Hunter S. Thompson knew...

No self-respecting blog concerning motorcycling can long avoid the 800-pound gorilla sitting with his feet in the punch bowl--the single finest piece of writing about motorcycles and motorcycling, Hunter S. Thompson's
"Song of The Sausage Creature"

The whole piece deserves reading, so I will only quote this:

"We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird...But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. If you go slow and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles."

That sums it up pretty well, doesn't it?