My Guilty Secret - BIke EXIF

I have been a follower of the website BikeEXIF almost from day one, its run by an English advertising guy Chris Hunter who lives in Australia and has been going for about 4 years now - you must know it as its one of the top bike sites around.  Its raison d'être  is to show interesting bikes , combined with good photography (thats what the EXIF is about), over the last few years the comments section has been getting  more and more extreme and there is now such a clear division between the yea's and neh's, its worthy of a Phd or a book to get to the bottom of it -  Men are from Mars women are from Venus - or arty custom guys vs. techy mech guys.

I am an old rider now who has been on Harley based customs for 15 years  - and the reason I do is that I love the style and art of riding custom bikes  - but I do ride them everywhere, I might not get my knee down but I hit the speed limits, and I think I get about 80%+ of their ability most days I ride. This is important to me as so many of the dark side (of BikeEXIF readers) genuinely believe that customs never get ridden.  So my guilty pleasure when I read Bike EXIF is to "exasperate" me that people judge these bikes for all sorts of bizarre reasons which basically come down to the fact that they would not out perform a normal bike on a track day.  Now living in the UK where we have congestion, and CCTV this is bizarre - I swear I could beat a GSXR on a race to the centre of London - why? - well I know the way for a start, and day to day riding is not all about speed and sticky tyres.

So to get to the point if you hate these "art" bikes try not to visualise yourself ridding the Nurburgring on one, but see yourself riding la Croisette in Cannes  - you have probably not done either  - but if you do both then maybe you will finally get it.  In the words of my favourite Harley Davidson T Shirt "If I had to explain you wouldn't understand"