Here it is, anyway… Summer finally arrived. All is well here.  The temperature reached near 80ºF yesterday. Everything was absolutely lovely until about 8 PM when the skies opened and a hard rain began. In the morning, I’d opened the R-3’s pit zips and back vent zip (each slider to the center) for the first time this year. A well-worn all-black Aerostich with at least a dozen years of regular day-to-day wear, and one replaced zipper slider which I’d only broken by impatient zipper operator error. Replacing it was a simple DIY five-minute fix. Worn underneath the R-3 was a pair of similarly old cotton casual shorts and a short sleeve ‘beach’ type button down shirt. I was riding mostly surface streets with my modular helmet’s chinbar tipped up showing my face continuously grinning from ear to ear, simply enjoying the summer riding experiences: An ever-changing endless kaleidoscope of sights, smells sounds and sensations coming at me at forty miles per hour while the bike was delivering its usual sixty miles per gallon. The rains came in the form of many large very cold drops, all from a bank of cold-front leading dark clouds. A moment earlier I had been enjoying an outdoor music event called ’Superior Porchfest’ which is a uniquely old-fashioned midwestern small-town weekly summer event. The musicians get paid, but everyone else, including the homeowners who donate their yards and electricity, volunteer. There’s a food truck or two, a porta-potty and a wide range of live music. Silk screened Porchfest logo T shirts and home-made dog food (no kidding!) are among many fundraiser items being sold. It’s a very pleasant event which builds community spirit and connection and a great way to end a workday or just get out of the house for a couple of hours. Each week the event is at different volunteered homes, with different musicians performing different types of music. When those rains arrived I was sitting in an ultralight camping chair I’d brought, enjoying a nice food-truck burrito thing (my dinner). At the arrival of rain everyone hurriedly packed up and fled, and the event ended a little earlier than we’d all hoped, but it was still a very enjoyable evening as long as it lasted. After I’d put my little chair back into its bag and deployed a travel umbrella and walked over to my bike (where the R-3 was draped over its saddle), I zipped closed those underarm and back vents, deployed the boot rain covers from their little pockets Velcroed onto the backside of each shin-covering leg, and stepped in -- zipping the suit around me, securing the collar, helmeting up, and then rode home through a gutter-filling downpour, still smiling all the way. First time this year for riding through both a hard cold rain, and a nice warm day. This combo was strong reminder of what partly the purpose of these suits was in the first place. Every time I arrive somewhere and step out with dry clothing underneath, I shake my head and grin. When I started street riding back in 1969 (ugh…), It was impossible to use a motorcycle this way without frequently experiencing the discomfort being too hot, and then (later) getting soaked by a cold hard rain. With all of today’s great technical gear, why don’t more people do more everyday riding? I was the only rider at the Porchfest’s free music event, and then the only one on two wheels riding through the downpour. Just to be very clear (and repetitive, sorry) despite the perfection of yesterday’s sunny delightfully temperate pre-rain weather, 97% of those around me in their cars in traffic had every one of their car’s windows fully up. They do this every damn day. It is an unbelievably uniform demonstration of mass-self-isolating behavior. How did this ever happen to us? I’m no heroic motorcyclist, but it would seem like our deeply ingrained human social contract, upon which ALL forms of collective action, and all forms of good governance so heavily depend, requires we all accept that we are, as the cliché goes, “all in this together”. And what seems to most strongly nourish and sustain this stuff is a universal shared exposure to common everyday experiences which transcend the infinite range of our individual self-interests and opinions. Until quite recently that awareness resulted in the creation of technologies and infrastructures which were made as much as possible around recognizably shared needs of people. Look at a street-scene photo of any city anywhere in the world before 1940 and you’ll see streets and sidewalks filled with people on foot. All of the worlds older cities are still like this. Those places remain crowded with pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and (of course) motorcycles.* Modern cities are different. Here in little Duluth Minnesota the older urbanized hillside directly abutting the Lake Superior shoreline is a dense mix of older commercial buildings and old homes and apartments. But just over the hillside away from the lake, it’s sprawled-out malls, big box stores, huge new apartment buildings and big and small homes on very large lots. Everything is spaced out to better accommodate the needs of cars. Not people. There are few pedestrian-friendly sidewalks because the distances between places of business and schools are way too far to walk in a reasonable amount of time. You already know which infrastructure better suits motorcycling, scootering and walking. I am a privileged car owner and occasional car user, though I enjoy riding a bicycle, scooter or motorcycle quite a bit more than driving. Even through pouring rain. For me, the satisfactions of single-track balancing motion is worth the extra effort. This means wearing an armored, vented, waterproof, abrasion-resistant coverall (or jacket-and-pants) plus gloves and a modular helmet. All this gear takes extra time and effort to put on and remove, and money to acquire. It also makes one feel like the perpetual oddball in traffic, even on the nicest days. But if your bike has fenders and you have the right gear, you never fear puddles or rain clouds. Riding nourishes us in real ways, and indirectly nourishes our shared underlying social contract, the bonds upon which you and I -- and everyone – depend on. Riding is like consuming a steady diet of fresh, flavorful organic food - while driving anywhere inside a sealed climate-controlled car, with all its windows fully up on nice days, feels more like enjoying highly engineered processed junk food. A continuous diet of mainly that highly processed food stuff eventually messes with our insides, and I type this as a lover of Cheetos, ice cream and “processed cheeses”, same as I love the comfort, convenience, efficiency and safety of cars. But whenever I am able, and have the time, I like to walk, pedal or motorcycle there even more. If you’ve read this far (?) you already know all this. Why don’t all those very nice people sitting around in folding chairs on someone’s freshly mowed lawn on a warm summer evening enjoying free well-played live music not seem to know it? Ok, maybe a third of them had to us their car to haul little kids to the event. They get a pass. What about the rest of them? -- Mr. Subjective, June 16, 2026 * This famous 1942 painting ‘Nighthawks’ is partly a comment about how industrialization and technology isolate us from each other. If it’s not too much trouble, please get off your butt and ride a little more often.

And Another Box of Chocolates. The fellow who became the owner of the first Aerostich suit is a highly accomplished writer with a bunch of published books, a degree in history, considerable expertise in Air Force subjects, airplane and flight history and technology, and a successful career as an automobile and motorcycle journalist. He rode twisty backroads FAST and was a skillful motorcycle road racer, too. During my twenties and thirties his smart editorials in Auto Week and Cycle World taught me a lot. Many of them offered a deeper understanding of motorcycle culture and mainstream culture than anything I’d read elsewhere or could have come up with myself. Steven L. Thompson got that first Roadcrafter unsolicited, with a cover letter introducing it and attempting to explain what the suit was for, and letting him know if it was not his size to please let me know. I hoped he’d give it a try. Fortunately, he immediately understood what it was, and liked it very much. He also wrote encouragingly about it ('Dressing Up’). Aerostich would not exist today without his generous encouragement, support and recognition, literally from day one. As the years passed, we became friends and eventually collaborators on his insightful book ‘Bodies in Motion’ which analyzes some of what underlies our profound attraction to motorcycles. Steven is still around, and we’re still friends. Recently he sent me a link to a story about the ‘Big Wheel’ children’s trike. Unfortunately, it was behind a paywall, so I was unable to read it, but the story’s title alone was enough to get me going and I wrote what follows. (That behind-a-paywall article is here: “The Wild—and Weirdly Dark—History of One of America’s Most Iconic Toys - How the Big Wheel turned plastic, physics, and pure chaos into a generation’s first taste of freedom.” from Popular Mechanics. If you subscribe to Apple News at $12.95/mo and want to make me a .pdf, I’d love to read it.) What follows is an autobiographical story from my childhood. Among other things, it reveals how much of an insufferable, overly-opinionated little sh-t I was. The first Schwinn ’Stingray’ bikes came out when I was in the 5th grade. With their innovative chopper-esque styling they quickly became the company’s best-selling bike and were soon copied by many other bicycle manufacturers. Nearly all kids loved ‘em. That year I was still pedaling my trusty red and white 20” Huffy traditional bicycle with painted steel fenders, ‘paper-boy’ style bicycle handlebars, ‘balloon’ tires, a Bendix coaster brake and a normal bicycle seat. It handled great and was good on both sidewalks and single-track ’shortcut’ trails through overgrown vacant lots. Excellent at jumping curbs, too, this was a true do-anything little bike, and I loved it enough to periodically use auto paste wax to shine it up. It became my faithful wings as soon as its bolt-on training wheels were removed. So when I examined those flashy new Stingrays it was with narrow eyes and a mix of anger and sadness, in roughly the same way as a decade later pop singer Don McLean described America and American music culture changing in ‘American Pie’, his wonderful song about the “Day the music died…” Here’s verse three of that song: "Now, for ten years we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone
But that's not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
And while Lenin read a book on Marx
The quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died” (Notes: “jester” = maybe Bob Dylan, “rollin’ stone” = maybe the Rolling Stones band, “the king” = maybe Elvis, “Lenin read a book on Marx” = maybe John Lennon, “quartet practiced in the park” = maybe The Beatles. Personally, I love both pre-and-post ‘American Pie’ pop music.) Those Stingrays embodied everything which seemed to be going bad in America in the worlds of bike marketing, and about the inherent wonders of riding a bicycle. The overly stylized machines seemed like pure evil on two wheels, yet they were selling like hotcakes and ’sliced bread’. I had neither the age, wisdom, or experience to understand what was happening to America, but I knew this terrible bike represented the beginning of the end for something amazing about the experience of riding a bicycle. At age ten I was unable to appreciate and describe it, yet one look at a Stingray and I instantly felt a kind of anger through my every fiber: “The jester stole his thorny crown, the courtroom was adjourned…and we sang dirges in the dark, the day the music died.” For a couple of months every spring and fall, from the third through fifth grades, I rode that Huffy about two miles to and from my elementary school. On September 24th, 1963, a couple of months before President Kennedy was assassinated, he did an overnight campaign stop here in Duluth, speaking in the basketball gymnasium of our local university (UMD). Their campus was less than an eighth mile from my elementary school and that night my parents went to witness the President speak. They had either left me with a babysitter, or maybe I was left on my own - I no longer remember this detail clearly - but I also went there, pedaling my trusty Huffy just to see if I could somehow get in. As I left our house it was already twilight, and if there was a sitter (?) I‘d have sneaked out very quietly, powered mostly by adrenaline and curiosity, hoping to sneak into that gym. I knew the best route even in the dark since it was the same one I’d been pedaling to school every weekday. When I got there some guy at a side door actually let me in and I stood with a few others, crowded into an aisle between folding bleachers, looking around at a sea of people, and trying unsuccessfully to spot my parents because I did not want them to see me there. That trusty Huffy got me into lots of trouble like this and then always got me out of trouble, every time. After the President finished his speech, none of which I remember (…or understood), the city was already in full darkness. Despite the gloom I pedaled back home like the wind and fortunately made it there before my parents. I was in bed faking sleep by the time they arrived. None of this would have been remotely possible riding an idiotic ill-handling Stingray. When the Big Wheel trike came out a few years later I was already older. Little kids had them. The roto-molded polypropylene frame and matching soft plastic tires were as ridiculous and useless as it’s ‘chopper-esque’ riding position. Those G-d Damn’s Stingrays had somehow led to this abomination, I thought. But parents and little kids both loved them because on asphalt or worn concrete driveways they were pathetically easy to drift and slide around in safe and controlled ways, thanks to the near-zero frictional coefficient of roto-molded polypropylene. Plus, they were cheap and less tippy than a traditional trike. When used as intended, which they all were, it did not take super-long to wear through the oversized front wheel’s molded plastic tread, at which time the entire crude and cheaply made thing went into a garbage bin, and then a few days later to the local landfill. It was still years before today’s semi-fake plastic recycling programs existed. Despite (or because of) those dynamic and durability limitations, little kids everywhere begged grownups for them and thanks to a very low price it was not difficult for even lower income parents to comply and shut them up. A few years later those kids would be pedaling Schwinn (or imitation) Stingrays and a few years after that they would be making horrible ‘sissy-bar’ equipped almost-choppers out of completely inappropriate used Honda CL 77 scramblers, all while Evil Knievel was bloviating about jumping the Snake River, true courage and good ol’ American pride while wearing rhinestones on his fingers and a snazzy leather suit which looked like it had come from one of fat Elvis’s concert wardrobes. These days I’m still riding those same streets as I once did on that Huffy, except now I’m doing it year-around thanks to a lightly-modified a 200cc fat-tired Suzuki Van Van ‘winter bike’, which turned out to be a dependable cold-temp starter and seems/feels safe-ish for use on snowy and icy streets. You don’t know what strange is until you’ve ridden a studded-tire bicycle, e-bike or Van Van for day-to-day transportation though one of our always slightly too-long northern Minnesota winters. “To discover what normal means, you have to surf a tide of weirdness.” – Charlotte Rampling, Actor, interview in The New Yorker, 16 May 2021. I’m no poet or Henry David Thoreau philosopher and weirdo, but in America today there’s something inherent about riding which estranges you from all those who do not ride, and which also helps you see the world a little more clearly, probably a little more cynically, and possibly with a bit more humility and a little less hubris than all the good and sensible people surrounding you. Most of them from inside their sealed/safe/comfortable/convenient cars. Also, I was not ‘born old’, or with a good sense of self-discipline and a desire to be on a scholastic ‘honor roll’, and an ambition to be an Eagle Scout, admirable as those things all are. Back when I was riding that Huffy my simple plan was to become a paleontologist who drove a Corvette across the sands of outer Mongolia to find and dig up dinosaur bones. I’d also hoped someday along the way a pretty HS homecoming queen might fall in love with me. Never got that Corvette or any dino bones, but finally - and entirely by chance – did end up married to a smart, feisty, pretty homecoming queen almost as lonely and (forgive me honey…) weird as me. It sure took a good long time, though. By the time we’d met at random, I was old enough to be eligible for Social Security. “Life” really “is like a box of chocolates.” You never do know what you’re gonna get. She and her brothers all loved their Big Wheels. If you loved your Stingray and Big Wheel, that’s ok, too. From a certain viewpoint those things did look fly and were great fun. You probably looked really cool on yours, too. But they still rode like absolute crap… Mr. Subjective, February 2026 PS – Possible future blog post: “Every Dog Has Its Day: The Fall of Schwinn and the Rise of (good handling) Mountain Bikes” PPS – I was completely wrong about the Big Wheel. Though it resembles a tricycle in form it’s actually and more simply a perfectly genius toy. Children of all ages love the sensations of skidding, sledding, skiing, sliding,surfing and every other form of semi-controlled drifting. Many kinds of mammals (think otters, etc) do. This toy was cheap to make, safe to use and introduced kids to exactly this kind of fun in a beautiful way. At a fast glance it looked like a trike, but it was always so much more. These days I am sorry I misunderstood and maligned these things for most of my life.

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: Heated Grips An easy connection for a heated vest or bib Gaiters protecting the fork seals Optional removable handguards and ‘hippo hands’ An optional windshield A center stand An extender for the front fender The larger-sized rear tire and wheel also mounted on the front An O-ring final drive chain 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.

…Business Goals We Aim For (And Sometimes Hit) Every business is supposed to have a ‘mission statement’. Something simple and easy to understand and to follow. Aerostich is no exception. As I’m typing this, we are on the third or fourth iteration. Our mission statement has changed over time. We started in the fall of 1993 without one. By 1998, we had one, and it was: “To profitably provide products that encourage the adoption of motorcycling.” By 2015, it had both expanded and narrowed at the same time: “Aerostich creates and provides products and services that help make motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles more useful…Because riding anywhere is nearly always a comparatively more healthful, efficient, and fun way to get there.” In June or July of 2016, it became: “We create and provide better gear (and services) that help make riding safer, more comfortable, easier, and more useful." We still use this, but maybe it’s time for another rewrite? These days, it sometimes feels like something is missing. An ingredient we don’t actively consider, sort of like the DNA coding ‘blueprint’ we're all made from. Particularly when it comes to the business’s marketing narratives we create (catalogs, ads, videos, emails, all of it) and our employment practices. Humility, Transparency, and Irony are all tightly woven into our company and people like (…analogy warning!) the fibers of the tough 500D abrasion-resistant Cordura nylon fabric used in the products we design and make. Not that we are perfect, by any means. These ideas are goals, not accomplishments. We make as many errors as anyone, but despite them, we keep showing up for work and trying. Doing the best we can while recognizing that no matter how hard we work, or how much we try, here and there we’re gonna fall short sometimes. Humility + Transparency = an occasional apology.  Humility + Irony = acceptance with good humor.  Humility + Transparency + Irony = awareness... that all our problems, even the largest and most daunting, are “first world problems”. If you don’t already know what that phrase means, Google it. Humility + Transparency + Irony = knowing and admitting that sometimes riding a motorcycle is completely ridiculous and stupid, though still always worth it. The only way I know to deal with that paradox is to grin and ride onward, simply because compared to the wonderful comforts, securities, and conveniences provided by automobiles, riding just feels more right. A lot more right. Right-er. Riding in bad weather presents THE perfect example. It’s raining hard. The gutters are filled with runoff. Your face is stinging from oversize raindrops, or your windshield or face shield is covered with vision-distorting water. It’s a moment-by-moment struggle. When (if?) stuck in this situation, and if you are anything like me, you are giggling at the insanity of it, and of your existence. You are uncomfortable yet thrilled to be out there, battling the elements, and feeling more alive for doing so. Or you can pull over under the shelter of an overpass and wait until it lets up. And that’s ok, too. The lesson is the same. It’s ridiculous you put yourself in this situation in the first place. In an early Aerostich print catalog, I wrote (something along these lines…): It’s 1915. A driver in an early fully enclosed automobile/horseless carriage and a rider on a motorcycle pull up to park somewhere alongside one another at the exact same moment. It’s raining heavily. Over the thunderous roar of the falling rain, the smug driver says to the rider, “I bet you wish you had a car!” The rider smiles and replies: “No, but I sure wish it would stop raining!” When it comes to riding motorcycles, bicycles, and scooters, I don’t think it gets any more complicated than that. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, at least once in a while, something is wrong. So, ride on, and as always… “Stay out of trouble, kids!” - Mr. Subjective, Sept 2025 The new prime minister of Japan, when she was a young spitfire.Now she is an older spitfire.  Does anyone know if she still rides?

