From the Vault: WWBW? It’s Like a Magic Boner Pill

At Baker Drivetrain, we are gearheads who live and breathe making innovative drivetrain products each and every day. All-in, all-out. In this industry, you see a lot of people who dip their toes in, around the block once on their uncle’s Harley and are ready to change to the world. Hell, you see a lot of companies spring up, especially overseas, that see nothing but dollar signs and the bottom line but have zero commitment to the culture. They crash what once a pure and fun party with garbage products and non-existent support.

Here’s the BAKER difference: We don’t just show up to the party when we hear it’s a rager. We run the party. We’ve been doing it every day and we have no plans to stop – ever.  

In our latest From the Vault feature, we flash back to 2008, where Bert draws a connection between pubescent morning wood and the state of the American motorcycle scene. You have got to read this one, so let’s dive in:

Now that I’m playing the back nine holes in my life, I’m able to look back on my earlier years with a degree of clarity. Recently, I’ve been thinking about my teenage years when I would wake up with a cast iron boner every morning. That purple cyclops would report to duty anytime to leaves rustled in the trees or a squirrel crossed the road. What a cruel trick nature plays on us. It’s like giving a MAC-10 to a 1^st grader and sending him off to school. The six year old kid would empty the clip on a classmate for stealing a cookie out of their lunchbox. The 6^th grade is not capable of using it with discretion (like on the fuckheads who drive too slowly in the left lane).

These days I wake up in the morning and look forward to going to my job. My job is to work with my designers to develop new transmissions, clutches, and drivetrain products for American motorcycles and to mechanically improve what rolls down the road on two wheels. It gives me mental wood. Nobody appointed me to the job. I just kind of assumed it because I saw a need out there and nobody was doing anything bout.

The whole American motorcycle scene woke up with a big stiffy a few years back when Harley sales took off and the TV motorcycle thing hit hard, much like those groovy hedonistic parties you hear about with the human buffet and lead crystal candy dishes full of Viagra and Vicodin. Everybody was coming to the party and having a good time. Unfortunately someone should have been watching the door because some losers with the cooties made their way into the orgy and contaminated the livestock and swiped all the Vicodin. Fuckers.

The losers I’m referring to above are the self appointed masterbuilders who started building bikes and not delivering product as promised. After they pissed off a lot of people they closed up shop and went back to their job as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Other losers are the opportunists who viewed this industry as easy money and came to the party selling products or services that sucked. I hope most of them have gone back to selling joints on the playground to elementary school kids (in China preferably).

It appears that the American motorcycle scene has now returned to its state of normalcy and I think that’s a good thing. A few years back the overall size of the scene was larger than it is now but there were a lot of people in it for all the wrong reasons. The scene needs to be populated with those who worship the machine not people just looking to go to the party for some free Viagra. Baker Drivetrain will continue to develop innovative drivetrain products and offer them to those who are in the game for the right reasons.

Bert Baker