’s a different animal than up north when it comes to riding. In the South, especially where I live in Florida, you can pretty much ride year-round! It can get a bit cold at times in the Winter but that’s why God created leather. Put on your jacket, gloves and chaps and you’ll be good to go! In the Summer it can get blistering hot but once you’re in the wind it’s considerably cooler. It sucks if you have to ride in the city where you are constantly stopping and starting. As you’re sitting at a light the heat from the blazing sun combines with the heat coming off your engine and it can get pretty uncomfortable. It used to be worse prior to the year 2000 here in Florida. Before that, you also had to wear a helmet and THAT really made you sweat! Thank God for ABATE and the abolishment of the mandatory helmet law.

The coming of Autumn and Winter signals an end to many things in the biker world. Up north it’s obvious. Depending on how far north you live, it still means cold weather and many folks have to garage their bikes for the duration.

In the South, especially Florida, The Autumn and Winter months have a different connotation. While it can still be warm enough to ride, we now have a pest that comes when the weather turns cooler. This pest is even worse than those pesky Love Bugs that are a pain in our ass twice a year for a couple weeks each. Love Bugs are a mess than can splatter your windshield to the point to where you can no longer see through it, or if you’re like me and hate to use a windshield and prefer to having the wind in your face, the Love Bugs can be a REAL inconvenience. You definitely don’t want to ride with your mouth open! YUCK! I once had a live Love Bug get into the right lens of my goggles and was walking around in there. I had to wait till I stopped to get that bastard out of there!

No, this pest makes Love Bugs a welcome guest. This pest is what we call a Snowbird. These things can actually kill you and are the murderers of many bikers every year! Snowbirds are old retired people that live up north in the Summer but come down south to escape the ravages of Winter. They clog our roads and often drive 40mph in a 55mph zone. They often haven’t a clue as to where they are going and will change lanes or turn for seemingly no reason and little, if any, notice. You can be riding behind one of these menaces and have them stop dead in their tracks to look at a yard sale going on! They really don’t care. In fact, they expect the people living in Florida year-round to not only tolerate their behavior, but to actually thank them for coming down every year and boosting our economy. Yes, they actually do help our economy and thanks to the tourism dollar we don’t have a state income tax in Florida. But sometimes my wife and I will be relaxing after getting off work, where we often interact with these rude and sometimes downright MEAN people, and have to listen to the almost constant scream of ambulance sirens running all around tending to our “Winter Visitors”. We’ve come to call these sirens the “Wail of the Snowbird”.

The law certainly doesn’t help us. If a cage driver kills one of us, they most likely will get a ticket averaging $180. ABATE is currently trying to change this so there will be stiffer penalties for car drivers who kill bikers. Maybe this will make them think twice about cutting us off so they can turn right into the flea market from the left lane.  Be sure to join your local ABATE chapter and help make it safer for us all.

So, let’s brace ourselves for what the cold weather brings. For those of you up north, you can start saving money and plan on what you may want to do to your bike. Then you can bring it down to show off at Daytona in March! Or, if you live in the South, ride safe while dodging these treacherous villains that are out to kill us.

This is just my two cents worth, give me yours!

Till next time, let’s be safe out there.

Johnny