A dispatch from Milwaukee for the motorcycle giant's 115th anniversary.

“Stand in the middle and don’t move,” Cole said.

Cole Freeman is a stocky blond stunt rider with rosy cheeks from St. Louis. Despite a recent streak of not being able to follow instructions, I felt like I should make a concerted effort to follow this one. Cole and his hype man were about to enter the Wall of Death, and in a moment, so was I.

The Wall of Death is a silo-shaped old carnival attraction that dates back to the 1900s. Two motorcycles ride along the vertical wall and perform stunts, held in place only by friction, the science of which I found dubious. Cole was smiley and fearless, and had recently been crowned the new Evel Knievel, after an official blessing from the family. Me? I was not smiley. I was terrified.

So I stood as still as possible in the eye of the tornado. They whirred around like bees, crisscrossing, high-fiving, at one point taking my hat. These guys were relaxed and having a blast, though, and once that energy rubbed off, I stopped sweating and a grin crept up my face. I still wasn’t sure about the science of it all, but I trusted Cole. It felt good
.



We were in the middle of Milwaukee for the Harley-Davidson 115th Anniversary celebration, but my fear-conquering journey started a few weeks before at the Harley-Davidson of Glendale, where I was enrolled in the Harley-Davidson Riding Academy New Rider Course, a jam-packed weekend of both classroom and course instruction. I showed up to the classroom at 6:30 P.M. on a Friday night ready to learn. (Full disclosure: I had not been in a classroom setting since I dropped out of high school in the 11th grade.) To my right was a father and son, who had just graduated from high school and enrolled in the Army. To my left was a friendly woman from New York City who owned a natural-skin-care company. The rest of the class was a surprisingly diverse group: a few Porsche-driving midlife-crisis Republican types; an early-30s overachiever who was gunning for the title of teacher’s pet; a WASP-y blond guy from Boston who had ridden motorcycles in the Dominican Republic; and a soft-spoken black guy who drank a lot of soda, presumably to calm his nerves. The classroom portion was simple. Succeeding meant paying attention and using common sense. It was the riding portion, which started at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m., that had me nervous.

In a way, the classroom brought me back to high school in Conyers, Georgia. The popular kids were all hunters, the stereotypical kind who wore Bass Pro Shops mesh hats and cowboy boots, and had gun racks fastened to the back windshield of their muddy F-150s. They were loud and proud about being conservative and myopic; the kind of grown men who would go on to post Constitution memes on Facebook. Nothing seemed less interesting to me and I went the other way completely, turning up my nose in disgust not just to their obviously ridiculous worldview but to every aspect of their culture—including motorsports, which terrified me. So I dropped out of school and putzed around Atlanta for a few years, before finally relocating to New York City, where I started my own business, did drugs, and surrounded myself with like-minded liberal thinkers.



By the time I arrived at the vacant parking lot in Glendale the next morning, I was amped up on cold brew and adrenaline. I was told to grab a pair of gloves and a helmet, and all of it was starting to feel very real. The instructors were friendly enough but not super chatty as they walked us through all the basics.

Then it was time to actually ride a bike.

The rest of the article and pics here...

https://www.gq.com/story/harley-davi...15-anniversary

Not sure if I approve of the writer's footwear choice....but it is a good read none the less.

 

 

He showed up for class after having a cold brew??

 

GQ guy with no socks "faces his fears and rides a motorcycle".....and fails. ok

 

Yeah I noticed that too, lol. What are the requirements for the riding portion? And why are they putting new riders on heavy larger motorcycles to start out with?

 

Hey Chuck, I think when the writer says "cold brew" he means cold coffee! Not quite the same as what most of us think of when we say "think I'll have another cold brew!'. LOL

 

I assumed it was in reference to a cold brewed coffee - meant to further demonstrate his left coast liberal bonafides. At least it wasn't a double shot skinny mocha latte with an arugula twist or something like that.

 

No doubt lived in Greenwich Village when in New York and in San Francisco now.

 

Next challenge...Overcoming my fear of socks.

 

lmao