An age thing? Baldies and bikes!

Timbo

Supercharged
Joined
Apr 18, 2011
Messages
257
Location
Wigan, UK
Ride
2013 R3 Roadster
Went to the Manchester Bike Show on Saturday and my mate bought his 18 year old son along for a look in the hope he would get into bikes one day.

So, making use of the lad, we sent him off to get the coffees while we mooched. Half an hour later he finds us, commenting "Though it would be easy to find two bald middle-aged men here but EVERYONE is bald and middle-aged!!". He is 6'4" so thought it would be easy to spot us but apparently from up there we all look the same :cool:

So I guess the average age of the bike enthusiast is increasing, hair is less common etc. This is not good!

Where i work, within the dept there are around 20 blokes with bikes, most are 50 or over and there is one guy in his early 20s that is as passionate about bikes as the rest of us, just one!!

I don't have an answer for how to change this and guess the bike test being so hard to pass and there being so many tests (here in the UK) to get to ride something you like is a factor, but it is done for safety, so cannot really disagree with that.

But how do we fix it? Can manufacturers do something? Is it the same elsewhere? Do other countries have such complex paths to gaining your license?
 
Went to the Manchester Bike Show on Saturday and my mate bought his 18 year old son along for a look in the hope he would get into bikes one day.

So, making use of the lad, we sent him off to get the coffees while we mooched. Half an hour later he finds us, commenting "Though it would be easy to find two bald middle-aged men here but EVERYONE is bald and middle-aged!!". He is 6'4" so thought it would be easy to spot us but apparently from up there we all look the same :cool:

So I guess the average age of the bike enthusiast is increasing, hair is less common etc. This is not good!

Where i work, within the dept there are around 20 blokes with bikes, most are 50 or over and there is one guy in his early 20s that is as passionate about bikes as the rest of us, just one!!

I don't have an answer for how to change this and guess the bike test being so hard to pass and there being so many tests (here in the UK) to get to ride something you like is a factor, but it is done for safety, so cannot really disagree with that.

But how do we fix it? Can manufacturers do something? Is it the same elsewhere? Do other countries have such complex paths to gaining your license?


Factor in the danger of sheer lazy drivers here in the UK ,lovely day here yesterday so went for a spin on the Rocket could have been taken out at least six times by drivers not even bothering to check their mirrors.
Usually distracted by the phone ,sat nav or girlfriend who knows what? If you can’t see or hear a Rocket then there’s no hope.........biking probably doesn’t appeal to the youngsters cause you can’t FaceTime while your riding........
 
Factor in the danger of sheer lazy drivers here in the UK ,lovely day here yesterday so went for a spin on the Rocket could have been taken out at least six times by drivers not even bothering to check their mirrors.
Usually distracted by the phone ,sat nav or girlfriend who knows what? If you can’t see or hear a Rocket then there’s no hope.........biking probably doesn’t appeal to the youngsters cause you can’t FaceTime while your riding........

Unfortunately that's not just in the uk.
 
Nice on Monday so took a day off and went out for a spin, a short one at 200 miles up round North Yorkshire.

If the roads themselves with the grit, pot holes and lines of gravel or diesel round corners don't get you, overtaking people is quite literally dicing with death!!

I reckon you can FEEL a rocket coming before you hear it but still people pull out, drive at you because you are invisible (I mean, we are all spawn of the devil on bikes so who cares? right?). One guy was looking me straight square in the eye, I get right up to him and he pulled out of a side road across my path. I was slowing down because I knew he was going to do it, or assumed he would! but COME ON!!!

/rant off.
 
Bikes do not matter to things, which mass-media put into our brains every day. These things are safety, family, children, more children, more and more children, be in safety with your family to buy more of our products..

If remember a histori after World War II, motorcycles were an important part of people's life due to their low cost and availability. And those two facts made people of Europe and USSR buy them. In our country almost everyone born in 50s-60s-70s could ride a bike. My grandfather had two bikes with sidecar (Ural was one of them), they helped him to build a house and played a great role in housekeepeng. And what I see now? A lot of people, which think, that all bikers will be dead sooner or later, because if you buy a bike, you must crash and die, it's not safety...

Millenials are not the reason of it, they are the result of our society: society of Cold War peroid and consumers.
 
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