Cruisin' Away The Gas Crunch Blues

Happiness Is High MPG
The motivation for this story came from you. We see you out there, hoofin' it on whatever pile you can find, with a big smile plastered on, saving some bones and laughing about it. The bikes are low-end, high-end, and no end, and we're hoping that a few of you stick around when the fuel prices and temperatures start to drop.

Andrea Bordelon, a 38-year-old massage therapist living in Prescott, AZ was not too happy with her 450-mile per week commute. Three times per week she'd climb into her 16-mpg Jeep Grand Cherokee and drive 150 miles roundtrip to a Sedona, AZ spa.

"It was killing me," she said. "With what I spent on gas it was hardly worth the trip." Bordelon began thinking about a more economical way to travel. After owning several Sportsters over the years, Bordelon stopped riding for nearly a decade. "When I left Massachusetts some years ago, I left the biker life. I moved to Zurich in 2001, got married and began a new life and motorcycling wasn't a part of it."

Bordelon divorced and returned to the States in 2005, but money was tight. Another re-start, another biker-less biker needing a ride. "Things slowly came together. I became a massage therapist, saved some money and bought an SUV, which was fun and came in handy in Arizona, but I always missed riding. Then came the gas explosion. "Suddenly, I was spending about 150 bucks on gasoline every week; I figured that money could go to a better cause."

That cause became a 2007 Harley Softail Deluxe. "She gets 45 mpg and saves me about $100 a week in gas. That's $400 a month, more than my bike payment. So, yeah, biking pays, and is a helluva lot more fun than being stuck in a truck."

Alfonso Freeman is a Los Angeles-based actor who was paying through the nose to burn fuel while sitting on the freeway driving from his house in the suburbs to auditions and acting classes in Hollywood and Downtown. He did a little riding in his youth, but this 2007 Honda Spirit 750 is basically his first bike.

Before settling on the Spirit, he also sized up a few other bikes like the V-Star 650, but the bigger motor and more svelte lines of the Spirit moved him. Plus the dealer made him an offer he couldn't refuse to move a leftover '07 ($5200 out the door). He opines, "It's a small bike, but big enough to get some respect."

Alfonso's big motivation to start riding was avoiding LA's infamous gridlock; getting a minimum 40 mph was just a nice perk. He took the obligatory rider safety course and was very smart about beginning his foray into the fine California art of "lane sharing."

"At first I just went to the front of the line at lights, and I talked myself out of doing it in traffic on the freeway. Then one day I hit a stopped patch and just eased it on out there carefully... I've never looked back."

Speaking of never looking back, "I'm having fun riding everywhere. I ride up Pacific Coast Highway, or out to Chino to visit relatives. I want to move up to a Harley or a Goldwing in a year or two, so I can bring a passenger. I'm sold. I'm a biker now."

Paul Johnson emailed us from Tucson, AZ. Paul reports that when he moved to town four years ago from Alaska, he saw the booming street bike scene and was fascinated. When gas prices shot skyward he joined up!

"I'd been commuting in a GMC K2500 Sierra Duramax Diesel 4x4, which was gross overkill most days, so along with the increase in fuel prices (as well as putting too many miles on the truck) it made sense to ride a motorcycle."

A street rider for a few years back in the 1970's, he'd also ridden ATVs, dirt bikes, and snowmobiles in his 27 years in Alaska, as well as competing with a dog sled team! However, street riding just didn't hold much appeal in the frozen (and frequently unpaved) North.

With his wife's blessing, he purchased a friend's cherry 1998 Honda Magna for $2600. He reports that, "It's a nice ride, with good handling. Not a cookie cutter twin like most cruisers."

Sheldon Rodricks checks in from Canterbury, New South Wales, Australia. He's a regulatory services officer (if you know what that is you've got one on us) who was simply sick of spending $50 a tank filling up his car. In his own words, "I have been driving to work for the last four years. Now that gas prices have jumped, I managed to get a 1982 Yamaha XV750 Special from a bloke who obviously has enough money to tank up his V8. Anyway I picked it up for next to nothing and spent about three weeks getting it up to spec-also for next to nothing! She's got loud pipes and is all black, engine included. She has never been dropped but by the looks of it, she never really had any TLC either.

"Now that it's cleaned up for the road, it costs me about $9 (Aussie) to tank up and I get an average of 260km (161 miles) per tankful. Besides it's bloody fast and loads of fun."

Apparently NSW recently repealed its anti-lane-splitting law, so now Sheldon is saving time and money on his bike. In fact, between the constant grin on his face and the extra money in his pocket, he's converted a couple of his colleagues over to two wheels. He brags, "At this rate we could have our own club by December!"

Re-Entry Riders For MPG
Fun At $4 Per Gallon
As gas prices continue to climb with no one actually believing they will ever again significantly decline, motorcycle dealers nationwide are reporting record sales of highly fuel-efficient scooters, with some spillover to larger displacement machines. A large part of this new wave of interest comes from previously dormant riders who haven't ridden in years, and another large part from those who have never biked before. Manufacturers have long scratched their balding corporate heads wondering how to bring entry or re-entry riders into the fold when the solution was elegantly simple: do nothing. Just wait for the fuel crisis.

It couldn't come at a better time. Although motorcycling experienced unprecedented double-digit growth for more than a decade, sales had flattened out in the last couple of years, sending panic waves rumbling through the boardrooms of major makers. Most analysts thought it was a serious overreaction, but OEMs still slashed advertising budgets at a time when they needed to do more promotional work, not less.

Without spending an ad dollar, motorcycle manufacturers are now serendipitously bathing in the national spotlight. Everyone from old grannies to college kids are seeking ways to squeeze more mileage out of their gas money and have turned to the mini rebel machine to do it: the scooter. Demand is exceeding production this season for the trendy fuel-sippers. But this refreshed interest in motorcycles is not limited to anemically powered machines; big bike sales have also perked up. Mark Barnett, owner of perhaps the largest Harley dealership on the planet, said, "We had two record months this year out of seven. Great year. Why buy the 70 mpg scooter when you can ride the 60 mpg Sportster?"

While life aboard the wee 75- to 125-mpg machines is probably not going to inspire another The Wild One film, where fat Baby Boomers menace a small town with their expandable waistband wearin', oat bran eatin', Viagra-poppin', rampagin' scooter gangs, it definitely is inspiring a little freedom-the freedom to blow your money on rent and food.

Motorcycling has long been demonized as the domain for leather-clad thugs and ne'er-do-wells of a savage street ilk. But we know we're very nice people and nothing could be further from the truth, usually. There are other wholesome benefits to motorcycling's resurgence. When you get people up on two wheels they tend to want to stay there, forever, like some unknown law of physics. They then begin buying bigger and faster bikes until they're shoehorning behemoth Chevy V8 motors into bicycle frames. This is just natural.

Once you experience how fun and economical a bike is, it spills into your veins and you become one of us, a biker for life, addicted to the wind and rush of hammering through the gears. And if all the bad black T-shirts are accurate-and why wouldn't they be?-you stay a motorcyclist in the afterlife, too. That's how powerful the pull is. Cool, eh? Now get on your bike and go save the ozone layer.