As promised, here is the surprise. We've all seen the Best of awards on the covers of the glossy motorcycle magazines. Now it is time for the people's choice, or, in this case, the motorcycle riders' choice. I'm a charter member of MBI, an international association of motorcycle bloggers who believe the annual Best of magazine awards tell only part of the story. MBI have been working for the past two months to bring this to you.
Our idea is for regular riders, not moto journalists, to recognize noteworthy achievements and egregious lapses of judgment. Any new motorcycle or motorcycle-related product, service, event or action by an individual or organization is fair game for our awards.
This year's "good job!" categories are:
• Most promising new concept
motorcycle - for practical innovation
• Object of lust -
for the motorcycle we most want but can't afford
• Best new everyday motorcycle
- for practicality plus fun
• Standing ovation
- for the best contribution to motorcycling during the year
• Wish we would have thought
of that - an award for the most
innovative or interesting new
motorcycle-related product
• Best web presence
- for the most informative and easy-to-use motorcycle purveyor web site
This year's categories of dubious honor are:
• What were they thinking?! - for the least useful or practical new product
• Ugliest new motorcycle - for the motorcycle we love to hate
• Thumbs down - for the worst contribution to motorcycling during the year
We didn't try to be objective in our judging - where's the fun in that? We leave that to the magazines. Instead we looked at motorcycles, related products, services and events of the year from our individual perspectives.
As this is our first year, the member bloggers performed both roles as nominators and judges. We have representation from the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Chile, Australia, China, Japan, and oh yeah, the US. Let me know if you think we did a good job. We plan to open the process to the motorcycling public for the 2007 awards - more on that later.
Check out the winners and losers ... Enjoy!
I rode the F3 trackbike on May 30th and 31st of last year, but haven't ridden it since. Normally around February I would start looking at the track day organizers' brochures and barricade track dates for each month with a thick black outline on the kitchen calendar.
The F3 has been waiting patiently in the garage for the last two months for me to remove its cover and start prepping. I've felt badly about letting it sit there. A week ago when a friend asked when my next track day was, I realized that I had no plans for the track this year. Peter and I have become distance riders - our street bikes are designed for touring. We discussed it and agreed that It was time to find the bike a new friend.
The ad on Craig's List drew three nearly immediate responses. One fellow asked if the bike could be restored to street-legal condition. Not the right friend for the F3. The other two were enthusiastic about the track-ready condition of the bike, and seemed ready to show up with cash in hand. One of these eager buyers appeared to be a young woman. I really want to see more girls/women on the track so I was predisposed to sell the bike to her, but something was wrong in her email communications - no greeting, sentence fragments, a presumptuous phrasing, no closing or signature.
Ignoring the fact that her name could have appeared in a white middle-class California high school yearbook from the 1950's I replied to her email thinking, "...maybe her written language skills aren't good. Maybe she's not a native speaker of English." I asked a few chatty questions, how long she had been riding, had she ever been on a track before, that sort of thing. I wanted a better connection with this potential buyer.
Meanwhile, I responded to the email of the other person, and received a polite, well-constructed response from a young man. After one more email exchange, we talked on the phone and I liked what I heard - a sincere desire to become a better rider, someone already committed to the tarmac classroom whether he had to tape up his lights or not. Preferably not. We set up a first meeting.
But what about the other potential buyer? Didn't I want to help her get on the track? Yes, so surely her second message would establish that "good feeling about the buyer" that I wanted to have. Her response was disappointing. She didn't answer any of my questions, just asked about pricing and asked for an address. Something was not right. I replied to her message to let her know that there were other buyers ahead of her, and that I wanted to be fair to them. She didn't acknowledge that communication.
Jem came over to look at the bike - he professed appreciation of the quirky color scheme, he didn't roll his eyes at the manual choke pull cord. He wasn't perturbed that the engine of a bike that had sat idle for a year wouldn't perk up and be ready to ride just because I pulled the cover off. He was exactly the buyer I was looking for, an experienced street-rider, just catching the track bug, not thinking about racing. My cats liked him. Okay, I could let this guy have my F3. He gave me a generous deposit, we set a pick-up appointment and I took the F3 ad off of Craig's list.
