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South African’s live in a country with arguably the most liberal Constitution in
the world, but we appear to be governed by folk whose mindset is to regulate
constitutional rights in legislation that rapes that same Constitution of
the freedoms it is intended to uphold. The day that I light a fag after
scoffing my underweight 300g steak at my local steakhouse and get jumped on
by thirty SWAT-clad cops – and get hauled off in an awaiting Ratel because
I was sitting 32mm too close to an open window - is not, I reckon, too far
off.
The
point is that what I’m doing now is illegal. I cannot send you an email
“of a business nature” that you did not solicit. Where I come from you
solicit prostitutes – and maybe also your neighbour’s wife, which in the
neighbourhood I grew up in may amount to the same thing – but not emails.
But there you have it; I’m a criminal – which is by no means a
happenstance foreign to bikers, so maybe I’m safe. Tell me you’ve never
ridden your bike at 61 km/h in a sixty zone and I’ll pay your lawyer to
sue me for my unsolicited email! Or just read the bloody thing and have some
fun.
I’m gatvol with the hardcopy biker magazines on offer in South Africa. If you can find something to read that
is not an advert for anything from bolts that light up to battery powered
gloves that warm your hands, or that does not expand page after nauseating
page on why the circumference of the piston of a slave cylinder - because of
the power-to-weight ratio of its composite materials - produces a point zero
zero seven percent increase in horsepower over the model manufactured the
previous year, the rest of it is written in a style more suited to
three-year olds!
Okay,
maybe I can understand why the writing style is more suited to three-year
olds. Back when they still had “standards” at school, people who went on
to become bikers were generally expelled in about Standard 4. Or they first
finished school, got a PhD, bought a Harley, considered themselves bikers,
fell on their noggins while drag-racing at 25 km/h and now act like
three-year olds.
Can
you imagine – if like me your 40th birthday bash is a foggy
memory - the kak we would have made if we had cellphones with cameras
and MMS and everything back then? I reckon schools would have introduced
hanging to replace “six of the best” as the worst sanction. Today,
errant “learners” are suspended from attending school of a few days.
Hell, we had to bunk to earn that privilege – and “six of the best” was
a small price to pay after the school inspector called to visit your vacant
sickbed - especially if you had stolen the tube from the spare tyre of your
old-man’s car and stuffed a decent slice of it down your rods.
But
all the technical scrambled egg? Personally I don’t give a flying eggnog
why the circumference of a slave cylinder piston makes a bike faster. All I
want to know is if I twist the throttle real quick like, am I going to feel
like an astronaut when that shuttle-thing leaves terra firma? And what must
I chuck in the petrol tank of my club president’s bike so that when he
finally pitches for breakfast on our next run he’s the gat that
gets the cold bacon that looks like it’s being served in a bowl of axle
grease?
True,
many bikers act like three-year olds, but look; you’re reading this I and
wrote it and there are even big words like “solicit” and
“prostitute” to pronounce, so between us I reckon we can lay siege to
the title “literate”.
So
here’s the thing:
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I
read, write and ride in at least two and a half official languages -
plus
a few unofficial ones which I reserve for those times I come off my
bike, but will not employ here as I do not wish to alienate Christians,
Muslims, Jews, whites, blacks, greens, oranges and potatoes – or
mentally/physically challenged left-handed women – although it is very
likely that all classes of people and vegetable will be the subject of
“gipe” from time to time. (Please tell me that you know who John
Cleese is, or that Monty Python is not your pet name for your broekslang.) |
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Reading,
writing and riding are probably the three things from which I derive the
most fun
(if I ignore the inexplicable and overwhelming pleasure I get from the
company and antics of my 21-month old daughter). And, just maybe, like
me, you think I can write in an entertaining manner.
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I
have access to all nature of computer and media gizmos ‘cause I own a
business (man, am I tired of that), and if I need more stuff I can maybe
buy it, bum it or ask you to steal it.
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I
don’t know of any large-scale e-zine (that’s a magazine type thing
distributed by email, in case you were expelled in Standard 4 or fell
off your hog) operating in South Africa for the biker/biking community.
