A young guy buys a new ZX-14R and he’s really proud of it. He’s out riding around, enjoying having a more powerful bike than anyone he knows.

He’s stopped at a light when an old geezer on an ancient, rusty scooter pulls up beside him.

“What kinda motorsickle ya got there, sonny?” asks the old guy.

“This is a Ninja ZX-14R,” the young guy replies proudly. “Most powerful production motorcycle you can buy!”

“Ya don’t say! Sure is a nice lookin’ motorsickle.” The old guy’s leaning over, checking out the gauge cluster, getting a nice close look at the paint job. Just then, the light turns green so the young guy decides to give the old scooter rider a show and he twists the throttle. Seconds later he’s just barely into second gear and already hitting triple-digit speeds when he looks in his mirror, expecting to see the scooter as a distant speck. Instead, he’s shocked to see something coming up from behind and gaining on him.

Before he can even make out what it is, something goes whooshing past him. How could anything accelerate faster than his Ninja? And maybe it was a hallucination, but it looked like the guy on the scooter. But that’s impossible! He hasn’t even had time to make sense of this when he sees something coming straight at him at high speed. A split second before the impact, he sees it’s the old guy on his scooter.

The collision is horrific, but the kid manages to get off the road. His Ninja’s fairing is shattered and the front end is mangled, but the scooter is a smoldering pile of scattered parts. He sees the old guy lying in a ditch and staggers over to see if he’s alive. The old guy is breathing, but he doesn’t look good.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” the kid asks the old man.

“Yeah. Unhook my suspenders from your mirror.”