The Alphaville Herald

Back in the Saddle: Motorcycling With the Idiot

by Alphaville Herald on 06/02/07 at 6:19 pm

by Jimbo Quality

[Editor's note: Readers will recall the mishaps of idiotic correspondent Jimbo Quality in his Traveling With the Idiot quest for two-wheeled ecstasy on the Grid. Below, finally, Jimbo gets back on track. Sort of.
--Walker Spaight]

Jimbo Quality mounts his . . . well, never mind

Eureka, I found the damned motorcycles! Turns out they weren’t actually that hard to find once I actually left the nightclub I’d holed up in. They’re at a place called »Mooz« and a place called »Misp«. You can actually see them right on the map, without ever having to fire up Search. Now why didn’t I think of that earlier? Well, there were a couple of reasons why.

At my beloved nightclub home, aside from earning some serious Lindens while camping, I had kept on winning free prizes just for being there. I won cookies and doormats and t-shirts and all kinds of cool stuff. It was kind of hard to tear myself away. Then I won something called a poofer or something, and, being a gadget-loving guy, I just had to try it out. I dove into my inventory to get it, and just as I did, the guy next to me exploded. Seriously, take a look:

I was certain that my poofer had had something to do with this, so I skulked away, embarrassed and more than a little afraid that the guy I’d accidentally poofed would figure it out and come kick my cyber ass. I ran outside the club for the first time in several days, and, while my eyes adjusted to the sun, I thought I heard the distant sound of a V-twin. No matter, I had more gadgets to try, including a Dancing Cow attachment (see above) by Blain Candour. People, let me tell you, if you don’t have one of these things, get one. You can thank me later.

A couple of days later, when the fun of the cow started to wear off, I decided to go out and earn a little rent money by trying to find the racing motorcycles. (Yes, that’s right, they do pay me to write this. The real money I stand to earn though is in the pool the Herald staff started as to when I’d actually find motorcycles). I looked at my group, The SL Motorcycle Racing Association, and promptly IM’d the group member with the most impressive sounding title who happened to be online at the time. Lucky for me and probably unlucky for him, this happened to be a racing legend named Gianluca Mahoney. Gianluca informed me that I could find motorcycle racing at a place called Mooz and at another place called Misp, and he walked me through the process of finding places whose name we know by using the map. (Who knew Gianluca was such a genius?) He said he would meet me there in a bit, and so I got all excited and immediately beamed myself to Misp to meet him. (Yes, of course, he meant Mooz).

Gianluca Mahoney, racing legend and teleporting genius [Well, compared to the author -- Ed.]

While I was waiting, before I figured out I was at the wrong track, I thought I’d take a spin. There was a bike just sitting there, and Gianluca had explained that racing motorcycles is free! I hopped on the first bike I saw. The siren and flashing warning that my theft attempt had been logged made the ride very unpleasant, and I was not at all impressed with motorcycle racing in SL.

Finally, Gianluca teleported me to Mooz, where the racing truly is free. Les White, the king of all motorcycle racers in SL, owns both tracks and lets people race on Mooz for free. Your intrepid reporter just had to take one for a spin. Gianluca showed me where we average citizens can get one of a dozen bikes for free to race around the track. (This is different than getting a free motorcycle, in this case; once you’re done racing, the bike disappears!)

Racing these bikes is a lot of fun. First of all, they go like crazy. As Gianluca explained, they go 236 km/h, which is roughly 60 meters a second. They lean and dive through the turns like the real racers do, and they sound very very cool. I really suck at driving them, which was made very public very quickly because the track keeps track of your time. As one racer crosses the finish line the screen reads something like “SpeedyJoe Smith turns in a time of 28.034 seconds” and then, a long time later when I cross the line it says “Jimbo Quality turns in a time of 357. 788 seconds, a new personal best.” Still, it was fun and most of the time I was able to whittle down the time it took me to do a lap.

Once I had done a few laps, I pulled into the pit area and Gianluca told me all about the weekly races, and about the racing season that any interested racers can join anytime. There’s an annual champion crowned at the end of the series based on performances through a number of races. It was all very interesting stuff and I paid as close attention I could, but you might recall, dear reader, that my goal in finding the motorcycles was to find the places that the biker chicks frequent — and as Gianluca was explaining the racing season, the lovely Mara Kohl appeared on the scene.

The lovely Mara Kohl

I’m pretty sure I interviewed both Gianluca and Mara a while longer, but I’m not sure of what they said. Though I know I seem incredibly smooth and suave in the Herald, I don’t do as well around beautiful women, even though I have a cool job like being a Herald Reporter. So while I’m sure I was asking all the tough questions, I was in fact wondering how Mara felt about dancing cows and if she’d lead me back to wherever it is that biker babes like her frolic. Eventually, I left them to their racing and went home and logged off, accidentally totally erasing everything they’d just said.

My advice, Dear Reader? Take a trip out to Mooz and check out racing for yourself. It is a lot of fun, and if you get the secret locale of the frolicking biker babes, give me a shout. There’s a dancing cow in it for you. [What, no towel? -- Ed.]