Both...and forever My brother Ken recently sent me a link to a devastating story about the recent decline of Harley Davidson. It described something more than a decline, a catastrophic collapse-in-progress of one of the worlds most well-known brands.   Another old riding friend of mine recently sent me a link (Thanks, Mark D!) to a popular vlogger’s video about how motorcycling is ending: Bikes not selling, dealers closing, riders aging out, fewer young people getting into riding, etc. All the usual observations and laments. It is a well-done video which I scanned/watched with knowing interest. Aerostich is smaller than it was ten years ago, too, and we have a front row seat, but… Although the vlogger who made this video is correct about how the motorcycling ‘culture’ we lived and enjoyed is currently in a moderately rapid decline, which there are many reasons for, what it misses is that over the next fifty years another motorcycle culture will very likely arise in its place. It probably won’t look much like the one most of us have experienced and enjoyed, though.  Predicting the shape of any future moto-culture isn’t something I’m any good at, but some clues are surrounding us already, including (but not limited to): Honda’s best-selling bike here in America last year and this year is the 300cc model which comes in three or four variations:  A not Street legal dual sport play bike, and also as a fully street legal version. Kawasaki is selling more bikes in America than Honda this year. First time EVER. Hopeful Honda still has a bit of Mr. Honda’s famous ultra-competitive bad-ass DNA and this development will motivate the heck out the crew at Honda. Maybe even to the point of American Honda bringing back some kind of riff on the well-remembered “You Meet the Nicest People…” ad campaigns from the 1960s. The times we are living in today might be right for that kind of message, again. What was once old might become new again. Today’s version of their pioneering Cub is a truly wonderful machine. All the world’s motorcycle manufacturers are making and selling all-new models with very strong globally compliant ICE exhaust emission controls, anti-lock brake systems, etc. Even the smallest engine sizes and lowest-priced models like the Cub are being (or have already been) entirely redesigned to incorporate these technologies. Motorcycle makers would not be spending the large amounts of money to do all the re-engineering of even their lowest-end bikes for a future they don’t think will exist. They have what most people would call lots of real ‘skin in the game’. Automatic gearboxes, lighted control buttons on the handlebars, high-tech dashboards, easily rider-controllable performance features, and better engine management controls and amazing fuel economy are all coming on fast. Everywhere. Not to even mention electric powered motorcycles. The American electric bike specialist Zero just relocated their company’s HQ from Santa Cruiz California to somewhere in Europe because that’s now where the majority of their sales are. Suzuki just entirely redesigned their long-time best-selling DRZ 400cc models (there are two versions of this model) because this bike is: A) one of their most important core products, and B) it needs to be legally sellable in all markets world-wide. The top-to-bottom re-do involved meeting much stricter standards that what we have here in America. It meant fuel injection and a catalyst in the exhaust, and more. The new DRZ has the same HP as before, weighs a few lbs. (kg’s) more, and now can be sold worldwide. They would not have done all this, spending big money to do it, if they thought motorcycling was ever going away. Ebikes (electric-assist bicycles) are selling very well. They are not motorcycles, but they are important because they are an easy entry “gateway drug” for all riding, and more specifically for motorcycles. They are as beneficially-addictive as any motorcycle. Their plusses = lower cost, no licensing test, and no registration and insurance needed. Minuses = lower speeds, not being super compatible with auto traffic and range limited. After seven years my fairly crappy ebike has accumulated about 8,000 commuting and errand miles, five to ten miles at a time. If I wasn’t already a motorcyclist, I’d have become one by now. Summary: There is a good future for motorcycling, in America and world-wide, and the very smartest people with the largest stakes in this future are betting serious money this will be so. I agree with them. They are the biggest stakeholders in motorcycling’s future. Selfishly, I also suspect this future may be slightly more in alignment with some core things we have always prioritized in Aerostich products and marketing narratives: Utility, usefulness, function, comfort, safety, long-term durability… The future of motorcycling-in-general is brighter than ever. There are some very bright lights at the other end of the tunnel we are currently riding through. The celebrations of long-distance testosterone-fueled endurance riding and (similarly) the wonderfully popular sanitized simulations of ‘biker’ styles many of us have enjoyed for decades are super cool, but these moto-subcultures will probably continue to weaken because many younger potential-riders don’t find them as compelling as we did. The same can probably be said for the luxe touring segment and the high-tech ADV bike worlds. These areas of motorcycling will continue, of course, and I love them as much as anyone, but they may end up as smaller niches within a much larger expanding moto-culture universe, one which is just now on the cusp of being created by younger riders looking for coolness and relief from the omnipresent dullness and boringness of screens and sealed cars. The mainstream of the future of motorcycling will not look like the past, stylistically, but riding and motorcycles are likely to continue being popular, so long as there are people and roads. And if I could snap my fingers, make a wish, and suddenly 90% of all single-person car drivers would actively be riding motorcycles, bicycle and scooters, instead of passively sitting inside their cars, almost everything about how humanity works would soon be a lot better. Less Alzheimer’s and dementia, less psychological and emotional problems, a lighter environmental and energy footprint on the planet, calmer, more alert, more happier and more co-operative people. Everywhere.  The historical accident of having 90% of the people across most of eastern Asia riding small motos, bicycles and scooters everywhere they needed to go in the decades after WW2 was the secret ingredient to how societies there functioned so well and grew so successful so rapidly, and how all this occurred under such a wide range of differing types of governments. After any society becomes wealthier, and you put everyone inside sealed cars and behind screens, with everyone thus being more generally alone and isolated from one another, and (importantly) more isolated from ‘nature’ (human and otherwise), that is when societies start to fall apart.    Riding is good for you. It is well worth its risks and minor discomforts.  Motorcycles, scooters and bicycles will always be bad-ass, and will always be tremendous fun, and will always be worth the challenges and risks, no matter what the styles and forms are. So six seven y’all and stay out of trouble. - Mr. Subjective, Oct 2025

Nice Try, Ford… “How do you wrench happiness out of the cold, miserly hands of capitalism? How do you be less lonely in a world with billion-dollar industries designed to profit from loneliness?” - Substack writer Lyz Lenz, “The Opt-Out Revolution”, June 4, 2025 “…we should be mindful about allowing tech to steal something away from us that we would not have otherwise” - Julia Soares, assistant professor of cognitive science at Mississippi State University The title of this post, ‘The Great Escape’, is also the title of an old (1963) Hollywood movie about a group of WW2 soldiers from the allied armies all stuck together in a brutal Nazi POW camp. They collaborate on a daring escape then split up and individually make their separate ways across Europe toward freedom. This film was a product of Hollywood’s old ‘Studio System’ when it was at its peak and by today’s movie standards is painfully slow and full of predictable clichés. But if you can get past all that stuff, it’s still well worth streaming. It features a huge all-star cast and happens to have one of the greatest and most famous motorcycle chase scenes ever put on film. Its underlying message is simple, powerful and important, too: Freedom is worth risking your life for, fighting for, and if necessary, dying for. (Watch on YouTube, free, here.) Screenshots from 'The Great Escape' Fast forward to now. Recently I spent a week behind the wheel of a nearly brand-new Ford Escape mini-SUV during a vacation in Florida with my wife and her mid-eighty-year-old parents. The Escape turned out to be a nice-enough machine: Simple to learn and use. Comfortably held all four of us and our luggage fine. Did exactly what we need it to do. The car rental guy looked at our documents and pointed to a row of mini-SUV’s saying “Any of those in that row over there. Your choice.”  It was a nice selection: A Mitsubishi, a Nissan, this Ford and two or three others. One smelled like smoke. Two had around 30,000 miles and this Ford had only 2,900. All decisions should be this easy.   Off we went and right away I could feel this car had ‘state of the art’ electric power steering. My own car back home is a nineteen-year-old 120,000+ mile vehicle with now-obsolete hydraulic power steering and a manual transmission. It’s an old-fashioned mostly analog car with a very thin overlay of digital electronic fuel injection, anti-lock brakes and an extremely slow-responding small nav and entertainment screen. Its driver’s door pocket holds several old-fashioned printed state highway maps which have not been used in many years. I’m happy with it. For all the nice stuff in the Escape’s overall package, the electric steering was a deal-breaker. I could feel the difference, moment by moment, going in either a straight line or around a curve. It’s a subtle but herky-jerky feeling compared to fully analog hydraulic steering. I just could not stand how it steered. Beyond that both the new Escape and my old car back at home are ok, but they are only cars. Escape-wise neither is even remotely comparable to any motorcycle. I gotta tell ya Ford, no car ever made is an actual “Escape” vehicle compared with a motorcycle. Nice try, but every motorcycle comes a lot closer to providing an escape than your mislabeled SUV. Throw a leg over any bike and you say goodbye to the admittedly useful convenience, safety, and banality of cars. They are mostly useful if you happen to need to haul around a few other people and a few largish items like their airplane-compliant roller bags.  In one way or another, most of our tools and technologies sell us the same thing: Time. From the first stone axe and spear to the latest and most sophisticated practices in industrial agriculture and farming, to the satellites up in the sky to the roads and cars we all use, to the most cutting-edge A.I., almost everything technological is about giving us more time to do the things we most value and enjoy doing; The pleasures of being with our friends and relatives, playing games, working with our hands and bodies, watching TV and movies, reading, falling in love, mating and raising a family. This has always been so. It's both a cliché and a truism to write “Time is the only thing in limited supply -- there is an infinite supply of everything else.” There’s lots of money to be made selling people ‘time saving’ technologies. A useful measure of the value and importance of any new thing is in how time-saving it is. The more time it potentially can save us, the more costly it is. Computers, jet planes, communications satellites and A.I. all are near the top of this list. But there is a point of diminishing returns, though that exact point is a little different with every technology and for each of us.  Does a dish washing machine save time? Yes. Of course. Do dish washing machines prefer that special soap which eliminates the need to manually and carefully rinse food off the dishes? Yup. Do either of these wonderful time-saving technologies help calm a busy mind? Nope. Does handwashing one’s dishes do that? Yup. You can make the same argument about manual vs. automatic gearboxes in cars. Or power windows and automatic-opening trunks and hatchbacks. Save time…or feel better? This is always a choice. You have a choice. The Ford Escape mini-SUV is a wonderful example of a vehicle designed to provide relatively high levels of convenience, safety and comfort affordably -- and to save one as much time as possible in the management of its operation. But it isn’t an escape from much of anything. It’s merely another brilliant example of marketing, engineering and capitalism combining to help you save time -- so you’ll have a bit more time to do the kinds of things you enjoy doing more than driving around in a mini-SUV. It is human nature to seek comfort, safety and efficiency. Conflicting with those normal and natural inclinations are all the less-comfortable, less-safe, less-efficient and sometimes harder things we do which require continuous attention and focused engagement. Walking and bicycling are two obvious examples. Motorcycle riding is maybe a bit less obvious, but even a relaxed casual motorcycle ride requires this same type of effort. When body and brain must continuously and seamlessly work together to accomplish some physically challenging tasks which involve using our sense of balance, that activity puts us in what some call ’The Zone’. This is when our conscious sense of the passage of time diminishes. After said activity concludes one experiences a uniquely relaxed state of bliss due to the beneficial neural, physical and biochemical changes (endorphins, dopamine, etc) which were generated. Extending this idea further, when more people routinely have more of these kinds of experiences more often, societies function better. In other words, better-functioning people perform individually and collaboratively better, thus make better societies. But when (and where) more people move toward experiencing less of these fully engaging situations there’s a decline in how well both individuals and societies-in-aggregate function. There’s no simple clear-cut way to defend this hypothesis. It’s partly an analytic result, partly a gut feeling and partly a personal observation about how I feel and function after any walk, bicycle or motorcycle ride, compared with how I feel and function after driving or riding in a car, and after looking at any screen for a while. Our comfort-seeking nature isn’t bad; but it’s only the low-hanging fruit. Life’s best stuff hangs a bit higher, and getting to it requires a little more effort. Whenever I decide to put on my R-3 suit and ride off to work or for errands anywhere too far away to travel by foot or bicycle in the time available, or to travel for recreation using any of these three methods, I’m choosing a compromise between the comfort, safety and convenience of a car and the more holistic health benefits walking, pedal bicycling and motorcycle and scooter riding produce. Riding provides a near-perfect blend of comfort, efficiency and happiness, even on cold, dark rainy days. My advice? Use and enjoy every time-saving technology as necessary, and without guilt, but also try to be aware of the trade-offs involved. Sometimes a Ford Escape is not an escape at all. When and if you have the time and resources, it’s very nice to have a motorcycle in your quiver of personal mobility options, and if you do, with the gear needed to allow riding be more of your all-weather all-destination transportation, you’ll never look back, and you’ll never regret it. Choosing to ride there will make a difference inside of you, and to the world surrounding you. Riding is truly ‘The Great Escape’, and just like freedom, it’s always worth the time, risk and additional effort. – Mr. Subjective, Sept 2025 PS – Despite the optimistically mis-named rental car, our vacation was wonderful. Seashells, Sunshine, Gulf of America and Mexico, and lots of old and mostly happy people everywhere. PPS – Also, this link takes you to a very nice thirteen-page printable essay I ran across on a substack that influenced my thinking about all this. And here’s another link to a printable essay about all this that I also enjoyed.

