Dear Suzuki...

Interstices, Mashups and Fusions

When I was very little my mother would read me to sleep with bedtime stories. Most nights I wanted favorites read again and again. One was Dr Suess’s ‘Horton Hears a Who’. Another was ‘Anatole’. It may have been their illustrations, or my mother’s attention, or some deeper message those stories carried, but whatever the reason for a year or more they topped the list of favorite bedtime literature.

‘Horton Hears a Who’ is about a nice elephant who, because of his extra-large ears, is the only elephant able to hear the voices and other noises made by a community of extremely tiny people living out their otherwise unknown lives. Horton knew others were unwittingly about to destroy this entire miniature world. Fortunately for them he was nothing if not determined and eventually was able to help them be discovered, thus saving the entire microscopic community. The lesson was if you happen to discover or learn something nobody knows, it’s ok to tell the world about it even if no one else believes you. Stick to it long enough and if you are persistent, eventually they will. (Side note: this is essentially how I feel about useful day-to-day utility-transportation motorcycle and bicycle riding.)

‘Anatole’ is about an industrious little Parisian mouse raising a family and how he makes a living.  Every night he sneaks into a nearby cheese factory after it closes for the day and samples all the different types and flavors of cheese they manufacture. This mouse knows his cheeses. He learns the company is struggling so to help he starts leaving tiny notes on the various cheese varieties about how their flavors might be improved. When the cheese makers arrive in the morning and find his tiny notes, they modify their recipes accordingly and soon those reformulated cheeses start winning gourmet awards. The business prospers and eventually Anatole receives well-deserved recognition and he and his family live happily ever after.

Both stories carry important lessons for a young person to learn. Thirty years later as I was trying to get Aerostich going I must have remembered them, at least unconsciously, because some of the design and business decisions I made reflected those ideas.

At some point I also picked up an understanding of ‘interstices’, ‘mashups’ and ‘fusions.’ Interstices are the empty spaces between larger things. Think of a bucket full of soccer balls and marbles. The marbles fill (or infill) the interstices between the larger soccer balls. Mashups are combinations of two different kinds of things, and fusions are when a blend of two different things yields a third all-new thing which then fills some formerly vacant space – the interstice - between the two already existing things. Examples are infinite: Combine two musical genres and create a new genre. Combine two ethnic cuisines and you end up with a new cuisine. Combine a riders rainsuit and an armored crash-protective suit and you end up with an Aerostich Roadcrafter. Combine a motocross boot and a street boot to get an ‘adventure riders’ boot. The well-remembered Aerostich Combat Touring Boot was that and today there are dozens of variations based on its pioneering fusion. Combine a lightweight street bike with an off-road bike and you end up with a ‘street scrambler’ or a ‘supermotard’. Combine a dirt bike with a touring bike and you end up with an ‘ADV’ bike.

If you are lucky the result originally intended to fit the interstices between well-established market categories will exceed the popularity of the existing categories. BMW’s GS bike family is a blend of street bike and dirt bike and became their best-selling motorcycle type.

Ten years ago, we started fooling around with a lightly modified Zero electric motorcycle for local winter transportation in our hometown of Duluth Minnesota. Our purpose was: A) To test Aerostich rider’s gear in cold weather, and B) find out how an electric vehicle of any kind might work in this climate. Until then nobody had ever tried to run an electric car or motorcycle through a Duluth winter as daily transportation. It gets cold and snowy here: Average annual snowfall is 80-90”, average January/Feb low temps run around minus ten degrees F. But riding for daily transportation is always worth it, right? Horton was hearing another Who...

As the winter-motorcycling years followed, the result became a lightly modified 200cc Suzuki VanVan. These are good low-temp winter starters thanks to fuel injection. They are also easy to keep upright thanks to a very low saddle, light weight and fat tires. But with a little work they could be made even better for winter-transportation applications.

