by Sonny Barger
Why? The material things become the only things that matter. People lose themselves. They forget about what true friendship and loyalty are and what it means to have things that you cannot touch. They lose their way, the road has far too many forks, and they forget where they are going. They complicate their lives by keeping everything in their head and don’t face a problem and take care of it. They avoid problems and hope they will go away.
They don’t take the time to strip down their bikes, create a plan, and move down the highway.
13
Temper the Steel to Forge a Strong Blade
Bad times set you back. Hard times can make you tougher.
Some say good soldiers are born not made. I don’t fully agree. True, some warriors are born healthy and strong. Others need to be strengthened under extreme heat and pressure, like a diamond from a lump of coal, like a forged blade.
Life is one long boot camp, and only extreme and strenuous life experience can turn you into the complete soldier. When the bad times come along, don’t complain. They’re part of life.
What can you do?
Educate yourself and go to school. If not right now, soon. I dropped out of high school because I thought I knew all that I needed to know. Yet it wasn’t until Folsom Prison that it dawned on me that an education would benefit me in the long run. I might have initially done it to prove to myself that I could start my “reeducation” program from scratch. I literally entered a program on the elementary-school level and quickly worked my way up the educational ladder. I obtained an AA degree in a few short years. Education is often wasted on the young in the sense that they see no practical application for it, since they haven’t really lived life yet. For adults, the combination of life experiences with education is a perfect fit and makes perfect sense.
Think about joining some branch of the service, like the army. What I learned in the service helped me immeasurably. I was introduced to the concepts of loyalty, order, and chain of command. I came to understand that not only knowledge but also discipline was valuable. I developed a strong sense of brotherhood. I hardened my body and mind while developing a keen sense of survival. Once there were other people depending on me, I took life more seriously. I also had a great time meeting and hanging out with guys I probably never would have met or even approached on the street. I got along with different kinds of people from all different parts of the country. I got a strong, immediate sense of how big and diverse America was. The army worked for me. I made it work for me.
If you get thrown in jail, learn from it. I garnered as much knowledge about life in jail as I did in any school and the army combined. Jail slows down time. You need to speed it back up. Reading occupies the hours and allows you to learn something. Your jail job can help fill up the days. Classes educate you and turn the days into weeks. Court appeals can break up the months. Jail teaches you a different type of survival game than the army. The army prepares you for the jungle overseas. Jail prepares you for the jungle on the streets. Confinement teaches you to be resourceful and grateful for the small things in life, from a family visit to a simple piece of fruit.
In short, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If jail and prison don’t break you, they will make you stronger. Prison made me stronger, and I left with an education, the will to write an autobiography, and a buff body.
School. Army. Jail. These are a few basic life experiences that prepared me for the hard times and the long ride ahead. They are the life experiences that tempered me, and allowed me to find strength and direction in adversity. After tempering myself, I was ready for anything “the man” or whoever had to throw at me, and believe me, I’ve had the whole combination plate including the enchiladas thrown at me over the years.
14
Early Is On Time, On Time Is Late
Vince Lombardi time is ten minutes early.
One of the hardest things to get accustomed to once I got released from prison was people who were late. Life in jail is run on a strict routine. If you’re not on the right side of the cell door when it’s being racked, you’re screwed. You’re punished for losing track of the time.
A world where it’s standard procedure to be “fashionably late” was a concept I had trouble getting used to.
If you deal with me (or anybody you respect), be on time. I’ll go as far as to say, if you can’t be early, don’t even bother showing. Keeping me waiting tells me all I need to know about you. You don’t consider my time, or yours, valuable. Worse, you’re judging my concept of time by yours, which disregards and disrespects the sanctity I may feel for time. I’ve “done time” when time was an endless stretch in front of me. And I’ve experienced the reverse. After I was diagnosed with cancer and given a couple of months to live, the time ahead of me shrank to what seemed like a momentary flash. That’s when I adopted the philosophy that early is on time. Now I value every minute.
Don’t forget about prep time; factor that in. I’m a known stickler for being on time. When we’re off for a run at 9 A.M., that means we hit the road at nine o’clock, which means you need to arrive early enough to tend to your bike and what else you need to get straight for the journey ahead. This all sounds so elementary, I’m almost embarrassed to include it in this book. But you’d be surprised. Time is a funny thing. The older and more experienced you get, the quicker time passes. The more successful you become, the more precious a commodity time becomes. Guard your time from the time wasters and the losers who are apt to bog you down.
The better my bike runs, the quicker time passes. When I’m broken down along the highway under the hot Arizona sun, time slows down. Being consistently on time says a lot about you. It’s an easy way to distinguish yourself as dependable in a sea of mediocre people who treat time (like freedom) cheaply, with disdain, and with little regard for its value.
15
Just Talking Never Gets the Job Done
You’re at your best when what you think, what you say, and what you do are all in sequential harmony.