A Bit More Subjective, Mr. Subjective Three reasons I like this photo: It’s a 7mp file. Lots of detail. It shows a rider purposefully striding toward his less-expensive simple bike (the Moto Guzzi) wearing rather expensive gear, right next to a more-expensive complicated bike (the Honda Gold Wing) with a cheaper piece of gear draped over its windshield. (The Guzzi is about $5-6k, the Wing around $22k, and one features great technology to separate you from the air and environment around you, and the other has very little of this kind of technology. Neither approach is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and you are reading this, you probably already know where I personally come down. The Guzzi belongs to the tall fellow demonstrating the purposeful-looking stride.) It’s a banner shot, so it would fit well across the top of a blog post or email offer. There are as many ways to enjoy motorcycling as there are riders. Motorcycling works on us in ways that cut so deeply into our neurology, our psychology and our ‘souls’ that it’s truly a universal activity, experience and technology. If you ride a motorcycle – any motorcycle – down a quiet suburban street anywhere in the world, and there happens to be a three-year-old child on an adjacent sidewalk, lawn or piece of plain ‘ol dirt when you pass, that child’s eyes will follow you, and his face will break into a grin. He or she ‘gets it’ in a way at that age they don’t get cars. Any cars. Exactly this same thing will happen alongside a remote dirt two track anywhere in the most impoverished parts of our planet. Motorcycles are not only fun to ride and take care of and look at, but they are also good for us internally. In relative terms they also are good for our planet. And not just some motorcycles. EVERY motorcycle. And that little kid standing or sitting by the roadside? Maybe 98% of them will break into that same cute smile and will watch you as you pass by. I’m not sure if this focused awareness starts at age two, three, four or five, but it’s as close to a universal as you can get when it comes to the enormous diversity of people on this planet. Note: There is an age-window involved. When you are too young, you don’t automatically do this, and as you age, fewer and fewer people continue to do this. But some people do it all their lives. That would be me, and you, if you are reading this. It’s the same for the rider of that fancy Gold Wing as it is for the rider of that newer ‘old-school’ Guzzi when they each were small, and still new in the world.  Some riders extend a hand as they approach an oncoming rider, and some don’t. Some ride loud, some ride quiet. Some ride in fancy high priced gear, and some don’t spend any money on special gear. Some ride fast and some ride slow. Some are old and some are young. By now, you are getting the idea. None of that stuff matters. Riding is, simply stated, one of the most primal activities existing. Riding motorcycles is good for all of us. Not everyone gets this, though, which is, uh…ok, too.  It sure would be nice if a few more responsible grown-up people did understand, though. At least those good people in authority who lead most of us: All the religious, philosophic, scientific, academic, intellectual and political leaders who help move us forward more-or-less together.  For clarity, “all of us” means not only people, but all the plants and animals we share this local part of the universe with. It would be cool if motorcycling were not only tolerated by the non-riding majority but was actively endorsed and encouraged for the relative benefits to everyone that nearly all forms of riding provide. Those benefits should be recognized because riding is not only good for active riders, but also is a relative good for everyone else, too, at least when compared to other forms of auto-mobility. Riding is better for you and the planet than the best Tesla or the nicest Prius. But please don’t beat me up too much about this. My wife and I own, maintain, and enjoy a couple of cars and we appreciate many other kinds of machines, all of which are all pretty good overall, and plenty useful. But at the end of the day, for simply getting from A to B with a moderate load, nothing beats even the crappiest motorcycle. For me…and for every other living thing on our shared planet. One of the best lessons the 43 years of Aerostich has taught me is how universally good the experience of riding motorcycles, bicycles, and scooters is. We have customers on choppers, scooters, minibikes, luxe touring bikes, antique bikes, and crotch rockets. You name it, someone who rides it has Aerostich gear. The one common denominator seems to be how much one rides, or how important a part of one’s life riding might be. Those who most value the qualities of Aerostich gear – the functionality, utility, protection, and comfort – are the riders who either ride a lot or who put riding near the center of their lives, and this delta intersects with those who also have the money to be able to afford to invest in expensive, long-lasting gear. But A) you don’t need any gear to have a deep relationship with riding, and B) I know ‘kids’ with practically no money who wear well-used Aerostich gear purchased on eBay when they ride their low-cost Chinese copies of Honda Groms or their ancient rusty broken-sounding found-in-a-barn zero-cost 1969 Honda CL 350. What I’m trying to convey here is simply this: Motorcycling is good for you, good for society, and good, period. And though lots of people do not get this, it’s still as good. Doesn’t matter why, or how. Motorcycles are simply a very good kind of thing. You and I are lucky to have them in our lives regardless of specifics related to model, make, or type. We are the fortunate ones, simply because we get to have the ordinary experiences of riding and taking care of and looking at motorcycles.  A few people have once been riders but are no longer able to, for health or age reasons. I’m not overly sad thinking about what they’ve lost. Because like that small child on the side of the street whose sparkling young eyes follow as a motorcycle rolls past, and whose mouth always turns into a delighted smile, they still get it, and they still watch and still smile. Their eyes still sparkle, and they remember, too. Which brings this blog post to a close. If you’ve read this far, and there happens to be a motorcycle somewhere in your vicinity, go out and touch one of its handgrips and say a silent blessing to it. Be thankful. Be kind. And be useful. And maybe also go for a ride. - Mr. Subjective, July 2025 PS – The Hi-Vis Darien-clad fellow in the photo at the top of this post is a long-time moto-journalist Maynard Hershon, who shared this image with me a few days ago. He and his wife Tamar live in a high-rise apartment or condo in Denver. I’ve never been there, but I’ve met Maynard in person a couple of times. Once, a long time ago, a riders group called the Four Stroke Singles National Owners Club (FSSNOC) held one of their rallies somewhere in North Dakota and the planets aligned for me on that date (distance, schedule, weather, finances, motorcycle…) so I rode out there and low-and-behold, there was Maynard along with maybe fifty other riders of all ages, riding one cylinder bikes of all makes, models and styles. Some, like Maynard, even in Aerostich gear. The club still exists, and you can find it here, and you won’t meet a nicer bunch of wonderfully quirky riders. In 40+ years, I’ve been to two or three of their events. Had a nice time, every time. And, uh…there is an Aerostich connection. The first or maybe second FSSNOC event I attended was riding with a couple of mildly hooligan-y friends who’d never been to one of this club’s gatherings. We found the club members sitting around a small motel or camping area (I no longer remember which), drinking both beer and soft drinks and quietly sharing stories about their lives with various single-cylinder bikes. They kept doing this for the next two days. It was the most calm and laid-back motorcycle event I think I’d ever experienced. At some point on the ride back to Minnesota, the three of us were talking over our rally experience and the friend named Alyn exclaimed with strong emphasis: “That was the most BORING RALLY I’ve ever been to!!!”, which is how our every-5-year Aerostich anniversary event came to be called ‘The Very Boring Rally’. If you’ve never been to a Very Boring Rally and are curious, here’s the VBR’s website. And, if you’ve ever come, thanks for coming! And lastly, Maynard’s writing is most often found in the UK’s Motorcycle Sport and Leisure magazine where he has written a monthly column about motorcycle-life in the ‘colonies’ for decades.

Having Very Little to do with Motorcycles or Rider’s Gear... …Unless you happen to be looking for a thin sheet of titanium to cut-up and use to fabricate something for your moto. A few days ago before falling asleep I was watching a few YouTube videos and at one point was presented with a five-minute infomercial starring a nice young woman making a sales pitch about ‘revolutionary’ and ‘sanitary’ titanium cutting boards. More out of naïve curiosity, and with zero interest in purchasing one, I clicked the ‘buy’ button and was presented with this online storefront: https://trytitachef.com/pp/en-2/? I’ve deleted the coded sales-source tracking information which followed the question mark at the end of the link above, but here is some of it: gad_source=2&gad_campaignid=22666324047&wbraid=ClkKCAjwvuLDBhBvEkkAAPopvbR-ZAYH9qKikK3DC_DwVUk9bpgPV6FE5vwE6fDRT7ZvtZDOpCyYus03MCMl09jQnx66TgOF-v69jidQYY2hqDLNJBpwGgIu8A   Any YouTube keyword search for titanium cutting boards will display dozens of other similar videos about these miraculous new cutting boards, each fronting another online store: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=titanium+cutting+board+video The reason I’m sharing this is because though you may come here for great motorcycle gear and interesting stuff about motorcycling, you also are likely to be an online shopper for Aerostich products, so I thought you might enjoy a brief description of my experiences with some of today’s online marketing, using these titanium cutting boards as an example. Short version: Most online marketing today is just as irritating and misleading as the broadcast television commercials and infomercials were during my childhood. (The more things change, the more they seem the same… Ain’t technology wonderful?) Here are my experiences with titanium, cutting boards, sharp kitchen knives, and germs: My personal preference is for wooden bowls and plates with ultralight titanium eating utensils (from camping/backpacking outfitters), and for having food prep knives about as sharp I can make them with two different grades of ceramic stones plus an improvised leather ‘strop’. I’ve also long favored hand-washing my daily-used wooden plates and bowls, and the titanium utensils, rather than dishwasher-washing anything. All dishwashing machines use extremely hot water (and some electricity…) to clean and sterilize whatever is placed inside them. Wooden bowls and plates can only be hand-washed, and I enjoy that as another simple dexterity-improving task. The bottom line is I don’t know from personal experience if titanium cutting boards keep one’s knives sharp longer. If you watch any of the videos about them, you can make up your own mind: Scam or innovative germ-eliminating solution? My guess? Scam. The relative softness of the wooden plates I use helps my knife blades stay sharp. I know microscopic germs get stuck and live inside even the hardest wood, and some kinds of germs can make one very sick. I’ve experienced food poisoning a few times, but never from my wood plates and dishes. Salmonella can be very serious and generally means at least a day of high fever and multiple brief-but-severe episodes of (projectile) diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting. I will never forget the worst time. I was riding and homeward-bound near the end of a week-long motorcycle trip, and I’d eaten a quick lunch made from a decent-looking salad bar at a questionable-looking truck stop. By 4:00 PM, I was on a toilet in a motel room maybe a hundred and fifty miles past the poisonous salad, and in great agony with a high fever and all the other symptoms. I was a mess. It took my body two or three days to recover and be able to complete the trip. Fortunately, there was a Walmart less than 1/8-mile away and the person I’d been riding with was able to purchase a few things to help me get through this ordeal a bit easier. Lesson: Avoid ALL truck stop salad bars. Despite that experience, I still prefer hand-dishwashing-wooden plates and bowls. The reasons I like wood over other food handling materials are: Very easy to keep clean, germ-free and safe -- if one knows how. Very lightweight and unbreakable in normal use, plus the attractive patina of long use (I know appearance is subjective). Environmentally friendly and ‘natural’ compared to all plastics and titanium. No harmful plastic micro-particles released into the world and titanium takes large amounts of energy to mine and refine. Plus, most of the world’s titanium comes from Russia, and all these new titanium boards are manufactured in China and sold online via Amazon. Three entities I choose to support as little as possible for reasons outside this short story. The only downside to wooden dishes is that one must diligently hand-wash and then let them air dry fully after each use. The requirements are dish soap, water, and air. (Some online videos also teach how to use lemon juice to sterilize regular cutting boards, etc...) The key to my wooden plate sanitizing process is air, which means letting the dish or bowl dry completely between uses, preferably after a hand-wash using dish soap. The key is they be allowed to dry fully after each use. Dryness is the key to ensuring all germs are long dead by the time one re-uses a particular wooden plate or cutting board. Germs die when the moisture they require goes away. Every time. All of them. The washing tool I prefer is a clear plastic soap-and-sponge wand with a detachable/replaceable old-fashioned cellulose sponge and a handle filled with dish soap that slowly filters out through the sponge. It makes lots of suds and is fast and easy to use. When not in use this tool sits upside down in a broad-based ceramic mug located on the kitchen counter next to the faucet. (A repurposed narrow-necked French condiment container - an actual ‘Grey Poupon’ stoneware thing). Stored this way it nearly always dries fully overnight, killing any soap-loving germs which might be hiding inside the sponge. The only risk to storing this tool upside down is having soap drip off the sponge onto the kitchen countertop, but if you press the face of the sponge against the side of the sink to squeeze out most of the water just before putting it away, there aren’t any drips. Humans have been safely eating with, and cutting food on wood, for maybe only a quarter of a million years. Eating tech does not get more old-school than this. Ten minutes after watching the online titanium cutting board pitch, I’d viewed/scanned maybe a dozen similar YouTube infomercials touting these miraculous cutting boards. Lots of viewer comments beneath each, and 95% of ‘em were highly favorable testimonials. Also, all the videos seemed to have been made by young computer-and-social-media-savvy people. The reviews and testimonials were so overwhelmingly favorable that their preponderance alone seemed suspicious, at least to me. If nothing else, today’s younger people are acutely aware of how affiliate and online marketing work. Thus, I’ve come to suspect that most of the videos were intentionally misleading to simply help businesses sell more stuff.