For three or four years I’ve been riding a big fat Yamaha Majesty 400, which you might as well call a motorcycle. It’s large and fast and makes a nice rumbly-gurgly sound, and it has leather saddlebags and a mounted snap-shut carrying case on the rear. Between ’07 and ’08 I owned a BMW yellowjacket motorcyle, which wasn’t a substantially different thing except that it had a little more power and made more noise plus you had to constantly shift gears with your foot.

For whatever reason the foot-shift thing is hugely important to some guys. In their minds foot-shift vehicles are ridden by men, and non-foot-shift vehicles are ridden by dilletantes, and so anyone riding a large, Harley-sized, bloop-bloop scooter is somehow relegated to the realm of dandelions and dingleberries.

Scooters are smallish, Vespa-sized vehicles that sound like a swarm of hornets when you rev them up. If a two-wheeled bike is big (even heftier than some motorcycles) and studly and powerful enough to achieve speeds of 70 or 80 mph without breaking a sweat, it’s a rumblin’, easy ridin’, two-wheeled beast. Period, end of story.

Anyone on HE threads who threatens my sense of masculinity by calling what I ride a “scooter” will be jettisoned. I don’t wanna fight about this, but I will not be called a scooter guy. You don’t have to use the term “motorcycle”; “Yamaha beast hog” or “West Hollywood rumbler” will suffice. TheRealBadHatHarry has already come out on the losing side of this. My column, my rules.