A Writer Writing…About Cats!

After extensive research and multiple clinical trials, I have discovered the one thing that all geeks and all bikers have in common: a fascination with “the upgrade.”

To a biker, no motorcycle, no matter how new or how few minutes it has been off the lot, is so awesome that it cannot be made better.

From the moment my husband Bob got his new Harley home, I was thinking it was a good-looking vehicle and that he looked good on it, and…uh, that it was shiny and stuff. Bob, on the other hand, was gazing at it, thoughtfully rubbing his chin, conveying via body language, “hmmm…how can I upgrade this?” I recognized this look because it’s the same one I get when I’m browsing computers at Best Buy, studying on-the-box specs and mentally calculating the cost of maxing out the RAM.

Bob’s first bike upgrade was a pair of stylish leather saddlebags. These are very important if you want to perform any of the normal “errand” functions while riding, such as transporting critical documents or picking up a gallon of milk on the way home.

The next thing I knew, leather fringe had been added to both handlebars. (It matched the bit of fringe on the stylish leather saddlebags.) Then, an additional layer of handlebar fringe. Then, a giant chrome brake pedal that cost $40.

Now, I’d heard from reliable sources — wives of bikers — that once the biker in your life buys one piece of chrome, that you pretty much have to develop a household budget category for it, like you would for groceries, or health insurance. So you can imagine I was a bit concerned.

Our geek-to-biker conversation about this brake pedal went something like this:

Me: $40 for a brake pedal?

Bob: It’s chrome.

Me: So?

Bob: It looks cool.

Me: But your foot’s covering it.

Bob: Well, you can’t see a video card once you put it in your computer, can you? But they still put cool designs on them.

Dang. Impressive little outburst of geek-speak.

I admit, the chrome brake pedal does look cool. And I had forgotten, of course, that you only spend about 25% of your time actually “riding” a bike, the other 75% being for parking it, then polishing it and gazing at it, so I suppose it is important that every possible part of it looks cool.

I’m actually starting to think a totally chromed-out computer would be pretty cool. The kind of machine C3PO would dig. Just imagine how that power indicator light would gleam off a chrome tower. Though then, much like Bob and his Harley, I’d have to polish it a lot more….

Tags: biker, bikers, bikes, chrome, geek, geeks, motorcycle, motorcyles, RAM, upgrade

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Humor, Motorcycles, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.