Biker n00b: “Wait, you chose to wear a neon colored jacket?”

1. You choose your helmet based on your motorcycle.
You’d love to wear a full-face, but only if borrowing a friend’s Honda CBR600RR, otherwise you stick to your Bell Custom 500, no matter the riding conditions, when riding your Bonneville. Sure, the full-face is more comfortable and far safer, but what will people think?

Standard riding uniform as soon as the sun comes out.

2. Sun’s out, guns out.
As soon as the temperature gets above 60 degrees, you’re ready to get out there in a t-shirt or sleeveless vest. Riding down the road, squeezing the handlebars so your triceps flex, you look around to try and catch people watching you. You’re only going 40 mph, nothing bad can happen.

3. If you don’t rev your bike at idle, it might die.
Doesn’t matter if you’re on a 600cc sportbike or a bobber, any time your bike isn’t in gear you give the throttle a few good twists just to let the world know you’re a bad ass who’d be doing 100 mph if you weren’t stuck at that light. When asked why, you mumble something about it being good for the engine, it being important to let people know you’re there for safety reasons, or that it’s just a habit and you, “don’t realize you are doing it.”

200 guys trying to show off all in one tiny parking lot…what could go wrong?

4. You meet up with your motorcycle friends in the most populated places possible.
Whether you prefer the local motorcycle café or just a super populated downtown area; you and your friends wouldn’t think of meeting anywhere you couldn’t line up all of your bikes for everyone to admire. Sure, parking sucks and there are pedestrians everywhere and the food is greasy and awful, but you just feel at home there.

5. You LOVE to stand around admiring motorcycles.
You could spend all day listening to some guy ramble about how much faster adjusting his rear-sets by 1/8 inch made him or explaining why he wasn’t as fast as usual at a recent track day. Motorcycle shows are your absolute favorite, and you’ve almost perfected the ability to look at some builder’s rat-rod and point out he’s using the front forks from a 1967 Harley something or other.

If it’s fast enough for RideApart contributors Jamie Robinson and Cody Blank, it’s fast enough for me.

6. You think 600cc sport bikes are for girls and new riders.
Surely, you will outgrow that puny engine as soon as you get comfortable with operating the clutch. The power is just so limiting, you actually have to be able to turn to keep up with your buddies and can’t just catch them in the next straight. Also, absolutely no one is impressed when you say it makes 125 hp.

7. Your style of riding is the best version of motorcycling; everyone else is doing it wrong.
Those sportbike guys dress like idiots in their onesies and their bikes look like transformers. Those Harley guys look like pirates and ride bikes that are too heavy, too loud, too chrome, and too obnoxious. Those café dudes are posers who ride uncomfortable bikes just so people will think they look like Steve McQueen. Those dirt bike dudes, in their lifted trucks, flat bill hats, and Monster-fueled blood – have to actually truck their bikes places to ride. Those adventure guys just sit on their bikes, wearing brightly colored snowsuits, while miles accumulate underneath them; those things would be miserable to ride downtown.

Shocking that the Range Rover driver couldn’t predict the motorcyclists next move, right?

8. Riding in appropriate formation is boring.
Riding in groups is only fun if you’re either a) riding side by side with your friend like motor-cops do or b) if you’re passing each other every few seconds. That lane position stuff they talked about at your MSF course was so lame, no one actually rides like that. What’s the point of riding together if you aren’t interacting the whole time?

Offended? You might be a biker n00b….