* Combine high levels of affiliate-payment awareness with strong digital fluency and generationally raised levels of fear about many kinds of risks (germs, motorcycles, you-name-it…) and the unusually high profit margins from selling many Chinese manufactured products, and it adds up to a lot of YouTube videos intentionally presenting falsehoods or partial falsehoods about the desirability of titanium cutting boards. Beyond all that, today’s popular toothpastes, laundry soaps, and hundreds of other consumer products are now labeled as ‘clinical’ or ‘sterilizing’. Such marketing buzzwords appeal to all generations but are extra-effective with today’s younger people. Random free-range boomer parents: “Where did we go wrong?” Titanium cutting boards may be ok for cutting fruit, provided only the tip of your knife is run across the titanium, but for easier cutting of meats, fish, cheeses, and vegetables, they will dull a sharp knife far more quickly than any softer cutting surface. This one advantage of old-school cutting boards far outweighs all disadvantages, at least for me, but in the current online video universe, I’m clearly part of a small minority. Just another foolish geezer who loves riding motorcycles and making my kitchen knives sharp enough to dry shave a few ‘test’ hairs on my forearm. -- Mr. Subjective, July 2025 PS – These Ti boards do look like a possibly nice source-material for DIY fabricated ultralight bicycle or motorcycle brackets or side panels, though far more difficult to work with than aluminum stock. *A reasonably smart but unethical person could become rich and powerful spreading lies online. Hmmm… If you are looking for a very good comparison-review of cutting boards, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tm7mVpUIOk  It’s nerdy, honest and useful.

The Inauguration of Legal Lane Splitting and Filtering in Minnesota This week, on July 1, 2025, a new Minnesota law legalizing motorcycle lane splitting and filtering goes into effect, and I support this new law. The option (it’s not required) for motorcyclists to ride between two rows of cars and trucks through congested situations has been controversial long before this new law was written and passed. The practice will remain controversial for a long time, not only among drivers but also for many motorcycle riders. Opinions about motorcycles and scooters moving between lanes through congested traffic is yet another example of the old saying: “There are two groups of people in the world, those who ____ (…like lane filtering) and those who ____ (…don’t)”. For the purpose here, let’s label those who favor the new law: ‘commuting-utility-transportation-mildly-hooligan-riders’ and those who dislike it: ‘fair-minded-safety-conscious-drivers-and-riders.’ With most traffic laws I lean a bit toward the mildly hooligan and transportation-riding side but still place myself nearer the middle of than either extreme, which means I sometimes enjoy playing around with the dynamic capabilities of whatever motorcycle or bicycle I’m riding, so long as it doesn’t upset, impact or otherwise endanger or concern anyone else. This means no flagrant (or even small) wheelies or stoppies in traffic, no loud exhausts, and no anti-social riding behaviors when sharing the road with others. But if nobody else is around, it’s ok with me if riders play around a bit. And if it comes to avoiding a dangerous traffic situation where I’m highly vulnerable, I’ll briefly transition into a selfish road pirate by doing whatever is necessary to protect myself -- regardless of applicable laws and rules of the road -- so long as my actions do not endanger anyone else. A Short Personal Story: Experimental Lane Splitting I’ve grown up riding here without being able to lane split and filter. Forty years ago, when I was starting Aerostich there was no internet, only monthly print motorcycle magazines.  Most were headquartered in Southern California, partly because this is where the Japanese motorcycle manufacturers had their American headquarters, and partly because the weather and roads there were so favorable for riding all year around. To help promote the new (and at the time radical) Aerostich products I made friends with many of the magazine editors and writers there by sending them samples to try, and by riding out to California to meet with them. When riding there I always enjoyed filtering. Many riders did it, including state police on motorcycles, even though it had never been formally made legal. It saved huge amounts of time. To this day it is difficult for me to understand why most drivers there prefer to sit motionless on congested freeways instead of riding. Our time is the only limited resource on the planet and riding through congestion gives us a lot more of it. After my second or third trip out there, one very hot day I found myself in congested traffic here and decided to very carefully filter a few hundred feet to the front. Back then not all autos had climate control systems so many drivers and passengers had their windows lowered. You should have heard some of them yell (loudly!) as I slowly motored between the creeping and mostly stopped rows of cars. Some blew their horns and others shook their fists at me. You would have thought I’d committed a most terrible and outrageous act against all of humanity. I could immediately see none of these people had ever experienced driving through Los Angeles’s famously overcrowded freeways. The reaction was so violent that within a few hundred feet I fell back into line (like the coward I wish I wasn’t), afraid one of those overheated and overly frustrated drivers would shoot at me like a movie cowboy on a horse might casually shoot a rattlesnake. I never did anything like that again. The strength of the adverse reaction of several of the drivers I’d just passed by was frightening. I’d semi-innocently violated everything they believed in about ‘sharing the road’. No ‘cuts’ allowed. My guess is it will take five to ten years before lane filtering becomes even half as accepted here as it is across most of the rest of the world. There are simply not as many riders here as there are in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. I sure hope no innocent riders will be road-rage-injured-or-killed by some frustrated idiot. – Mr. Subjective, June 30, 2025 It could be argued that becoming a motorcycle rider requires at least initially a smidgen of idealism and a mildly rebellious and slightly juvenile outlook…yet I know many responsible ‘born old’ riders who love riding motorcycles just as much as I do. One of them is a long-time acquaintance, Curt Quiner. He and his wife and their two daughters have been regular visitors to Aerostich and good customers for decades. Beyond my gratitude for their Aerostich business, I like them for their deep interest in motorcycling and their warmly extended friendship toward me and my co-workers. Curt is partly occupied as a very good evangelical minister, and over the years he’s led the concluding religious service at several of the Very Boring Rally events. (Thanks, Curt!) But despite our similar appreciation of high-quality rider’s gear, Curt and my individual consumption of motorcycling may be a bit different. For some reason, I project he’s a law-abidin’ luxury-touring type rider who enjoys the recreational and hobby aspects of motorcycling in ways I sometimes might not. If this is so (?) he’d fit squarely within the mainstream of American motorcycle riders. Though we both enjoy riding for relaxation, travel, touring, and recreation, for about the last thirty years my core riding interest has been in daily commuting and utility transportation riding. I suspect this focus may produce a slightly stronger hooligan bias, thus, my near-unconditional support for lane-splitting and lane-filtering legislation. Minnesota’s new law brings this state into better alignment with how riders in most of the rest of the world consume motorcycling. Done correctly and legally, lane-splitting and filtering make motorcycling through urban congestion situations far safer. The reason is simple: Riders today are being ‘rear-ended’ frequently enough and hard enough to cause serious injury whenever traffic slows unexpectedly. This is happening now due to increased driver isolation and increased driver distraction via popular technological advances like cell phones, complex ‘screen’ dashboards, and highly effective climate-control systems which allow a more comfortable and tightly sealed driver environment. Improved road designs requiring less driver attention is also a factor. This is an example of combined technological advances that are strongly desired by millions directly harming the minority. Legalizing lane splitting and filtering addresses the problem in a fair way. Making lane splitting and filtering legal also influences a few road users to consider riding more, and driving less, which happens to be good for people individually and for civilization in general: physically, neurologically, sociologically, economically, and ‘psychobiologically’. This isn’t the place to go deeply into all that, but the scientific and statistical proof is out there if you are interested in looking for it. Riding more is good for you, and is good for everyone else, too. One of my favorite thought experiments is to imagine if normal human reproductive behavior was done in about the same manner several species of spiders do it. Yes, I know people and spiders are very different, but indulge me…First, they mate, then the female spider kills and eats the male spider to help her nourish the tiny spider eggs she is making. If that was how we humans naturally reproduced (eeeewwww!), it absolutely would be universally legal. The best and most successful laws, both governmental and religious, always seem to sanctify and codify what most people naturally tend to do. I know more than a few responsible and highly experienced riders will find the new law dangerous and threatening. We humans are a super collaborative species for a host of good reasons, and at the top of this list is because collaborating and trusting each other increases our individual chances of successfully reproducing and improves the odds for our individual long-term survival. We prioritize the benefits of collaboration, fill churches and sports stadiums, and make countries possible. I think of myself as a natural collaborator and am a ‘believer’ as much as anyone, but I also think many of our feelings, intuitions, and behaviors are what they are for reasons we can figure out. For example, laws reflecting a commonly held ‘moral compass’ are in place because such laws are useful. The devil and the divinity in them are always in the details because sometimes laws are partly built for the narrow benefit of leaders who, on occasion, may have questionable motivations, or who may hold underlying views about how human nature works that are inconsistent with the generally and broadly accepted reality. With or without laws codifying it, lane splitting and lane filtering allow the operators of differing types of road vehicles to work more co-operatively so everyone gets down the road a bit more safely, a bit more quickly, and a good deal more easily. Long before the California law permitting it existed, lane splitting was what many riders there did naturally. It’s the same across most of the developing world, where no laws about this practice may even exist (yet…). Moving between and around less nimble vehicles is what most riders in most places naturally do. It will take road users around here a while to get used to those riders who choose to do this in congested situations. - Mr. Subjective, July 1, 2025 PS - Bad hooliganism is a narcissistic form of sociopathic vandalism typically done by younger people experiencing a range of internal emotional and psychological struggles. Laws prohibiting this subset of riding behavior help reduce it, so such laws need to be in place. (Ask any former hooligan who somehow managed to survive their own adolescence.) PPS – Here’s a link to a recent 12-minute YouTube documentary about how to improve freeway congestion in California, and here’s a link to another short YouTube documentary about how current road planning, engineering, law enforcement and road signage actually make highway safety and congestion worse, and how to make it better. It carefully diagnoses the causes of excessive road congestion and prescribes solutions, while completely and unfortunately ignoring incentivizing motorcycle and scooter use as a component of those solutions. If, after watching this, you can explain why incentivizing and increasing utility motorcycle riding isn’t on all public transportation planning radars, please comment below. The lack of consideration for any increased use of motorcycles and scooters is striking. PPPS – Should you live in another state without legalized lane-splitting and filtering, watch this video about how to legalize it in your state: PPPPS - My friend Gil, who lives and rides in Israel, read this blog post in draft form and wrote, ‘From one old hooligan to another: About lane splitting, in Israel it is the only way to move during rush hours. Traffic here is terrible, and when riding you must split lanes. However, when I use the car, it is terrifying to see the scooters and motorcycles rush by, and the word hooligan pops up. Use the right to split wisely. I’ve had drivers suddenly change lanes in front of me; I had a taxi driver open the door in front of me as I was coming to a stop light. Cellphone-using drivers will drift between lanes. It is a dangerous world.’ So, to all you new Minnesota lane-splitters, be careful.