Two other buyers had asked about single pieces, the chock, the ramp. I let them know that there was a buyer for the whole package ahead of them but I'd get back to them if the sale fell through. Both buyers acknowledged my message and wished me luck.
The F3 went home with Jem today - they are going to be great friends and I'm delighted to have brought them together.
So what about the young woman? What's interesting / sad is that had the sender's name of that message been a "male" name, I would have been put off by the "bad manners" and would not have pursued the interaction. I expect better from women, as if that XX chromosome pair guarantees pleasant communication skills and social grace. It doesn't. And it isn't fair of me to have such expectations of people just because of their sex.
After talking about this sales adventure with few people I've learned that used-vehicle sales are often exploited by unscrupulous people. I'm beginning to wonder if that message wasn't from someone who hoped to take advantage of the fact that I would have to invite them to my home to see the F3 so that later they might help themselves uninvited and without permission to the contents of the garage and perhaps my home. I don't know anything for sure. It is just a feeling.
Today ended on an a major chord of happiness for the F3 who will soon be at Infineon with a new rider who is grinning his head off, but the chord had some dissonant vibrations. Be careful with your motorcycle sales, my friends.
This bit of advice on selling your bike comes to you from the local motorcyle good will ambassador, Jim Thurber. He's been riding since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Here is Jim's recipe for safety and success in selling a bike:
- Talk to the owner of the shop you take the bike to for maintenance.
That could be a dealership or an independent shop, just so that they
are obviously a third party. Although they'd rather sell one of their
bikes, at least their service department is being used. As a result
of this introduction the potential buyer may become a new customer who
will purchase riding gear, parts and service, and tell their friends
about the shop.
Establish a price for a tech review of your bike. The fee for this service will be paid by the potential buyer if they purchase the bike. It is up to you, the seller, to bring qualified potential buyers otherwise the shop owner may want to charge you for the mechanic's time.
The shop will have paperwork for the buyer to take a test ride (if you are willing), and for the bill of sale.
- Advertise anywhere you want - Craigslist.com, Cycletrader.com, local
school billboard, wherever is right for the bike.
- When you've established that a potential buyer is qualified to buy
your bike (you wouldn't sell an R1 to a rider with no experience, would
you?), set up the meeting at the shop. Tell the potential buyer that
a professional mechanic will be participating in the meeting so that
everything about the bike, warts and all, will be disclosed.
If the buyer wants to ride the bike, and you aren't comfortable with that, the mechanic can ride it and talk about it. If you do let the potential buyer ride the bike, have the person sign a statement that they are responsible for any damage that may occur during the test ride.
- If the deal goes through, the transaction is completed in cash,
or a cashiers (bank) check. Be sure to mention that family member of
yours who works in the Secret Service's counterfeit currency detection
unit.
- Tell the buyer that you will wait for twenty minutes after the buyer has left the shop on their new motorcycle. If the buyer brings the bike back, not wanting it, with absolutely no damage, you will take back the bike, return the money and tear up the paperwork. If the buyer doesn't return in 20 minutes, you're going home. When twenty minutes has ticked off, leave.
What I like about this procedure is nobody knows where anybody lives - safety rocks. Doing it this way will take additional preparation on your part, you'll need to talk to the shop's owner, work with their mechanic's schedule, look at the test-ride liability form in advance and figure out what applies and what doesn't, same for the bill of sale. Why put the buyer's decision at risk by wasting time trying to figure out those forms when the buyer just wants to sign and hand you a wad of cash?
When I sold the Suzuki GZ I copied some text from a book on selling used vehicles so that I would have a test ride liability form. When I bought the Suzuki in 2001, I had a license but no riding experience and brought my friend to test ride the bike. The Suzuki's buyer did the same.
For the F3, I found a bill of sale template on the Internet that had two simple clauses, one for affirming the representation of the bike to be true, and one for the acceptance of the bike being sold in "as is" condition with no guarantee or warranties, either expressed or implied for the bike.
* * *
Had dinner with a friend last night at a trendy new Vietnamese restaurant. We sat outside and watched people go by. Only another motorcyclist could have understood that when I said, "That's his third trip around the block." it was a shorthand for, "That guy is gonna waste half a tank of gas trolling for just the right parking place for his hot little cafe racer so that the chicks walking by will be able to check out the bike, and hopefully him and his cool leathers too."