I’ve been sneaking into my office in the dead of night (so my business
picks up the costs and I get to swindle the taxman a bit more), surfing
the net and reading every biker publication I have been able to steal,
to create a database of the email addresses of bikers, wannabe bikers
and Harley riders, bike clubs, bike club members and all those bloody
bike stuff shops and service centers that are the reason all bikers have
second and third bonds on their shacks. The process of collecting email
addresses is far from complete, but I have enough of them to make a
start. If you have email addresses for other bikers – yeah, even
Harley riders – please send them to me. You do not break the law by
doing so; only I do when I send them an unsolicited email. Your mates,
however, may break your neck, or replace your bike with a Harley one
night while you’re sleeping off the effects of a bottle of Klippies,
which is probably worse…
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The
idea is to publish RHYDAR'S
RIDER'S RAG by email every fortnight (at
least for the time being). At this stage it’s a freebie (when last did you
here that?). I have no fixed format in mind other than to make it
entertaining, relevant and useful. To decide what is relevant and useful, I
need your help, so this introductory edition is more an invitation for you
to let me know:
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If
you think an e-zine of this nature may work/have a market. (Someday I
hope to earn some sort of income from it if I can figure out how to get
you to part with your money.) |
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What subject matter/topics do you regard as relevant?
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What
would make the e-zine useful?
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Whether
I should permit business related and/or personal advertising? |
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Whether
I should just bugger off and leave you alone?
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Some
ideas I have include:
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An
editorial type article written by myself (and/or perhaps, one of you)
that is bike/biker/biking related; relevant, amusing, satirical, somewhat
acid/cynical, ripping, but above all topical, well-researched and
factually accurate. (In my non-biker, non-writer life, I’m a forensic
investigator, so I know a thing or two about factual accuracy and the
associated legal implications).
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Top
- next column
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Inviting
your submissions either to publish as is, or to use in the construct of
relevant articles. (“Relevance” is still subject to definition. Help
me!) |
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Providing
a news/notice board facility to bikers/biker clubs/organizations – for
which there should never be a charge.
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A
biker “Agony Aunt” to help solve those nagging mechanical/technical
problems that the experts never seem to know how to correct, and to
which solutions are generally found by bike riders after falling off.
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A
‘for sale” feature, but limited to bikes and bike equipment
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A
facility to trash bad service and anything that brings bikers into
disrepute (including bikers!). I’m all for good, hard, fun
(“clean” is relative), and riding as fast and as far and as often as
possible - but there is “sensible” and “stupid” – and
“stupid” we do not need. |
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A
facility to champion good service and biker antics that add value to the
reputation of bikers and biking in general.
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A
facility for bike owners to network their businesses (if you are stupid
enough to be self-employed – and like me, are damned near indigent).
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Bike
reviews, remembering to include older models ‘cause not every biker
has a 100K plus to spend on something he’s going to ride like a bat
our of hell and regularly bliksem against sundry offending
obstructions. I know of what I speak. My favourite ride is a Ninja that
would almost be as old as me if I were almost half as young as myself.
She’s a quirky stuk strond that still gives late model 1000’s a
skruk - and gives me heart palpitations when I let her rip. Ride her right
and it’s sweet. Get it wrong and you eat dirt and spit teeth. Then you
have to source parts and find specs and maybe
RHYDAR'S RIDER'S RAG can lend a hand.
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A
“Pomp Page” where we can give a particular club or cause a bit of a
punt. I, for one, would like to know the origin and ethos of different
clubs, the symbolism in their patches, etc. It’s history, man – and
more to the point it is biker history. You know, the stuff you’re
interested in?
