Let me expound on this important subject! Advanced riders must learn that dorkiness when waving is context sensitive. The rider's mind must continually evaluate his/her social relationship with an approaching rider while performing all the other mental calculations required for safe riding. A full vocabulary of waves must be mastered, and the correct one chosen, often in split seconds. Otherwise, one risks humiliation, insult, road rage or no response from the passing rider, leaving one's identity in crisis and possibly setting up the kind of mental confusion that can cause an accident.
Here are a few examples: You're cruising on your Savage when 3 or 4 bagger HDs riding two up approach. You do the relaxed arm down pointing at the road wave. All riders return it. An excellent transaction.
You're cruising on your Savage when a possible transvestite on a fuscia Vespa approaches and you do the same salute. He or she returns it with the left little finger raised from the grip like holding a teacup wave. You lose. The Vespa rider thinks you are disoriented and dangerous or can't see well. He or she is right.
You are approaching a greasy HD rat bike with a tattoo-covered rider wearing an open soiled leather vest and a Nazi SS helmet. You give the Hitler raised arm sieg heil salute and he returns it. Successful transaction.
But: You are approaching a motor officer on a Kawasaki Police 1000 and you give the same salute. The motor officer does an incredibly tight footboard-dragging U-turn, lights you up, gets off his bike and pounds you to raw meat with his truncheon. You lose. You called him a Nazi. What did you expect?
A dozen high displacement sportbikes are approaching you at 180mph on a suburban street at an intersection. You do the both hands salute where the right hand is raised open and the left fist smashes into the right palm. The sportbikes don't respond because the photons of light from your hands have barely reached them before they are past you. But glancing in your rear view mirror, you notice that about half the pack has collided in an explosion of fiberglass fairings and tumbling bodies and a couple of fires have started. You lose. You confused them and they had no time to respond. You technically caused the accident by using a bad wave.
It's like this with the waving. You just have to know what to do and do it right every time. The stakes are high!
I wave at all 2-wheelers, but I always try to do it RIGHT.
And waving at kids is the greatest feeling ever.
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