“The older I get, the faster I wuz.” I’m an old man now, 72, and although I still ride a motorcycle almost every day for transportation, and still do an occasional small wheelie, and sometimes will turn the twistgrip a bit more than is necessary, 98% of my riding these days is fairly sedate A-to-B local transportation and some occasional road trips. Beyond that there’s truth in the geezer observation: “The older I get, the faster I wuz…” Like everyone now old, I was young once and thought about my place in the world like many self-centered free-range youths of my generation. I was feeling moderately indestructible, and since I’d always enjoyed skateboards, bicycles, mini-bikes and eventually motorcycles, I liked practicing, and developing better riding skills, and testing myself, and figuring out how to do a modest selection of riding ‘tricks’. And thanks to a well-paying job a few years later as a union laborer (Minnesota’s minimum wage then = $1.60/hr, union laborer wage then = $6.88/hr), I was the prideful and grateful owner of an international orange Can Am 400cc dirt bike and was consistently collecting cute little 1st and 2nd place B-Class trophies many weekends during the summer series of enduros in our state's AMA district (23). Aerostich was still a few years in my future, but I knew my noisy hooligan enduro dirt bike needed to become less a part of daily A to B transportation and more a narrowly focused competition tool. This meant I had to find a bike with street-legal turn signals and a brake light, and a horn, and mufflers and a working speedometer, none of which the plated Can Am had. Soon a low-mileage 1978 BMW R100RS from a private party seller became available at an affordable price and I naively figured it would be simple to remove its fairing and replace its low handlebars with dirt bike bars, add semi-off-road tires, and have myself a home-made GS (this was few years before GS’s were invented, so there wasn’t a short name for what I was wanting to build and ride). As it turned out, converting that model BMW to a naked standard, much less a big ADV bike, was far more work and cost than I’d imagined, but I was nothing if not a determined young man so pretty soon this bike was remade as I’d wanted and I was bombing down gravel roads carefully learning to slide this big heavy pig of a street bike through corners and teaching myself how to do donuts on the damn thing. The RS’s larger 40mm ‘higher performance’ exhaust system diameter didn’t hurt, but a dirt bike it wasn’t. Not even close. Just barely manageable, but it got me around town more legally, despite an occasional pesky speeding ticket. With the help of some good people, some good luck, and a work-focus which came from feelings of desperation, at around this time Aerostich came into existence, chartered to make and sell armored textile coveralls to help make more of my days ‘rideable’ through this area’s often chilly and unpredictable weather. Work demands of the new enterprise soon ended my dirt bike and enduro riding career, but winter after winter with lots of work from a wonderful technically skilled friend named Rod, the BMW became increasingly hot-rodded. It went from a mid-60hp stock-engined machine to a mid-70hp highly modified machine which, by the time we were done, was able to do easy throttle-only wheelies in second gear as it came onto its aftermarket “performance” cam. I put maybe a hundred thousand miles on it that way, before eventually switching to a second-hand R80GS whose engine I wisely left stock. It was much slower, but far more practical, and I ended up riding it much farther and longer than the RS, measured in both years and miles. I was growing up. My peak hooligan days were behind me, but before they tapered fully down to (ahem…) ‘a mature, restrained hooligan…’ I made a lot of great memories riding the much-modified old RS. Here’s a list of what Rod and I did to the poor thing: 1978 BMW R 100 RS (Gold) - owner changes RS faring removed, converted to /7 configuration MT 50, MT60 dual sport tires Progressive fork springs, bottoming springs, fork brace, fork gaiters, alloy upper triple clamp Stainless front brake lines, late model handlebar mounted master cylinder Turn signal helmet holder, 80-100 w high beam, elec grips w/custom switch, narrowed ‘/2’ high bars, custom quick detach instrument faring, digital ambient air thermometer Avocet cyclometer computer w/clock, current & max speed, altitude, dual odometers, etc. Heinrich 9-gal steel tank with matching paint & striping, late-type petcocks and fuel lines Re-foamed seat with firm Vibrasorb foam, first aid kit compartment in seat pan reduced 80%, optional rear book rack Narrowed rear turn signals Braced main frame. Late type main and passenger footrests. Left main footrest relocated 2” back to be even with right side. Custom gearshift linkage to match relocated footrest. Drilled airbox, K&N filter, 39mm Kehin CR Pumper carburetors with custom venturi’s, 3 angle valve job, ported head, SS exhaust valve seats, titanium valve spring retainers, late type valve guides with oil seals, 1050cc big-bore pistons, late model(1986) clutch/flywheel, dual plug high output ignition, big battery, custom aluminum battery tray, custom exhaust crossover clamps, drilled relieved 40mm mufflers. 40mm headers. Custom external crankcase breather and filter system. Late-type larger capacity oil pan. Heli-coiled cylinder head studs (all). Early type round valve covers. Electric vest and Electric tank bag (radar detector, etc) fused outlet plugs Drilled and painted oil dipstick handle, aluminum horn brackets Monolever Swingarm and late model (1988) rear frame section, attached at backbone and footrest positions. Late type RT differential and rear wheel. Custom rear brake linkage and adjuster. Sport cam and 3 degree advance key Rebuilt motor in 1994 including main bearings, rod bearings, cam chain and sprockets, and all seals Rebuilt alternator, ignition advancer, and starter to late model specs. Late type electronic voltage regulator Remote-reservoir Works Performance gas rear shock and firmer spring Re-sleeved cylinders and piston rings, 1994 14mm front brake master cylinder and performance brake pads, 1994 Headlight off-on switch cluster, internal headlight running light Custom quick release throttle friction control Late model (1986) transmission, modified with roller bushings Molex accessory lead on handlebars Solid state digital voltmeter gauge And here’s a photo, taken around 1990, possibly in California at one of the USGP road-races at Laguna Seca: For an old heap, she’s a beauty, right? You can still look through what little is left inside those stock mufflers, like a child looking through a toy telescope, and you’ll see nothing but clear air from end to end, thanks to a hole saw made for cutting wood, a bunch of drill bit extensions and a juvenile electric drill operator. Speed-wise this thing ended up only about as hard-accelerating as a 600-class sportbike of the period, but with a quite-a-bit less top-end. It went only about 120, all-in. Still, it was surprisingly quick for one of these.* There are several good stories** about my riding heroics on this bike. Once, at a Reg Pridmore track school, as it was being ‘teched’, Reg looked down at the slant-slide pumper carbs and exclaimed in surprise: “Hey! You’ve got Honda carbs on it!”  “Yup!” I replied with a grin. Twenty minutes later this bike and I were out on the track with a bunch of far more modern sportbikes and riders and I started making those little gummy rubber snot balls on the edges of its skinny Pirelli MT 50 semi-dirt rear tire. One sportbike-piloting classmate (FJR Yamaha, maybe?) said during a break: “Boy, you sure make that thing go.” Another “Yup!”, followed by another stupid-happy grin. Maybe the best story about this bike and the riding heroics it enabled happened when I was riding through the infield area of the Brainerd International Raceway, on a narrow sandy two-track between some stands of tall grasses and trees, heading toward turn one, a right-hander at the end of a nearly mile-long straight. I was hoping to meet and camp with riding friends who usually camped in a grove of older shade trees just to the left of this not-quite-a-road, and I was going very slowly as there were race fans walking both directions along this same two-track. I’d never been to the exact spot where my friends liked to camp, so I wasn’t quite sure where it was. While sort of putt-putt-putting along at not more than two miles per hour, carefully weaving between a few scattered people, I spotted the campsite after almost riding past it. Without hesitation I quickly stood up, pulled in the clutch and tapped the rear brake. Half a second later I put my left foot firmly down, leaned the bike way over (to the left), gave the engine a good rev, and released the clutch so its back tire broke loose and came nicely around, just like it does when one is doing a donut. All without thinking. Half a second later the bike was spun about 120º around and was now pointing in the direction of my friend’s tents. As I slowly motored toward this well-shaded grove of trees, I clearly overheard one of the nearby pedestrian-spectators directly behind me say to someone they were walking with: “I’ve never seen a BMW do that.” And his buddy answered with: “They are not supposed to do that.” This was probably the second-best hooligan-riding compliment I’d ever received, even though it wasn’t spoken directly to me. At that moment I didn’t think anything of it but smiled inside the rest of that afternoon. Younger readers, please note this was many years before BMW was known for making sporting bikes. They were generally appreciated as well-made, old-school (meaning heavy), slow and not-especially-nimble old-guy touring or sport-touring bikes. Mine wasn’t that. Every word of this story is the truth, and the older I get, the faster I wuz… Mr. Subjective, June 2025 PS – See photo below, showing where this bike is today, dry-stored in the basement of my home, next to its R80GS successor. Both are about eight feet from a clothes washer and dryer, thanks to a very lovely and understanding wife. PPS – On a couple of occasions late at night in my bedroom slippers and bathrobe, I’ve gone down there and climbed onto its hard saddle and just sat there for a few minutes twisting its throttle, pulling in its clutch lever and squeezing its front brake lever.   Don’t.        Tell.        Anyone. From left to right: DIY fabricated radar detector mount, Avocet bicycle speedometer/altimeter, heated grips switch, DIY GPS mount, lighted bar-graph voltmeter. Also DIY 'quick release' instrument fairing. Odometer is a replacement. Actual miles over 100k. PPPS – Why did I write this story? Because of an email I recently received which linked my friend Paolo’s very nice blog essay about today’s over-the-top-amazingly athletic, highly skilled stunt-riding hooligans.  (Deep breath)…Kids. Hi Paolo, Your OMM essay for June 8 was terrific. I agree with you. And I take the cultural changes even farther. Soon after the second World War, just before I came along as a young rider, motorcycling attracted lots of moody and quietly dangerous rebels. It seemed almost like a home for dark souls who’d found the feelings and experiences of riding big unmuffled Harley’s and racy British bikes, and the supportive companionship of other riders who were doing the same thing, somehow helpful. Maybe it was WWII PTSD, maybe it was something else, but these guys didn’t quite fit into postwar suburban life. A few years later mainstream American moto-culture changed with the arrival of millions of inexpensive and nearly maintance-free small bikes from Japan, and thirty years later it changed again when it became easy to record and share riding stunts and heroic accomplishments (and embarrassing failures) with large audiences. By the time I was a young-middle-aged rider I was able to do decent stoppies, wheelies and donuts, and fly about twenty feet forward off a decent launching-berm. But no recordings exist, and because the technology had not yet arrived, it never occurred to me that anything I was doing as a budding moto-hooligan was even worth recording. It was more about me trying to learn how to manage the bike better for its own sake. The only person I was showing off for was myself. About twenty years ago this part of our culture changed thanks to everyone having a smartphone with a camera, and the internet, where one’s nonsense can be so easily shared with such a wide audience. Some kids call such showing-off a ‘flex’ because this is what strong men and women who lift weights do at gymnasiums. I’ve picked up this word and have spoken it as a compliment when I see someone doing something impressive. Our era was different. If a rider did something amazing, occasionally one would receive a compliment like “nice wheelie” or whatever. That was all. Well, it’s now an hour after I finished writing the above paragraphs. I looked and searched but could not find the old story I was looking for, but I did find a list of modifications I’d made to the bike that was the star of the story, so I’ve just written its story down for you. It is attached. Tomorrow I’m going to share it with my co-workers and see if they think it would make a good blog post. If it’s ever used that way, I will give you credit for the inspiration. Hope all is well there. Thanks for the inspiration to write the attached autobiographical story. Andy PPPS – Photos and videos capture and record accomplishments and events. Words and stories capture and record ideas and feelings. Both are important. *Most bone-stock 750cc and larger UJM’s were way faster. And cheaper…Much cheaper. Thus, one or two good riding friends questioned my sanity. Some still do. **Most involve either getting, or avoiding getting, speeding tickets.

