OK, it's obvious that Salon's editors are not much into succinct, since a great many of the posts are elaborations of what should have been obvious in that initial response, which didn't much impress. It's also obvious that motorcycles, and racing, and risk (as a concept rather than an experience), have an enormously negative symbolic importance for the soft-handed modern humans who apparently constitute the majority of Salon's readers. Therefore, let me expand.

Whenever someone tries to sell me his opinion, the first thing I want to know is: how deep is his data base? From the responses to this article, it appears that those with the strongest negative opinions about motorcycles and racing and risk have the least experience, starting with the author, who seems to have made one whole trip to the race track, one resentful time, to "show support" for the man she "loves," and who now presumes to preach to the nation.

I am going to try to sell you some opinions. Here is my data base.

I have owned a motorcycle every year since 1968, although there were several years when I didn't own a car. My first motorcycle race was in 1971, but in those days those of us in the center of the country were into drag racing, since the only road races were on the coasts. Beat the national record holder in my class in 1974, but never did set the record myself, since two-strokes only run best at sea level. Didn't start road racing until 1995, when I finally realized that riding fast on public roads, despite the fact that bikes are to cars as salmon are to boulders, is just a form of gambling. Had my first infarct in the pits at Heartland Park in August, 1996, while working on my Kawasaki. Took me until the next spring to get back to the track. In September, 2004, I finished on the podium in an Expert Class race at the National Challenge at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, a combination race track and museum that pales the Guggenheim show by comparison, four and a half months after my quintuple bypass. So far as I know, I am the only state Supreme Court Justice (by appointment) ever to win a national-class road race, even if it was only an ARHMA race at my home track. In 30 years, my wife Ruth has only missed two of my races. She has been with me to the emergency room three times, and several times more than that has had to drive me home from the races, with a mangled race bike on the trailer behind the Volvo. When it comes to motorcycles and racing and risk, I know some stuff.

Opinion: If the wine sipper gave up his racing for the thin treacle of Bauer's "love" (what did he get in return?), he probably wasn't very good at it in the first place. Bauer either doesn't know or doesn't tell. I always say I only race for fun, but it turns out that it surely is more fun when you win. Maybe the wine sipper just wasn't having any fun any more.

Opinion: It is wonderfully ironic that, in the softest time and place in the history of the planet to be a middle-aged, middle-class white person, when the net increase in the human population of the earth is not quite 2 million every week, we have become so obsessed as a society with safety. If I die on a race track this year, the human population will still increase by over 261,000 that day. What, exactly, are they saving themselves for?

Opinion: Racing on a closed course, dropping into what's left of the Gravity Cavity at Road Atlanta bouncing off the rev-limiter at 175 mph, is a couple of orders of magnitude safer than attempting to negotiate urban gridlock surrounded by incompetent and distracted car drivers. Cars, by the way, kill over 100 Americans every day. No one ever suggests I quit driving.

Opinion: The human male brain is hardwired to kill. If our ancestors had not been so good at it, there would not now be so many of us. On the race track, wearing armor and wielding magically powerful weapons, we are very much acting out combat that would, not that many generations ago, have left the losers dead and their wives and daughters on their backs in the dirt. There is little else, including scholastic wrestling, tournament chess, and oral argument in the Supreme Court, that is more intensely focusing. Before and after combat, all the rules of chivalry apply.

Opinion: Race pits are overpopulated with cigarette smokers, beer drinkers, gun owners and Republicans. You will never impress them by reading Cervantes, sipping wine, or making love "reverently." On the track, opinions count for nothing. You can either make the pass and hold the corner, or you can't, and are respected accordingly. Pit humor tends to be like locker room humor. The insult is a sign of respect. It would be a violation of the rules of chivalry to insult one who can't take it, as to kick a cripple.

Opinion: Salon's posters tend to be a bit sexist and ageist. Racers may be mostly young men, but there are an increasing number of women, some of a certain age, and a surprising number of us old guys who are still competitors rather than participants.

Opinion: Going fast on a motorcycle around a race track is about 25% machine, 50% rider skill, and 25% rider courage. There are few other opportunities in life to test the intersection of your skill and your fear, ten times a lap, one lap every minute and a half, for up to an hour at a time. Every so often, you find the zone, that Zen experience, forget that you're being brave, and go faster with less effort. Intermittent reinforcement is the most effective.

Opinion: I still think the wine sipper and the librarian are heading for a crash, but this time you can't accuse me of being succinct.