A Very Brief Guide To Motorcycling Terminology
I broke my leg when I was 24. Actually, I should say Boscoe, my best friend’s dog, broke my leg. He had a habit of launching himself at full speed and piling into unsuspecting bystanders like a furry, 70 pound cannon ball. He licked my face as I writhed around on the ground, and it slowly occurred to me I would not be starting my new job in two days (trimming Christmas trees) or moving my stuff to my new place that weekend. Boscoe, in a matter of seconds, had reduced me to 155 pounds of dead weight which, luckily, my older sister would feed and shelter for the next two months.
After the R & R and on two reasonably sturdy legs again, I was desperate for an income and took the first job I could find: piling lumber on the night shift at a local sawmill. Looking back thirty years, I’m amazed at my resilience. To go from languishing on a couch to throwing fresh-cut, red oak railroad ties around in the dark on 10 degree January nights makes me wonder who I was then. I lasted there three or four months and would be hard-pressed to remember many of the details of that job (though, come to think of it, there weren’t all that many), but I do remember one morning. I had gotten home at the usual , and too exhausted to go to sleep, I began writing a note to my girlfriend about my job. Somehow the letter evolved into simply a list of the words that had become part of my new sawmill vocabulary. Twenty minutes and one can of Grain Belt beer later I had 147 words.
Some of those terms anybody could probably define, like “chipper” (a deafening machine that, I had been warned, could reduce you to a basket of quarter-sized chips in roughly two seconds if you happened to slip on the slush and fall into the conveyor) or “Debarker” (a massive, toothed cylinder which tore the bark off logs and whose logo was a muzzled Great Dane). But others were more esoteric, like “picaroon” (a deft little ax-like tool for grabbing slabs of wood, at least until it was torn from my hands and run through the chipper), “green chain” (where I worked, but not because, as I first thought, I was green), “peavey,” “cant,” “dog,” and “flitch.” I’ve lost that list along with the memory of most of the more obscure words, but last night (more insomnia, but a bottle of Boulevard Pale Ale this time) I was reminded how each facet of my life has had its own language, its own jargon, and the words I choose at any particular time may show more about me than how I put them together. Enter motorcycling.
So here goes, a few entries from my current motorcycle usage lexicon, woefully incomplete, quite possibly inaccurate and absolutely arbitrary (in no special order):
Tank Slapper: Describes a phenomena where your handlebars begin to wobble back and forth, more and more violently until you regain control or suddenly, they stop. This often does not end well.
High Side: Often confused with a “lay down” or a “get off” (which are really variants of the “low side”), a “high side” is probably the worst possible consequence of a “tank slapper”, with you leaving the bike over it’s high side, and coming down, well, where are those big piles of leaves when you need them?
Stoppie: The opposite of a “Wheelie.” Driving down a four lane through a commercial district, a biker on a YZ1 in the lane alongside us was doing “stoppies” at each red light, grabbing his front brake at the last second to raise his rear wheel a foot or two off the ground. He eventually got a little carried away, and, with his bike reaching a dangerous angle, let up on the brake and lurched awkwardly into the intersection, narrowly missing getting “T-Boned” (self-explanatory). My wife said, “That looks dangerous, is there something wrong with his bike?” “No,” I answered, “there’s nothing wrong with the bike…”
Squid: I first heard this one used by a buddy as two kids on sportbikes howled by. “Squids?” I said. “Squids,” he answered, “Stupid, Quick, dead.”
Softtail/Hardtail/Knucklehead/Panhead/Shovelhead: They all mean “Harley” to me, but, come to think of it, that last one might be a fish.
Boxer: The term supposedly comes from the connecting rods in an opposed twin cylinder engine which seem to be boxing with one another, but I always get an image of the “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot” game the neighbor kid would never let me play.
Splines: I used to have a boxer, a mint R65 in fact, and it had splines (At least that’s what the manual said). Splines, as I took it, were to be lubricated religiously or things could happen that would be very bad. When I took my airhead in for annual maintenance, I would ask the mechanic, “Did you grease the splines?” to which he would reply (with a roll of the eyes and a note of impatience), “They’re fine.” I never got far enough into the internals workings on that bike to know if he was just guessing.
Pillion: I was thinking French, but it turns out this term is a Gaelic derivative and was first used to describe a little rug or cushion placed behind a saddle on a horse so a second person could ride. (Think “pillow.”)
Panniers: Obviously, the equivalent of saddle bags, but this one really is from the French and comes from a kind of hoop system designed to make a woman’s hips look bigger. Do these Givis make me look fat?
Countersteering: Some motorcyclists go through their entire life without reading Hough’s Proficient Motorcycling or realizing that as they round a sweeping left curve, they’re actually turning their handlebars to the right.
Rake/Trail/Caster: Heeding the sage counsel of Mrs. Gross, my sophomore Geometry teacher, I’m going to leave these three alone.
Harvest Season: What surgeons started calling spring after Wisconsin
Twisties: What motorcycling, for many, is all about. Opposite: “super-slab.” Watch for that far-away look in a motorcylcist’s eyes whenever “The Tail of the Dragon” is mentioned (318 curves in 11 miles!).
Cagers: Drivers who will probably never understand the allure of twisties. I think it was Pirsig who once wrote something to the effect that people in cars (cagers) are watching a movie; motorcyclists are starring in one.
Thumper: A one cylinder bike, so-named for its distinctive sound. If you buy one, be prepared for looks of frank bemusement from the uppity, multi-cylinder boys. My riding buddy refers to my F650 as “the sewing machine,” and it pains me to admit I can hear the resemblance.
Road Gator: One of the many banes of two-wheelers everywhere, in addition to potholes, windblown tarps, mattresses, plastic bags, shovels, horse manure, cardboard boxes, plastic water bottles, diapers, bags of garbage, and all the other crap people can’t seem to keep from falling onto the road. “Road Gators” are slabs of tire that have peeled off usually semi trailer wheels, only to lie in wait for the next unassuming biker to come along (see “high side”/”low side”). Many riders don’t realize that gators have a secondary threat: the wires from cast-off radial belts often are the culprits in flat tires, though they are usually misidentified as staples or nails.
Hard Parts: Anything that drags on the pavement when you get a little too leaned over, such as sidestands, rear foot pegs, or mufflers. Let’s face it, your sidestand foot was already too small before you started grinding it down on your favorite twisty.
Basket Case: The best definition I can think of is the mass of parts in my basement that was once a ’75 Honda 360. Judging from the way its been cannibalized, the number of acorns still in the mufflers, and the amount of rust in the gas tank, its wheels will probably never know the pavement again, leaving my wife wondering why I keep it at all and easily finding yet another meaning for this term.
As I said, this is an incomplete list. I’m sure with another bout of insomnia and little help I can come up with 129 more of my favorite motorcycling words. What are yours?
