Write it off to human nature. There's always someone with more money who's just got to show up with the flashiest toys. And whether they can use that toy to the limits of its ability doesn't matter. What matters to them is that they have the flashiest toy.
I've been long used to this attitude in modern cars (take your pick), antique cars (custom bodied Packard when most of the rest of the club is running Model A's and Chevy's?), motorcycles (can you say Big Dog, Ducati 999RS, MVAugusta?), watercraft (anything bigger than a rowboat or canoe in my estimation), cross-country skiing (the latest composite when hickory and cane poles were still the norm), and the list goes on endlessly, probably to extremes that I can't imagine.
The extreme, in my mind at least, was reached the day of a fairly large English Civil War re-enactment when a line musketeer shows up with an engraved wheelock carbine, while the rest of the line have plain old matchlock muskets. Here, individual freedom lost out - he was told to put his wheelock away and go get his old matchlock, or get out of the line. After all, we were reenactors and rule number two (after safety) in the hobby is, "Thou shalt not mislead the audience as to what was actually carried on the field. And period exceptions mislead."
I'm up to five bikes now, four CR or barely outside, four road, one citified mtb. None will ever be mistaken for flash and show. I just love to ride and wrench. And any of those showoff guys are more than welcome to ride with me - as long as they doesn't act like they're better than me because they've got more expensive bikes.
George R. "Syke" Paczolt Montpelier, VA USA Deranged Few M/C
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