Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

I’m a member of the most dangerous motorcycle gang in Chicago

by // 18 Comments

We're dangerous not because we are drug-crazed or angry or reckless. We're dangerous because we are the most awkward motorcycle gang in the world, and we are liable to do just about anything.

We agree on a few things. We're not big on Harleys; we're Triumph and BMW guys. And we all call each other, "Ace."

Actually, that's about it.

Some of us like to ride back roads, others like to take highways.

One of us is super punctual, one of us is pathologically late and everybody else is in between.

Some of us navigate by the sun, others need to know exactly where we are at all times.

We've got at least one Republican, but we don't talk about it because we don't like to fight.

There's one dame, but we don't treat her any different, because we wouldn't know where to begin.

Our professions range from writer to hotelier to small-company CEO to mortgage broker to restaurant manager to truck driver to one guy who nobody has any idea what he does even though he's tried to tell us many times.

We have no leader. The dame would probably be the leader if she had her own bike, but she doesn't. So whoever has the strongest opinion on a given issue gets his way. (That may sound like a Democratic System, but it's more like a Rotating Dictatorship.)

We don't even know what to call ourselves. Some of us call us "The Hard Cases," others call us "The Boys from Falconhead Manor."

Whowever we are, we're leaving this morning for a weekend ramble that it's taken us more than half a year to plan. We'll make about 700 miles roundtrip, from Chicago to Cleveland, then to some motorcycle races in a muddy field in the middle of Ohio.

Unless somebody suddenly feels strongly that we should do something else instead.

Wish us luck.

Wish Ohio luck.

Maybe I'll write something about it, if I make it back.

They call us the Hard Cases

by // 3 Comments

Last week you read where four motorcyclists from Veterans of Foreign Wars accompanied U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to the airport to fly to the rehab hospital in Houston.

More power to them. Like all motorcycle clubs who provide escorts, they are fuflilling their own desire to give meaning to their motorcycling, and perhaps they are giving people a feeling of support in the meantime.

And I sure understand that. I have a motorcycle, and I too dig meaning.

Did you know I belong to a motorcycle gang?

Yes, except the gang I belong to doesn't go in for that patriotic stuff, like escorting veterans' funeral processions. We don't strap Christmas gifts to our gas tanks and ride them down Western Avenue to give to children so needy they need gas-soaked presents. And we don't ride to Washington to saw a hole in the ozone over the Vietnam Memorial.

The Harley guys have that stuff covered.

Our gang? The Hard Cases?

We ride Triumphs and BMWs.

Our motorcycle jackets have sleeves.

And we bring our rolling thunder to escort battered wives to court dates, gay couples to weddings, corporate layoff victims to the unemployment office, divorcees to the tavern, drunks to their first AA meeting, poor people through rich neighborhoods and rich people through poor neighborhoods, spinsters with lost dogs to check at the pound, sad people to psychiatrists, terminal patients home from the doctor who just diagnosed them, Catholics to confession, kids to get their first cavities filled and panicky people to IRS offices.

It's not glamorous.

But we're the Hard Cases. That's just how we roll.

(Well, when we're asked. Which is never. So we mostly just ride aimlessly around Illinois looking for curvy roads and, when we're ambitious, to breweries in Wisconsin.)