Am I Torturing Myself?

categories:

Watching the documentary “Harley Davidson” on Netflix. There are many not-very-sequiturs here: I don't ride a Harley, never got that bug, and we're very likely to see snow tomorrow night. So the big questions in this viewing experience all center around “Am I torturous myself?”

The most obvious is watching people riding in photogenic riding weather. We're a long way from there, we had a week of cold rain today. Snow is looming, end even though it might only survive a day, it's just impossible to imagine that somewhere, right now, someone's unable to imagine the weather I'm in here.

Second up is the movie's whitewashed presentation of the bikes and its culture. Sorry HD lovers, but I really don't get the retro movement in moto's, not merely limited to HD's. My moto rides have consistently gotten more sophisticated, proud to say I'm as far into the 21st century as the conservative industry allows. (Yeah, it's not made in the USA, yes, it's German.) But the really awful bit is he attempt to sweep the excesses of the culture under the rug. In the early stages, I thought it was HD or studio legal just redacting whole pages of history and statistics, emphasizing the kumbaya aspect of moto culture (undeniably real) over the outlaw (microscopic in %, but megascopic in impact).

Ahh, but then we get to the Harley Women section. I can't begin to describe the patronizing here without being guilty of the equal sin of “white knighting.” So I'll just say that this part pleased no one outside of the HD boardroom.

So why wast 30 mins—that's when M got out of the bath—watching this? So I could test out Wordpad on my iPad? Inflict this writing on you? Warn you to stay away? Or am I so lacking in the riding experience that I'll watch utter crap to get even a distant whisper of it?

Hint: when people list things, they put the most important or likely at the end.

Edit from the (not very distant) Future: Today's heat makes it completely impossible to imagine the weather during this writing.  No wonder we have such trouble understanding [AGC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropogenicclimatechange).