Here's how to judge who to wave to: http://www.shinnysideup.com/msf/WaveII.htm
Come on, it was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Have we really become that dependent upon smileys?
There are lots of times I don't wave. Living in SoCal, we have A) lots of riders, especially on weekends, and B) lots of six lane roads with a ten foot wide "grass and trees" median. So in the first circumstance you'd never put you clutch hand back on the bars, and in the second, you end up looking like you're waving to a palm tree.
Having said that, I wave to *almost* everyone, at least when it's manageable. I've learned not to bother with the 17 year old crotch rocket boys wearing "No Fear" T-shirts. And anyone wearing genuine Hell's Angels or Hessian's colors is left politely alone. Everyone else gets the wave, and even in image-conscious L.A., almost everyone returns it.
I honestly find that, while my old bike gets a lot of appreciation from both the cruiser crowd and the sportybike crowd, it's the Harley/cruiser guys who tend to be the friendliest. My pet half-baked theory is that the cruiser guys just appreciate someone who works on his own bike and modifies it to suit his own taste a bit more than the "flush mounts and end cans make it custom" crotchrocket crowd.
I'm really beginning to feel like the plastic fantastic boys are a snobbier group than the "Harley or nothing" crowd. If nothing else, the "Harley or nothing" folks often aren't being completely serious when they say it. A lot of the crotch rocketeers really do believe if you're not on an '06 ABCDXYZ you're not a real rider.
