The Nastiest Column About Motorcycles Ever Written?

By Bud Wilkinson

While checking out the website Sports on Earth earlier this week, I came across a very funny story written by Alan Siegel about the some stunts staged by the Buffalo Sabres back in the 1970s and 1980s that were thought up by the hockey team’s “public relations czar” Paul Wieland, such as the drafting of a player from Japan who didn’t exist.

Later in his career, Wieland (pictured) moved from Buffalo to the Boston area and wrote a column for the “Sentinel & Enterprise” newspaper in Fitchburg, MA. Buried in the Sports on Earth piece was a short tale of how a 2002 diatribe by Wieland that mocked motorcyclists resulted in death threats. It contained a link to the 2002 column, so I read it and followed up by contacting Wieland , who is currently a lecturer at St. Bonaventure University.

But first, here’s the column:

They come as if the results of a warm day’s hatch. If you’re caught unawares, they seem to fill your senses, buzzing angrily and clouding your vision; swarming around you and threatening to attack. 

They are certain harbingers of full spring in New England. 

May flies? 

Black flies? 

Yellow jackets? 

Mosquitoes? 

None of the above. 

For it’s the time of the biker of which we speak, the phalanxes of motorcyclists who hit the roads as spring takes away black ice, and replaces it with black mood when one is stuck behind columns and rows of the bikers careening down the tarmac.\

Perhaps this is being too harsh. We all have been told of the wonderful things biker groups do to serve their communities, raising money for good causes, holding Marlon Brando look-alike contests. 

We realize they serve as a rough-edged form of population control, as the wildest sub-species of bikers annually spins itself into oblivion against dozens of New England trees and Massachusetts stone walls. 

Those of us familiar with the annual Darwin Awards, which go to people who kill themselves in most creative and stupid ways, find there’s a who genre of bikers who are Darwin candidates every day.

Consider riding down Route 12 heading north towards New Hampshire and finding oneself being passed on a blind curve by an idiot on a motorcycle who is weaving by you and other drivers at 20 miles per hour faster than traffic is moving. 

Scares the hell out of you, doesn’t it? 

No, whatever it is that drives men and women to buy and drive motorcycles on public rights-of-way, it isn’t common sense. Unless common sense is not seriously considering how fast one can die when thrown from the seat of a speeding Harley which suddenly stops speeding before your body does. 

I have a friend who has done a very informal observational study of bikers, and he has a chicken-and-egg theory about what makes them tick or is it “varoom”? 

One word, he says. “Starch.” 

I was puzzled at the least when he first said “starch” and I demanded an explanation. “Did you ever notice how many bikers are really big people?” he asked. “I mean there are some guys and gals who make cruiserweights look like bathtub dinghies. They are so big, I’m convinced they do the weight thing to keep from exiting those Harleys and Suzukis at high speed.

“Those bikes are really heavy and really powerful, and if you don’t watch, they’ll get away from you in a trice. So the best thing is to weigh as much as you can. That way you won’t fly off as easily.” 

So what does “starch” have to do with this, I asked him, thinking of the kind I get on my dress shirts at the laundry. 

“If you really want to be heavy and stay on your bike, it’s logical you have to eat a lot of starchy foods, like french fries, rice, or taro root. Now it isn’t easy to ride from place to place and try and eat greasy foods like that, particularly if you wear leather gauntlets like any good biker. The food gets cold quickly as you motor down the road. And how do you hold taro root or rice balls with gauntlets on? So it’s not a very appetizing way to get the starch you need to keep the bike connected with your copious seat. 

The answer, said my friend, is beer. “Beer is about the starchiest substance you can drink,” he said. “It can be consumed directly from bottle or can, cold or tepid, and it remains palatable under any circumstances. If a biker really needs a starch fix, there are a million places to grab a six-pack along the road. And six-packs fit neatly into a saddlebag over the rear wheel. 

My friend insists that bikers are out running around all day in warm weather because they need to replenish their starch shortage from a winter in hibernation. “Just how many bikers do you see in the winter anyway?” he asked. 

“They must go into caves or under rock projections to stay out of the cold and snow. And that means all summer they need to scramble to get enough starch into their bodies so they can live through the winter hibernation period. 

My friend has convinced me. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that bikers act the way they do out on the road because of that irresistible need to find starch. Why else would a pack of them risk their lives and sometimes ours to pass us on the highway, and then turn off at the next road house which has a flashing neon “cold beer” sign hanging in a front window?

And it’s a pretty sure thing none of the ones I’ve seen drink “light” beer. 

It’s easy to see why some riders would be outraged by Wieland’s column – the kind of riders who have no sense of humor. We’ve all seen lines of heavyweight cruisers outside of seedy bars and we’ve all probably been passed by “squids” riding like idiots on sport bikes. There is a lot of truth in Wieland’s words, even if he does somewhat regret them.

“I was writing a weekly general column for the paper in Fitchburg, and thus always was looking for topics,” he explained in an email exchange. “Shortly before the column was written, I was driving to my summer place in northern Vermont with my wife and daughters when a bunch of motorcyclists (all guys) came crowding me on a two-laner in New Hampshire (Laconia, there they went).

“I was going 55 or 60 so I wasn’t impeding them. But a couple decided to play games with me, veering toward me as they passed and then cutting in sharply in front of me. When I slowed down to rid myself of them, they slowed down and continued their juvenile exploits.

“I was madder than hell, and a couple days later penned that piece of vitriol.
I must say. It was about the nastiest thing I ever wrote. The copy editor didn’t change anything, but emailed me that I was opening a big can of worms. I didn’t care. I was still angry.

“After it was published, the damn thing went viral. I received hundreds of critical emails from throughout North America, including four death threats. I should have toned the thing down, or sat on it for a week, instead of filing it right through.

“I am not ashamed of the piece as a  journalist. I was a columnist. But I had no inbred antagonism toward motorcyclists. When I was in high school, I used to motor around occasionally using a buddy’s small bike. And my uncle was a motorcycle cop, an uncle I thought was the coolest guy in the world.

“It just proves that losing one’s temper can have unexpected consequences.”

Actually, the response to the column proves that Wieland’s thesis that some motorcyclists are jerks is accurate.