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The Wave
The WAVE
reprinted from Adventure Motorcycling
Catch a wave
by Ted Fischer
Sometimes when I ride for an extended period of time my mind ends up thinking about things that just don't seem to come to me at other times. The other day I got to wondering about the motorcycle wave, you know, the wave that motorcyclists give each other when they meet going opposite ways. I remember quite some years ago when I just started riding while living in a west coast smog choked community (???) that I wasn't aware of the wave until I happened to ride out to where the highways have less than 6 lanes. Seems people in the city just don't have time to perform the wave - probably got too much on their mind splitting traffic and all.
I remember the first time I encountered a wave, "do I know that gu"? Soon it became evident that this was protocol I was not aware of and that I should probably wave back. I thought this is really neat, just because we are riding a motorcycle we somehow belong to some sort of fraternity, how cool! Then on the same trip while enjoying my new found brotherhood and waving at every bike I came across I noticed something odd, not everyone waved back. Then it occurred to me, most of the non-wavers were riding the American model motorcycle (I think you can figure it out). I was on a Honda at the time and I guess I didn't belong to that club. So I started to wonder, why do motorcyclists wave in the first place? I came to the conclusion because of a common love of the activity, nothing more nothing less. Then why I wondered, is there a division between us and them, I had subsequently noticed that the non-wavers did in fact wave, just not to non-American model riders. The only thing that made sense to me was snobbery, that was the only thing that made sense even though it was senseless and I just continued on my way making sure not to wave to riders I knew would not wave back.
Some years later I found myself moving to a somewhat rural mountain community and to my surprise I found that ALL motorcyclist waved to me not just the ones from my division. Uh Oh, now I have to start retraining myself to wave to the "other" guys, seemed kind of weird after so many years of not. Then I noticed, when the folks from "the city" would come to the mountains, guess what - they didn't wave. Now I'm all confused, how do I handle this? I don't want to look like a moron waving to the wrong crowd but now its even worse, the "other guys" are just not on the American model but an import that looks like the American model. I started to wonder if the American model guy and the look-alikes wave to each other? It was about then that I realized I really didn't care, "screw 'em, I'm going to wave to everyone and if they don't wave back I just don't care". That has been my philosophy ever since and at least I feel better about it. But I still wonder...