“To discover what normal means, you have to surf a tide of weirdness.” – Charlotte Rampling, interview ‘The New Yorker’, 16 May 2021 Here in America riding a motorcycle can sometimes place you far enough outside the mainstream to make you feel a bit odd or uncomfortable. Not physically (though sometimes that, too), but emotionally. Usually this involves arriving at some destination as the only motorcyclist, while everyone else got there either in a car, or after using public transit, or by pedaling a bicycle. The specific situations are typically more amusing than awkward – and this is a feature of transportation-riding more than a bug. After a few years one becomes almost a connoisseur of those moments.   For example, once, when riding through a sparsely populated, semi-impoverished and desolate-looking part of northern Wisconsin, I walked into a broken-down roadside bar/single-pump almost-a-gas-station (gasoline + whiskey store = a Wisconsin tradition) and my Hi Viz Darien jacket generated an unexpected greeting. After telling the bartender how much gas I’d just pumped and handing him my credit card, I headed in the direction of the restroom on the far side of this gloomy joint. Before I’d made it even halfway, a completely sh-t-faced bar-stool-supported patron wearing a worn-out flannel shirt and a ten-day whisker stubble wobbly turned toward me and loudly bellowed: “Who called the EMT? The EMTs are here! The EMTs are here! Who called an EMT ??!! Who called an EMT ??!!” Every eye in the joint went right to me and the whole place became as quiet as a public library or church (your choice). A few moments later I was peeing and grinning. I’d made this sad old fellow’s day without even trying.   Historians, psychologists, sociologists and poets have written libraries full of books about our strong and unwavering need to follow crowds, and to belong. We crave acceptance, recognition, and affirmation. This is behavioral and emotional firmware built from our core DNA. For example, without ever being taught, almost everyone naturally gives very small children all the acceptance and affirmation they possibly can. It is so much a fundamental part of being human, lessons are unnecessary. And at the other extreme, every popular sport comes with legions of fans. We need to belong. In some advanced parts of the world (like the good ol' USA) a minor conflict arises in the minds of those enjoying frequent doses of motorcycling’s inherent soul and mood nourishing effects, with the mildly uncomfortable awareness of being slightly estranged from the mainstream. A thoughtful rider wonders: Should I ride only in societally-defined ‘normal’ motorcycling situations (fair weather recreational, sport, touring, and hobby riding, etc)...or, what, exactly? What kinds of ordinary riding activities get in the way of being fully accepted? And should we even care about this? Try riding for day-to-day transportation in rain, or in cold, or on any day with less than Kodachrome-perfect weather. Doing this marks you as a bit weird. Simply walk through a grocery store perfectly comfortable and happy inside dripping wet gear on a cold and rainy day and you cannot help but notice a few other shoppers discreetly looking questioningly at you, their eyes silently asking why the heck you are doing something normally so enjoyable in just about the most difficult, dangerous, stupid and seemingly uncomfortable way possible. What’s wrong with you? Alternatively, ride anywhere for a vacation road trip, or to some rally, or on a guided motorcycle tour, or around a racetrack, or for an adventure, or even at some locally popular trail-riding area on a weekend, and you will be well understood by the non-riding public as being perfectly normal.  Beyond all that are some special circumstances when you would particularly enjoy being accepted by people who don’t ride. These include family holiday gatherings, formal dinners, weddings, birthday parties, picnics and funerals. If you happen to be the only person who rode to one of those events, it’s almost guaranteed your dear old aunt Sandra, or your mother-in-law Karen, or your nosy uncle Freddy, or SOMEONE will ask in a curious yet mildly judgmental voice: “Did you ride your motorcycle?”  Especially if the weather you’d just ridden through to get there was anything less than perfect. Whenever this happens, and it will, those nearby will lean in a bit to hear your answer. And you’ll have similar experiences when riding to business meetings, courtroom hearings, public gathering events, and much more.   It's somewhat different when you ride to any type of business as a customer, or to a polling station to vote. There you are not seeking empathetic acceptance, and this is usually the same with co-workers, though the first time you ride into work there might be some gossip or a curious comment. But after a few days of riding to work your single-track moto-transportation quirkiness normalizes and everything returns to business as usual -- except on days when the weather is a bit adverse for riding.  I don’t need to tell you that regular moto-commuting and utility transportation riding is not only good for your mental and physical health, and also probably lightens the overall load you place on our cute little planet, or how sometimes it even saves you time and money. If you are reading this you already know all of that. Rain-or-shine, riding a motorcycle is nearly always worth it despite the occasional socially uncomfortable or awkward moment. So, if you happen to have a job which doesn’t require carrying a bunch of equipment or large or heavy items, and if your motorcycle more-or-less matches your local roads and routines, and if you have a good selection of decent gear arranged to fall conveniently to hand, you might as well ride there. I’ve previously written about the useful gear stuff several times, most recently here. Obligatory Useful Gear Sidebar Trying to ride year-around here in northern Minnesota puts me near the far-end of a moto-wierdo bell curve because we have a lot of crappy weather. July through October is fine but the other seven months can be, well…uh, not-so-much. Long winter-month recreational street and highway rides are essentially out of the question due to our below freezing average temperatures, but they’re not impossible if one has a generously faired luxury touring bike with leg guards, hand guards, a heated seat, heated grips, and lots of warm gear. Even with all that, such rides are rarely worth the discomfort and effort. (Off road and dual-sport rides in winter conditions are doable.) Local short-hop winter riding for errands and commuting is a different story, especially if you don’t mind getting a little dirty and are ok with your bike being exposed to all kinds of road salt and sand filth. You need only possess a halfway decent gear wardrobe and then most winter riding situations become semi-enjoyable. Not enjoyable like summer riding, but it’s still better than bumping down frost heaved roads inside a heated car. Assuming you have a bike that will reliably start in lower temperatures, all you need is a little extra time to dress for the temperature when departing, and then the extra time to undress for indoor comfort at the destination. For a typical 10-15ºf (-12 to -9ºc) morning, starting at the bottom you’ll want a pair of medium weight wool sox and a pair of fleece or flannel lined pants. (Long underwear isn’t needed with this type of pants.) Next, my sock-serviced feet go into a pair of fifty-year-old felt-lined Canadian-made Sorel packs (winter boots). Over your shirt you’ll want either a lightweight fleece, or thinnish 300gsm wool sweater. On top of that goes a lightweight down ‘puffy’ like this. If your destination is more than fifteen miles distant, and your bike is unfaired, you’ll probably want to add an electric vest or bib. And if your bike is older and its engine is smaller, and you’ve already added electric grips to it, the bib will work better because of the machine’s weaker electrical system. Over all these layers goes an R-3 or R-3 light. Mine is one of two ‘lights’: one in my regular size for nine months of use, the other a size larger with shortened sleeves and legs to accommodate added mid-layers during the winter months. Both are now around ten years old and have been holding up well. Finally, just before pulling on my modular helmet I decide between warm gloves or mittens, depending on the temperature. The bikes electric grips take care of the rest.  On the colder days (Below about 20ºf, or -7ºc) there’s a merino wool balaclava under the helmet, and the helmet’s face shield is set up with an added anti-fog pinlock inner shield, which makes an amazing difference. Regardless of how well-equipped you are, the worst problem of winter riding will always be the occasional stink-eye from a few self-righteously comfortable drivers within their well-sealed climate-controlled semi-armored chariots. The hardest thing about riding more is you sometimes just won’t quite fit in. At the end of the day when you ride for utility transportation, you’re alone. Just be careful out there. - Mr. Subjective, Nov 2024 Sidebar 2, Darker Stuff about Not Fitting In Ask an adventurous rider who’s traveled through impoverished parts of the world, and they’ll tell you the overwhelming majority of those living in these places exhibit tremendous amounts of kindness and acceptance. Many studies confirm how, relative to income and resources, those less materially advantaged are, in general, more emotionally supportive and charitable than average. Taking this a step further, why would anyone choose the profession of psychology or psychiatry knowing they’d be spending most of their working days inside stuffy little rooms empathetically listening to an endless procession of damaged people talking about broken mental and emotional lives? The simplest explanation is that when they were younger and were facing difficult situations, nobody helped them figure out what to do, and years later, if they were fortunate enough to find themselves at a college or university and still looking for answers, registering for a psych 101 seemed appealing. The rest became their occupational life-history. You probably know the old song ‘To Dream the Impossible Dream’? It is a wonderfully corny classic and soundtrack to probably the greatest Honda commercial of all time. It teaches an important truth: No matter what, giving, caring, and accepting is better for you than taking, not caring, and not being kind. Most adults and many adolescents and children naturally know this, but not everyone. Now go back to the top of this blog post and re-read the subtitle. Then ride onward as you see fit. Sometimes, not fitting in and “surfing a tide of weirdness” helps you become a better person. Another reason why, when compared to driving around alone inside a car every day, riding a motorcycle is nearly always a better way to get yourself from A to B.

