From Behind the Lens
April 2005
Burnt out on Burn-outs
As I write this column, I am being driven from Pensacola Florida to Daytona in my last leg to the annual rite which is spring bike week. I am eager to arrive and be a part of all that is great about a major bike rally. I love the people that I see at each and every event that I get to see no where else, I love the music and the drinks and the food and most of all, the riding.
The thing that I no longer relish at these bike rallies is the witnessing of the inevitable burn-out.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a tight ass, nor do I wish in any way to deprive anyone their God-given right to act as insanely as they deem fit; I just am so over the burn-out that results in a completely roached tire.
During the 100th Anniversary Celebration of Harley Davidson in Milwaukee a few years back, we met Gaylon and Michelle from California. They spent much time with us at our photo booth and Gaylon was the kind of burnout aficionado that I can respect. He sat quietly for hours with us watching us shoot, and when there was a lull in business and I wondered aloud why the crowds weren’t coming our direction, Gaylon executed 3 independent free-standing burnouts in front of our photo stage. The first made heads turn, the second changed the direction of travel and the third brought people running with their cameras to see what was going on. Gaylon didn’t need crowds cheering him on, he didn’t need a front wheel chock to hold him in place, he didn’t need to do damage to his bike or render his rear tire useless to do a relatively silly thing just for the hell of it.
What I don’t understand is the urge that makes a man say to himself, “I love my bike, I think my bike is one of the coolest bikes around, I have spent much time and more money on my bike, I have spent all week polishing it and now I am going to pin it up against a vertical concrete wall and spin my rear tire until it starts to throw chunks of hot, melting rubber all over the highly polished chrome and expensive paint job and then I will continue to spin it until it explodes and I have to have someone run me all over town during a major event to find another tire that they will charge me twice what it is worth.”
The Broken Spoke in Myrtle Beach has a really cool burn out “lift” that lifts the bike 10 feet into the air to do the burn out. I’m not sure why, I am guessing it is because the foul order and obnoxious rubber chards travel further when the bike is lifted into the air. At the first event that BigShots did there, Doyce, the owner, encouraged me to ride the lift into the air with a bike to take commemorative shots of one of the first burn outs done on his new lift. Now, I was never much of a fan of the burn out, and I did have a very bad cold that was making me feel awful, but I agreed to capture the moment for the bike owner and for Doyce.
As the platform rose into the air, I found a relatively safe spot in the front corner of the platform so that I could shoot back at the bike as it “smoked up”. The platform had no sides to it and only a vertical I-beam welded onto the platform for the front tire to nest into. The guy’s girlfriend straddled the front tire of this bike and lifted her shirt up to expose her breasts (another bike-event subject best left for another column). As I checked my camera settings and my footing, the burner-outer started his engine and revved it obnoxiously to draw more attention to himself and the imminent destruction of his tire.
The crowd went wild urging him on. Screaming and clapping at the combination of a bike about to get messed up and breasts being present during the messing of the bike. For me, I was scared. I looked down at a huge burly guy 10 feet below me and I yelled to him, “Will you catch me if I need to get off?” and he nodded that he would. I gave him a “thumbs up” as I drew the camera to my eyes to begin shooting. My subject entered first gear and gunned it. I rapid fired a burst of about 10 shots but before I exposed the 5th frame, the wind had caught the noxious white smoke and had completely obliterated my view of anything. I saw the tops of the girlfriend’s arms waving wilding in the air and above the tremendously loud engine noise, I heard her screaming loudly. At first I thought maybe the bike had jumped the channel it was in and was squashing her leg, but from the excited waving of her hands I fantasized that a huge phallus had come from the triple tree and had begun to penetrate her as she barley took a breath between each horrendous scream.
I, on the other hand, had a quite less pleasurable experience from the burn out. My $4,000 camera was being coated with the same thick, noxious, burning smoke that was covering my eyes, nose and lungs with inescapable penetration. The noise pierced into my head causing an intense pain. It turns out that my head cold had left me with a double ear infection which was not helped by the multiple decibel experience. I looked behind me to try to find my burly friend who had promised to help me out if I needed it, but the smoke was so think, that the man who had been less than 5 feet away from me moments before was now indiscernible. I waited a few moments to see if the burn out would subside but judging from the screams of the girlfriend and the crowd, he wasn’t going to stop until he blew a tire or threw a rod.
