The Five Percent

There's one in every group.

There's always that asshole that starts shit for no reason, the guy you don't want to take to the bars. The guy that gets in trouble. He's the guy that ruins the night.

I started thinking about this the other day, when I was needlessly harassed for riding a sport bike by a couple of dudes on Harleys. I let it go because a: I'm an adult, and b: it's easier to just drown them out with the exhaust note from my Yoshimura RS5 exhaust, which I did. My first response, of course, was "fucking Harley riding dickheads, they're all the same." Fueled by anger and adrenaline, that was what crossed my mind.

Riding home, I had ample time to rethink my position, and as usual, I conducted an internal debrief. I have a lot of friends with Harleys, and though we playfully talk shit to each other, we all understand that the point is to get out there and ride, have fun, and hit the twisties, while keeping the rubber side to the ground. Common ground on two wheels.

My estimate (based on purely my own observations) is that 95% of Harley riders, give or take, are just your average dude out for a ride on a motorcycle. I'm not talking about the so-called "one percenters" here, the various criminal enterprises that choose bikes for transportation, so disregard them for now. Once that number popped into my head, it stuck with me for awhile, and I finally figured out why - it's not 5% of people on hogs that are douchebags, it's 5% of people in every walk of life. Think about the following groups:

Motorcyclists/bikers. Road bikers. Guys with diesel trucks, ladies driving a Prius, 'pit bull' owners, fitness nuts... you name it, unfailingly, about 1 in 20 of those people is seemingly incapable of dealing with humanity in a civilized way. I'm not saying that every other one of those people is a saint, however, most at least keep their bullshit to themselves 99% of the time. And then there is that one guy, the loud mouth, the proverbial Reason We Can't Have Nice Things.

No one likes that guy.

Don't be that guy.