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A
biker profile page. There are a lot of biker ballies (the white-haired,
bearded oupa types) out there who’ve been there, done it (many, many times
over) and who never did it to get the T-shirt. These stories make for
fascinating reading and certainly contain a lesson or two for the rest
of us “experienced” riders. Although not a “motor” bike story, I
had an oupa that rode his bicycle from Durban to Johannesburg in the
1930’s, the bike frame stuffed with zol, which he sold to the mine
workers - or so family legend has it. Can you imagine the stamina, guts
and determination it took to ride a gearless old balloon tyre bicycle (I
have a photo of him on one of his trips) up the old Van Reenen’s Pass
road? Hell, I’m stuffed just from wrestling my 900 to get to the Windy
Corner viewpoint for a smoke break!
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There
are some allied benefits that don’t belong in THE
RAG, but which the
infrastructure needed to create THE
RAG can make happen:
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How
about an emergency news distribution service (by email)?
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I
already have email addresses for many bike clubs in SA - or at least
for those with a web presence.
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have email addresses for many businesses that service bikers - or at
least those who advertise in the well known bike magazines |
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I
have email address for some individual bikers, mostly stolen from
bike club websites and blurbs advertising bikes for sale. What if I
had the email address for every bike club and every biker in those
clubs? All you have to
do is send the info to me. Sure, not all clubs and riders have email
addresses, but I’ll bet that most have – or at least have access
to – an email address.
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I
have computer and media facilities that allows me to bulk distribute
personally addressed emails (ie. not SPAM) at a rate of about 2000
an hour. |
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Imagine if a biker is
hurt/killed. Imagine if you have to cancel or arrange
an event at short notice. Theoretically, all you have to do is email an
instruction to
THE RAG
and within a couple of hours
your notice could be sent to the email address of everyone on our
distribution database. (And we can offer the service 24/7 with my
existing business resources.)
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How
about establishing and managing a Trust Fund for bikers; not the type
where money just sits and gathers dust (it sure as hell doesn’t gather
much interest), but the kind that is there and ready when there is a
need to raise money when things close to the hearts of bikers happen
that need money to fix; like when club favourite Freddie the Turd prangs
his bike, lands up in hospital but ain’t got a single cent for medical
expenses, or the Turd’s kid needs a new heart or will die – or
whatever else we (and who “we” is must be decided by those to
subscribe to THE
RAG) constitute the beneficiary of the Trust Fund to
be. Let’s face it; bikers belong to that subspecies of homo sapiens to
which things just seem to happen – many of which are not good! (We can
raise money from those businesses that happily take our money when we
need something for our bikes and, in my experience, bikers are not
selfish when a brother/sister biker is really in the pooh.) |
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Recently
a mate, who is a biker and a club member, told me about his mate whose
kid just started high school and was being bullied something terrible.
So this mate called up a few biker buddies and 50 or so bikes all pulled
in together to take the kid to school one morning. No fuss was made, no
threats were offered; just a hell of a lot of heavy looking bikers dropping off a kid at school. There was no more bullying after that.
It’s a silly example, but it’s the kind of thing that is easily
achieved if there is an infrastructure that facilities quick, easy
communication between all bikers; the kind of infrastructure THE
RAG will have to have.
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The
e-zine must tickle, tackle and tingle like the cereal snap, crackles and
pops, to borrow an unoriginal metaphor.
RHYDAR'S RIDER'S RAG
must, above
all, be a
RAG
for bikers – not advertisers. Sure, advertising revenue is
critical for commercial success, but the 80/20 (weighted in favour of
advertisers) – or something of this order – spread that constitutes most
hardcopy magazines, is just too much. Because the cost of distributing
electronic media is a fraction of distributing a hardcopy publication, the
advertising content of an e-zine could be reduced to about 20% of total
content if there is adequate subscription buy-in from readers.
The
layout of the e-zine will look nothing like this and more like a website.
This effort is only to “test the waters” and is being distributed to 750
email addresses. Please respond, even if all you have to say is “bugger
off”!
I’ve
got to go for now. It’s 05h45 and the 21-month old has just woken up. I’ve got to go play with her – or else the day is not worth squat! I
leave you with a final thought; take pity on the dyslexic, atheist,
insomniac hog owner who stayed up all night sitting on his Harley wondering
if there really is a Dog.
Ride
safe...ride awesome...and THINKBIKE
LOONE RHYDAR
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