I discovered that I enjoyed writing in 1970 when I was in the fourth grade. This was about the time my dad bought one mini-bike for my brothers and I to share. However, motorcycles were forbidden in the household, and why a minibike was OK remains a mystery. Maybe it was that pull-cords are less threatening then kick-starters.
My dad was a staunch Republican, so his perception was that the media is liberal. This meant that journalism was not exactly encouraged as a career path. So I went to college, and studied mass comm. Upon graduation, I got sucked into an evil cult that focused on British sports cars, and later became a flack for a PBS affiliate. Dad didn't quite understand what flacking was, but he knew all about getting money sucked out of his wallet by boats.
In 1987, My wife and I bought a house. Shortly thereafter, a metalflake Honda CL360 motorcycle showed up in the driveway, much to my wife's surprise. The plan was to get home before she did, but she beat me home by about five minutes. There were all these barefoot neighborhood kids, standing in the kind of hard-pressed dirt that many blue-collar Floridians call a driveway.
I told Margaret that I wanted to either get this motorcycling thing out of my system, or see if it was something I enjoyed. I knew I was hooked. She knew it too. A year later, I bought the BMW. She said the Honda had to go. One bike was enough. At that time, it was.
Four years later, Dad and I were in his big white Caddy. A Honda Goldwing pulled up next to us. Dad looked at the bike and said, "You know, that looks fun ... just riding off into the distance."
That was after his quintuple bypass. His health was bad. His sentences weren't usually complete anymore. I wanted to tell him all about my motorcycle, and how much I enjoyed it, and all the places I'd been and the people I'd met. The last thing he needed to worry about was his youngest son, "lying in a ditch, bleeding" as he use to say. So I kept my motorcycling vice a secret. He died in 1994 when I was at Daytona Beach. It was Bike Week.
Now I'm working in internet content development. My title is Senior
Editor. I'm not really sure if I'm a journalist or what the hell
I do for a living. However, the motorcycle provides an outlet
and gives me a sense of accomplishment that no desk job in the
world can provide. My older boy enjoys helping me fix it.
Two words, "Dick Nixon."
Even today, you can ride a Nixonian era BMW across the continent. At 3000 miles you'll change the oil. At 5,000 miles, you may have to get a new back tire. What did Dick Nixon do for West Germany? Not much. He pretty much left them alone and their motorcycles are OK.
America wasn't so lucky. Harley's engine design, even today, harks to 1935, about the time Dick Nixon started to form his ideas and opinions. The distinctive "potato-potato-misfire-po-misfire-tato-potato" sound comes from this design, which is similar to Stagflation and Nixon's perception of economics.
It also creates a lot of vibration in the machine, which loosens
nuts (Liddy) and bolts (Dean), and fatigues the metal framework
of the motorcycle. Or in Nixon's case, the framework of society
and the voters. But for some folks, that's part of the Harley's
charm. It's also part of Nixon's charm. Harley-Davidson nearly
went out of business about the same time that Dick Nixon resigned.
More than $1,000. $20 a month for web pages alone. I just spent about $300 for a new clutch, throttle cable boots, oil filter, and stainless steel fasteners. I envision another $40 for a battery.
Then there's the cost of traveling to Daytona Beach for vintage racing, and going to other places to meet with other goofballs from the e-mail list I run. However, it's still a lot cheaper than social activities such as golf, boating, tennis or joining a militia. You can tie up a bundle of cash in assault rifles, camos, and an El Camino, and still have nothing to show for it.
If all you want out of life is a cheap place to park, a bucket of bait, and a cold six-pack of Budweiser, you need to live in Tampa. It's a great place to slack off.
Atlanta is completely opposite. Olympic sweat still pools in our rapidly crumbling sewer system. This city is about getting involved, and getting active, or else you'll get run over.
Interactivity is one of those words that has many definitions.
E-commerce is interactivity. Having a search engine on your website is interactivity. Creating spaces for online communities is interactivity. Having people click-through your ads is interactivity. Only the click-throughs and e-commerce users are going to put money directly in your pocket.
However, the search engines and online-communities may get them to come back to your site and repeat the click-through and e-commerce processes.
As for the online bulletin boards, the big problem is that most of the people attracted to these forums have too much time on their hands. There are a lot of losers hanging out in bulletin boards and AOL chat rooms. Oddly enough, some of them are cops on the payroll. The cops are wasting their time. They'll catch more perverts at the bus station, or in city hall.
It's accepted? I'm not so sure about that. When I'm out of the Ivory Tower of Cybermania, the people I talk to don't have the slightest idea what's going on in new media. Many don't care. Many can't comprehend it, or why we do it.
Most Americans still think that if they get a computer, and the
computer gets a virus, then the US of A is going toe-to-toe with
the Rooskies. Or that their 12-year-old daughter will get pictures
sent to her of old men cavorting naked with livestock. Or that
all their money will vanish like Barbara Eden.
Copyright 1998, Thomas L. Mangan
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