If someone wants to ride, hang out, or do business with me, the more transparent he is, the better we get along. The more “think,” the less “talk,” and the more “do,” even better. If you’re a good listener, then you’ve got the complete package. Your actions reveal your truest intentions. I always try to be that one-in-a-thousand person whose actions match his words.
Most people I know, especially motorcycle riders, always have their bullshit detectors set to the max. It seems that anyone who gabs a lot doesn’t get far. I’ve seen it a million times in bars or out on the road. Somebody is scared or gets loaded. Spews a bunch of bullshit. A dozen glances are exchanged. Nobody’s buying a bunch of words. All words, no action, no credibility.
You know when you’re talking shit and you also know when you’re keeping it real. Catch yourself when it’s the former. Stop. Strive for the latter. Stop and listen to yourself. I remember one particular person who started out as a bit of a motormouth. The guy talked nonstop bullshit chatter. I could see the guys getting sick of him. I saw the fists clenching and the glances being exchanged. I knew the guy was a gnat’s eyelash away from getting his ass kicked. So I took him aside and grabbed him by the throat.
“You need to go to Words Anonymous. Think about what you’re going to say first, then cut it in half.” (An old writer’s trick.)
And it worked. He learned to tone his shit down a little and let his actions say their piece. All I had to do was point the way a little. He’s doing fine now, and is a valuable part of the team, second to none among motorcycle mechanics. I saved him from getting lit up, and now, as a result, I get my oil changed for free.
When we have personal problems, nine times out of ten, we know the answer. But that requires thinking about it before we go ask somebody for advice or assistance. Simple rule: “do it” instead of talking about it. You’ll see more results and you skip a whole step (the talking part) in the process.
16
There Is No Reve
rse Gear on a Motorcycle
What a lot of people don’t understand about my friends and me is that we spend so much time on our bikes that the mechanics of motorcycling have seeped into our physical and spiritual beings. It’s how we think and operate on and off the bike. I’ve taken on many of the characteristics of my bike. I like to keep moving ahead, quickly. I rarely look back at the miles I’ve covered; I concentrate instead on the road before me. I split lanes to get ahead faster. I jump off the line quickly when I start. I overheat. I seldom, if ever, operate in reverse.
Since there’s no reverse gear on a motorcycle, there’s no reverse gear inside me. I don’t back down, nor do I retreat and retrace my steps. Instead of regret, I set my mind on forward-oriented goals. I’m a “destination rider,” meaning I cover as much ground and miles of territory as quickly as possible. I ride ahead with determination, and unless I’m stopping for food, fuel, or a brief rest, I’m covering maximum ground at maximum speed. I’ve had a lot of riders comment that keeping up with me on the highway isn’t exactly easy.
Have you been around people who dwell on the past, who are stuck on the good or bad times from another era? A real estate deal they should have made, a woman they should have married, the job they didn’t take. Sure you have. They are going in reverse big-time.
One of the foremost incidents I remember was a concert featuring the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in the late 1960s. It, of course, was covered by all sorts of media who called it the end of the hippie era or the Age of Aquarius or something to that effect. The subject still comes up today. People are still looking for answers and still have questions. To me, it was just another bike event. A new decade was on the horizon for me, an era that was to make Altamont seem like a garden party. But enough of that, it’s all in the rearview mirror.
Do you know people who won’t let you forget the mistakes you made ages ago? That’s exactly how your competition and your adversaries want you to think. Disappoint them. Don’t even consider going into reverse. Rather than brooding and letting your self-esteem go down the tubes, be on to your next job, caper, scam, brainstorm, or idea. Forget the past, get back on that motorcycle in your mind, and move out on the road and into high gear as quickly as possible. Move forward.
17
Cut Down on Criminals by Cutting Down on Laws
The whole concept of drug “abuse” today has expanded and been redefined. A whole new drug culture has emerged. It seems the entire world now is a self-medicating society. In England, traces of Prozac are showing up in the water supply. Besides illegal street drugs, we now have huge corporations “cranking out” prescription and mood-altering drugs that promise users they can solve their problems of depression and hopelessness simply by popping a pill. In jail they dispense what they term hot meds. Recreational usage aside, the entire world has slipped into a conveniently medicated state.
And yet the prisons today are filled with drug-related criminals.
Every day, teenagers in the ghettos are getting busted for peddling nickel bags of weed or crack. And they are doing it just to survive. They’re obeying the laws of the streets, and the cops who bust the little guys who are dealing are filling the prisons with these first-time offenders. Once someone young gets thrown in prison, it is hard for them to escape getting sucked into the vortex of crime. They grow up in prison and that’s all they know.
But these same cops aren’t scouring the beaches at the Club Meds or the swimming pools at the country clubs for the prescribed drug users. They are too busy filling the jails with the poor. Solution?
