Virus Riders

By Paul Fenn

Contributing Editor

When you want to see what motorcyclists in different lands are doing in interesting times like these, there’s no better place to satisfy that curiosity than the vast universe of human extremity known as ADVRider.com.

Some conversations began there at the start of the Covidian Era

They were about whether going for a ride – or yes, even long-distance touring – during the pandemic is a fine idea or not. And it turned into nasty good fun in no time. On one delightful thread, entitled Negativity, Anger and Hate During the “Pandemic”, could be found three essential factions: the Fearless Individualists, the Informed Pragmatists and the Fuck You, You Fucking Fucks, I’m Riding (FYYFFIRs, the correct pronunciation of which would be “Fyfers”).

Most posters are American

Few have held back. And what did I learn? I learned that moto men (they have all been men) digest their news in wholly different ways, and construct their own private realities with that news. We all do. But COVID-19 is triggering a new form of moto-political insanity in our particular arena.

Who’s your reality constructor?

If you’re a typical extreme centrist like me, you get your news from the Libtard-dominated lamestream radical leftist media like the New York Times, The Atlantic, CBC, the Globe and Mail and so on. If you’re among the MAGAlicious, you’re a likely Fox News man, a Breitbart belieber or maybe a Limbaugh latte-basher. In my experience, the former is a beachhead where journos, broadcasters and editors tend to rely on science, investigation, interviews with experts, you know—evidence. Whereas, within the latter coterie, a single blowhard can say anything he/she wants and their comrades in dipshittery will proclaim it as fact-checked, stone-carved truth, even though it’s really just an ever-widening haze of house-of-cards conspiracies to add to their powder magazine from which they prosecute their mortal hatred of anything and anyone that makes sense.

I always read the comments

Don’t you? It’s how to learn about people, all of the people. Before the COVID-19 hoax – yes, it’s an Obama-Soros-Bill & Melinda-China hoax or definitely all of those guyses faultses – it was the climate change grand hoax. Before that it was, ah, never mind, history is for Demotwats.

Here’s where all this is taking motorcycling

The MAGAphiles are increasingly coming to the conclusion that COVID-19 is a fat nothing, in spite of masses of evidence to the contrary – including from their trusted sources of fair and balanced bile. And some are heading out on their bikes for short, long and epic rides. A wander through the internet reveals that a certain proportion of them are crashing, but I can find no large-scale sample stats as yet.

Is COVID riding wise?

Let’s examine this. Best case scenario would be something like heading out, not crashing or getting hit, thinking you've been dodging the virus, arriving back home feeling normal and in one piece – though not entirely certain you’ve not picked up an unwanted hitchhiker along the way and possibly passing a serious illness to your cohabitants.

Medium-case is bleak enough

You go for it, but carefully. You head out, eat, gas-up, stay places. But you end up catching something that drags you down, maybe COVID-19. Deciding you need to get home fast, you make a mad run for it, while getting steadily iller, riding with ever-more compromised faculties and then crashing because of that. If you crash too badly to be able to tell the paramedics who rescue you how you’ve been feeling lately, you’ve welcomed them into your high-risk lifestyle. And anyone else who comes into contact with your ignorance, between the crash site and the moment they realize you’re a Covoid.

Worst-case – you drag multitudes into your hell

You go hard, get the cooties, then have a spectacular crash in some faraway city’s major intersection, whence a whole bunch of pedestrians come to your aid, and you give it to them, the rescuing paramedics, those in the hospital who treat you, some other patients, and then you find out your insurance won’t cover you because of the fine-print you never read concerning Act of God-type exclusions. Now you’re deathly ill, in six months’ traction and already owe some hospital $580,000, and counting, that you don’t have. And your dickheadedness means those sick medical people you infected can’t treat the COVID-19 patients who got it through no fault of their own, unlike you.

I don’t know about you

But I don’t dig the odds in any of these scenarios. I’m staying off my bike and cooking, drinking and gardening heavily instead. I hope you will too – at least until the only curve we need to flatten is the one we grew around our mid-sections through that awful epoch of 2020.

Further reading: https://hooshmand.net/ride-motorcycle-coronavirus-covid19-pandemic-crisis/

This is the first in a series of COVID-19 pieces. I promise to make the next ones more cheerful.

Get more of these here.