Nobody manufacturing motorcycles offers one specifically optimized for use in cold snowy places. There is an old saying in business when one is trying to figure out some business deal.  The phrase became so common it’s now a cliché: “There’s a pony in there somewhere.”  Yes, there is. For local transportation and the Suzuki motorcycle company that small horse is an interstice you could ride a VanVan through blindfolded. Many of the world’s peoples living in cold and snowy places would enjoy owning and using a lightweight winter-focused motorcycle -- if one existed.  Calling Anatole, the famous mouse with the extraordinarily well-educated cheese tasting palette…

Dear Suzuki,

You manufacture the basis for an excellent winter-focused lightweight motorcycle. With only a few changes a variation of your VanVan 200 model could be that bike. It would not take the place of any snowmobile or ATV. It would be something entirely new -- a uniquely versatile, practical, useful and enjoyable winter-adapted bike. Those peoples living in cold, snowy, icy places would find many reasons to buy one. Nobody else makes any type of winter-optimized lightweight utility motorcycle. You’d have this market entirely to yourself. 

There are essentially two tiers of modifications needed to develop your Van Van in this direction, measured by cost and relative importance. Here are the ten least-costly most-critical items:

1. Heated Grips
   
   
   
   
2. An easy connection for a heated vest or bib
   
3. Gaiters protecting the fork seals
   
   
4. Optional removable handguards and ‘hippo hands’
5. An optional windshield
6. A center stand
   
   
7. An extender for the front fender
   
   
8. The larger-sized rear tire and wheel also mounted on the front
   
   
9. An O-ring final drive chain
10. An insulating sleeve on clutch and brake levers
    
    

The next tier lists five more expensive but also critical items (some would require a substantial investment):

• Aluminum rims (the current steel ones are far, far, far, far too heavy)
• Snow tires (a low temperature-optimized rubber compound and tread design, low-profile-stud-able, heavily siped)
• Lighter weight muffler
• Brighter headlight
• Slightly larger (+ one gallon) gasoline tank
• Plug-in electric battery and engine block heaters (for extreme cold operation).

Finally, here are a few luxury and fantasy items, some maybe optional:

• An (optional) heated saddle
• An increased capacity alternator
• An on-off switchable two-wheel drive system using a small front hub electric motor
• A remote starter system
• A nice (optional) rear cargo rack
• A sixth gear
• Steel fork sliders (subzero temps shrink aluminum enough to lock the forks)

Motorcycle riders across the entire northern half of the USA, all of Canada, most of Russia, the northern third of China, all the high elevation ‘stans’ (Kazakhstan, Afghanistan etc), Greenland, the northern half of Europe, the southern fourth of South America and all those living at higher elevations in the Andes mountainous places are waiting. So am I.

A bike like this would offer all peoples in the world’s colder areas a kind of versatility, efficiency, economy and functionality no snowmobile, ATV or conventional motorcycle could ever achieve. This ball is in your court. You can pioneer and own this.

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

- Mr. Subjective

PS – If you wanted to make this bike a bit more ‘freeway compatible’ (a very low priority for my application) enlarge the engine to 300cc’s. The 200cc’s it has delivers enviable MPG but only takes this bike to around 60mph. Even the slightest headwind or grade means 55mph - pinned. Which is fine for small town surface streets, and for villagers in northern Norway or Alaska, but these days many riders must deal with high-speed ‘freeways’ for at least some portion of their everyday A to B.

PPS – Interestingly -- at least to me -- is how, after my ‘winter’ VanVan was set up with DIY modified tires (inflated to only 4-4.5lbs), it feels safer on snowy icy roads than my e-bike or regular bicycle on their studded ‘winter’ tires. I’ve been riding single track machines on snowy icy urban streets for many years now, and even though I’m moving much faster on the VanVan than I do on those bicycles, riding the well-traveled auto-packed down and sometimes rutted tracks aboard the VanVan still feels a lot safer than navigating the areas of deeper snow nearer the road’s shoulders aboard a bicycle or e-bike. Car traffic leaves the sides of the roads piled up with snow with the well-used lanes comparatively clearer. And more-closely matching the speed of surrounding traffic also feels a lot safer. And at night (winters being long and dark) a motorcycle’s better lighting makes a nice difference, too.