There are a lot of them, but the simplest one would be to abolish the drug laws altogether. Everyone would be equal and a lot of cops would be out of work. It is my belief that drug usage under a new system with no laws would not go up any more than it is today and would probably even go down.
18
If You’re Gonna Ride, Wear Leather
If you choose to experiment with substances, make sure you know that if you continue with them, at some point the chemicals will be in control and you won’t. And losing control is not where anyone wants to be.
Back in the early days of the psychedelic experience of the sixties, before acid was illegal, street chemists and friends liked to test their stuff out on different people. What happens if you take the blue pill with the red one? How good is this dose of acid? How easy does a swig of “Oakland Dew” go down? How potent is this weed? How much can you handle?
At the time, my friends and companions would try anything, once. That’s how we were able to test our own limits. For instance, I knew that speed wired me too much. That pot made me hungry. That alcohol made me a greater danger to myself while riding my bike. That reds put me to sleep. That acid was fantastic. That cocaine, besides stealing my soul…well, never mind. We’ll cover that ground elsewhere.
The 1960s were an era of experimentation, and some of us were there at the beginning. But then the drugs got wider and wider distribution and started moving into the colleges and suburbs. When that started happening it took some of the fun out of it; it was almost coming to the point of legality. It wasn’t just something being used by those outside the bounds of society.
Two chemicals blatantly kicked open the doors of freedom for me. The first one is an easy guess. Acid. Not since I began riding motorcycles had any one experience opened up the concept of freedom to me wider than my first trips on acid. There’s a lot of truth to the old axiom that if you can remember the sixties, chances are you weren’t there. While I do remember those days, the ultimate acid experience is almost impossible to put into words. The world slowed down and magnified. Colors that were deeply embedded in my psyche rushed to the surface. Sound, especially music, became extravagant. A trickle in the gutter resonated like a roaring waterfall.
I have to be honest. Acid expanded my definition of freedom. It became clear to me, for better or worse, that my physical body limited my perception of the physical world. Pure acid jarred loose those physical restrictions and enhanced sounds, smells, and colors. Of course some of us went overboard. We made the party we had created into a shipwreck. The mixture of acid and my friends on motorcycles wasn’t always a good one. But for me, I respected the drug’s power and I’ve never regretted a single trip I took. I’ve seen people ride out some real bummers, and I helped them get through them, but for me, acid was an interesting, entertaining, and smooth ride inward.
I bring this up for the benefit of the young. Remember that as far as chemicals are concerned, you have choices. First, you need to be cautious, even more cautious than we were back in our early days. The majority of the people in prison right now are there as a result of bad choices, alcohol, and drugs. The authorities are on the watch. There are a lot more laws now than existed forty years ago.
While I enjoyed LSD, which opened up a new world to me, I also fell in love with cocaine, which put me in prison and cost me dearly in terms of my freedom.
Some people say they don’t ride motorcycles because they are too dangerous. They are—just like drugs. It is your responsibility to know this in the first place. You have to be alert, you have to be prepared, and it doesn’t hurt to wear leather so if you take a spill you won’t scrape the skin off your body.
A big part of my freedom today is being free from any dependency.
As just an aside, I’ve adopted my own personal campaign and that is against cigarette smoking. Rather than calling for more laws telling people what to do, I’ve taken it upon myself to deal with it on a much more effective and personal one-on-one level.
At book signings and personal appearances, whenever a small kid walks up with his parents, to the table where I’m signing, I lean over and ask, “Know why I talk this way?,” putting my thumb over the plastic valve in my throat that enables me to speak since I lost my voice box.
Invariably, the kid, scared, shakes his head.
“Because I smoked cigarettes,” I tell them. “So promise me you won’t smoke cigar
ettes.”
Then we shake hands on the deal.
The parents, standing behind, look pleased. And I’ve done my part to try to rob the tobacco companies of one more sucker customer.
All in a day’s work.
To sum up, all of this drug abuse, addiction, medication, and prescription is a form of hiding from and avoiding the real world and the real you. Be in charge is the name of the game in my book, being prepared is my credo, and substances…they just get in the way.
19
Customize Yourself. Originals Don’t Come Off the Assembly Line.
Don’t be so damned run-of-the-mill and buttoned down. There are already enough scared people out there occupying the middle of the road and afraid to show their colors or speak their minds.
There was a time when motorcycle riders were looked on as total outcasts. There were so few bikes on the road, we bike riders waved at one another when we crossed paths on the streets and highways. That’s when bike culture was custom and each bike was a one-of-a-kind. We built them (or should I say rebuilt them?) in our garages with our bare hands, adding our own signature touches. Even today, when we are regarded as acceptable outcasts, our motorcycles can still reflect a rider’s self-image. Millions are enthralled with the mystical process of building customized motorcycles as seen on television reality shows.
