slang

Have an eccentric uncle who fixes up old two-stroke Yamahas? Does your husband/boyfriend frequently escape the house on Saturday afternoons to go tearing off on his BMW?

If so, here’s a quick glossary of slang so that you can sound more like a real rider and less like a typical dumbass cager.

ape-hangers – huge handlebars that require you to hold your hands up extremely high. ONLY ever acceptable on a custom chopper, but even then they’re awful because it makes the bike virtually impossible to handle with any precision.

beemer – a BWM motorcycle. Not to be confused with “Bimmer” car. The motorcycle of choice for geeky types. The tech guy at your office probably has one.

busa – The Suzuki Hayabusa. This is basically the fastest production bike on the market for the past 8 years or so. Extremely popular with guys who like putting fluorescent blue lights and huge shiny wheels on their rides.

butt jewelry – What sportbikers call Harleys and choppers due to all the pointless chrome-and-tassle shit they bolt onto their bikes.

cafe racer – A 1960s British term for kids who would strip down their bikes and hot rod them so that they could race from cafe to cafe. Think Rockers in the whole rockers vs. mods battles. These are basically the coolest motorcycles on the planet. Everyone will love you if you show up to bike night on an old cafe racer.

cage – A car.

cager – A car driver. As in, “that goddamn brainless idiot cager should have his exhaust pipe shoved up his ass.”

chicken strips – the narrow strips of fresh rubber at the edges of the tires. The less you have the bike leaned over, the wider the chicken strips.

get-off – A euphemism for a crash. No motorcyclist has EVER just crashed. It’s always a get-off, or he had to “lay ‘er down” or something.

gixxer (pronounced “jixxer”) – The Suzuki GSXR line of sportbikes. They are inexpensive and ridiculously fast, so they’re extremely popular with 19-year-old kids who ride like maniacs (see “squids”).

Hardley-Ableson – Derisive nickname for a Harley-Davidson. The key to understanding the two-wheeled world is that H-D guys ONLY love H-Ds and people who ride other brands universally DETEST the slow, heavy, ill-handling Harleys.

lump – The motorcycle’s engine.

naked – A style of bike that has no plastic bodywork (called fairings).

performance award – A speeding ticket.

pillion – This one can mean either a passenger riding on the back of the bike or the back seat itself.

pirate – Ever notice how Harley people dress in silly black leather outfits with skulls all over them? Exactly. ARRRRGH, MATEY.

pudding bowl – The stupid little barely-legal bowl-shaped helmets that pirates wear in helmet-law states. They offer absolutely no protection, so if anyone ever offers you a ride and hands you one of these, politely decline and insist on a full-face helmet, which protects the face, jaw and back of the head.

Rossi wannabe – Valentino Rossi is the 8-time world champion of grand prix motorcycle racing, so he’s basically the sport’s Michael Jordan and one of Europe’s most famous athletes (seriously). If you see someone tucked way over trying to get his knee down on the street like he’s in a race, you can call him this.

scooter – NOT a scooter. A scooter is a motorcycle. Ok, scooters are also called scooters but you can refer to your motorcycle as a scooter. Some bikers call themselves “scooter trash,” which kind of makes you sound like you’ve watched too much “Easy Rider.”

smoker – A two-stroke motorcycle. The EPA effectively banned two-stroke bikes, but they were huge in the 70s and 80s and are known for producing huge clouds of blue smoke and a noise that can best be described as a billion angry bees.

the slab – Any super-highway. To be avoided if at all possible because highways are incredibly boring on a bike.

sled – A motorcycle. See “scooter.”

splitting – Also called lane-splitting, filtering or white-lining. This is riding in between two lanes during traffic jams. It’s legal in California and every other country in the world besides the U.S. It’s actually safer than sitting in a lane during stop-and-go traffic because it lowers the risk of a rear-end crash. Plus it uses the roads more efficiently. If you ever see motorcyclists riding up toward you in between the lanes, give him/her a few inches. You’ll get to your destination just as fast.

squid – A squid is a dangerous, young sportbike rider. Think wife beaters and flip-flops and Gixxers. There are about a billion different theories for where the term squids came from. I like to think it’s an acronym for “Stupid Quick Until I’m Dead,” but it also may have come from the nickname for all the Navy sailors riding around San Diego. If you’re riding with a buddy who’s taking risks and riding fast, you can even call him “squidly.”

the twisties – Twisty roads.