Subtitle: And Other First World Problems “If there is a cheat code in life, my Aerostich suit lets me arrive in style without the anxiety of wearing (or not) gear. Every day I wear my Aerostich to work makes me happy. I love the fact that I can wear my street clothes under the suit and take it off in 10 seconds.” Cong Wen, Dec 2024 Aerostich Rider of the Month (pictured above) We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Here’s a link to Cong’s RoTM (Rider of the Month) full profile. There are many cheat codes in life, big and small, within motorcycling and without. Things like finding a good spouse is this, because despite the added complications they make one’s life better, richer, and in most ways a lot easier. Same for finding an occupation you can do fairly well and which you like doing, at least most of the time. Same for finding and adopting a useful spiritual and faith-based belief system and finding and keeping a good life-long friend, and on and on. But this is a motorcycle blog, so let’s try and stay between those narrow topical guardrails and list some of the motorcycling cheat codes here. Owning a useful and daily ridable bike is at the very top of my list of moto-cheat codes. It doesn’t need to be a humble, modest or slow bike, either. Almost any bike, as long as its tires hold air, the engine or motor runs reliably, and you can afford to insure it is a mobility cheat code. It’s also important you don’t need to feel it must always be kept pristine looking, and that it be something which will wear the patina of real-world day to day use reasonably well. It helps a lot if it has decent lighting and somewhat effective fenders so it is rideable at night and in the rain, too. Not super noisy is another plus. Having a good place to park said bike where you live and work is another cheat code. These places need to be secure enough so the chances of bad guys stealing it are minimal. That’s about it. Your bike just needs to be ‘there’ (wherever you parked it) when you get back to it after being away for a period of time. Indoors, outdoors, covered, uncovered, locked or unlocked, it doesn’t matter. It just needs to be there waiting for you when you need it to be there. For many years my friend Mark L left an old and quite beat-up Honda XL parked unlocked in a small motorcycle parking area by an LA commuter train platform. It was weathered and far from pristine but ran and rode fine. He lived in distant Oceanside and commuted to LA on that train several days a week. For whatever reason, nobody ever tampered with or stole the bike so it was always ready when he needed it. As his train would near the LA station, he’d unroll his Roadcrafter, suit up, walk to the bike, fire it up and ride about a dozen miles across LA to his workplace, which came with a nice secure parking area for motorcycles. He did this for years and this was one of his moto-life’s greatest cheat codes. (Just behind his marrying a terrific woman.) Being able to fix and maintain your bike yourself, or (alternatively) knowing a good place and/or skilled person you can hire to do this for you, is a great cheat code. It isn’t easy to learn how to change and balance a motorcycle tire yourself, but if you do learn how and have the needed tools and a good place to do this job, this is a heckofa great cheat code. Same if you find the right person or place to hire to take care of this aspect of riding. Gear-wise, the big cheat codes are having a selection of protective comfortable all-weather gear that fits and actually works well for you in all weathers. This can be harder than you might think, and require a larger investment than you’d like, but once everything has been more-or-less assembled, you have a real cheat code.  Especially if it is arranged for fast and easy access. Fuel injection, GPS navigation, anti-lock brakes and anti-skid systems, and other digital technological enhancements all are cheat codes for motorcycling, but, and this is a BIG but, for everything they give they take something else away. For example, many of today’s big road bikes come with digital cruise control systems which are great for lowering wrist fatigue and helpful if you ride long days and high mileages on trips, but they also are electro-mechanically complex. This is not a big consideration because they are so reliable. But in contrast I spent all my prime riding years figuring out how to accomplish this via various micro-adjustable friction devices added to the twistgrip. All very simple, light weight, and reliable, but not turn-key. You needed to figure them out when you installed them. We still carry several types because I still prefer them functionally because unlike digital systems you still must adjust the throttle position yourself, upward and downward as needed, and I like the mental and physical engagement of needing to do this manually. All good nav-systems are cheat codes, and in a slightly different way so are good printed maps.  So is having a way to write something on your tank bag’s map window as you ride. Noting a license number or non-GPS turn-by-turn directions. I use a grease pencil like this like this. These are all cheat codes. Carrying a selection of useful tools is the same. A tube patch or tubeless tire plug kit is absolutely a cheat code when you find yourself in possession of a motorcycle with a flat tire. Same for a tire pump or canister of compressed CO2 or air. Part of being a motorcyclist is finding, developing and being able to use an array of cheat codes which allow you to ride more often. They seldom come easily. You find them and figure them out as you play the game, and the more you play, the more you know where they are and how to use them. What are some of your moto cheat codes? - Mr. Subjective, Dec 2024 PS – When it comes to our overall individual mobility there are lots of other technologies which offer their own kinds of useful cheat codes. Examples range from protective footwear to supersonic aircraft, but when it comes to most people’s day-to-day transportation, the main examples involve bicycles, scooters, motorcycles and automobiles. Cheat codes are about saving time and helping us enjoy healthier, happier, longer or easier lives. Of those four vehicle types, the two in the middle best combine the benefit of time-saving speed with a type of physical experience which inherently improves our neural and our emotional health. Some of those benefits are scientifically and empirically measurable, too. PPS - Beyond all that are two further plusses falling outside in-motion riding experience. Choosing riding sometimes forces us to slow down and spend the extra time needed to figure out solutions to the logistical problems using any bike presents. Simply figuring out what to wear, when and how to wear it, and how to carry whatever we may need to carry. For example, almost every week I ride to a grocery store to refill my pantry using either a small-ish backpack or larger messenger bag. Inside the top pocket of the backpack or messenger bag is one of our very compact Lightweight Portable Bags for overflow loads. At the store I’ll either push a small cart or carry a store-provided basket, and after paying, I’ll have between $65 and $125 worth of food to carry. The heavier items (Cheese, milk, produce, fruit, canned soup, etc) always go directly into the backpack or messenger bag and the overflow items, if any, are carried in the LP Bag. Those are lighter things (bread, cookies, dry foods, deli, etc) which were set aside as I loaded the backpack or messenger bag. When riding home that LP bag almost always hangs freely from my left wrist just in front of my knee. Sometimes, while I’m sorting and packing groceries, one or two other shoppers will be checked out while I’m carefully sorting and loading my purchases. For me the hardest skill of getting groceries by motorcycle is simply not being embarrassed by the necessarily slower packing process. But my logistical choice to carry groceries home on two wheels was more than a casual preference, and more than idle rationalizing, because I feel better after getting groceries home this way. I value my own limited time like anyone might, measuring the speed and efficiency of whatever I’m doing, and some activities are more important than others. But every chance I get to carve out a little time to slow down and solve the many small physical and logistical problems necessary to ride more is always time well spent. The other notable plus (plus number two) is how perfectly motorcycles and scooters split the difference between walking or riding a bicycle, and driving a car or truck, when ranked by motorcycling’s comparative per-mile environmental ‘footprint’. Today’s handy auto-optimized infrastructure clearly already exists, and most of the time how we choose to use it is entirely up to us.

With our Harley dealer gone (after over seventy years!), Duluth and adjacent Superior now have only one operating motorcycle store, RJ Sport and Cycle. They sell Hondas, Yamahas, boats, outboard motors, ATV’s, side-by-sides, snowmobiles and much more. I went there a few weeks ago to purchase a small item and noted they had far more boats, outboard motors and side-by-side ATV’s on display than motorcycles. For better or worse, Harley stores don’t currently have that option. (The local Suzuki and Kawasaki dealerships left town years ago. The SMSA here is somewhere around 150,000.)

I just ran across an online ad featuring a motorcycle being used as a prop to help romance and sell what appeared to be hipster laundry soap packets with many different scented options. Curious, I went to the company’s website which is here. I wanted to see if the motorcycle was also being used anywhere on the website, or was only in an ad that targeted me, a known motorcycle-interested person. The bike was nowhere to be seen on the company website but I was more than a little astonished at how romantically the soap pods were being presented. Online marketing techniques and technologies today are often overwhelming, and yet to younger consumers everything about this apparently (?) seems normal. There is a famous saying or quote somewhere which goes (approximately): “sometimes a ____ is just a ___.” I don’t remember who famously spoke it*, or what the two items in that sentence were, but just about any proper noun could be used. "Sometimes a flower is just a flower.”, or whatever. Catching myself shaking my head slightly as I explored the elaborate Laundry Sauce website while also thinking “Sometimes a sachet of laundry soap is just a sachet of laundry soap.” was like looking closely into a mirror at the increasing array of wrinkles on my face while that distortion-free reflection is screaming back: “You are an old old man now, and going forward less and less about the world surrounding you is going to make much sense. Get over it!” Though people have publicly identified their trades and guilds for centuries, formalized marketing always seemed synchronized with the beginnings of the industrial revolution (1800-ish) and with the start of serially produced and widely distributed goods. When I arrived in the middle of the last century things were already moving quickly. Ivory soap was 99 and 44 hundredths of a percent ‘pure’.  “It floats!” the soap marketers proclaimed.  Laundry soaps soon split into powders and liquids, then further into ‘fresh scented’ and ‘unscented’, and today we have this emotionally complex Laundry Sauce website. Plus the infinity of similar sites for every other kind of product and service. Oh. My. G-d. Does all this ever feel like the rich/developed/advanced world has gone off the deep end. But it hasn’t. It’s just me becoming old. When I first arrived, Ivory soap seemed nice but overly boring. During my young-adult years as a consumer, the unscented version of liquid Tide laundry soap (and other similar brands) seemed normal. I’ll probably purchase that product for the rest of my life. There has been much solid research revealing how we humans imprint most strongly on those things we encounter and experience during adolescence. And how once imprinted we return to those tastes, ideas, preferences and values for the rest of our lives. A well-known example of this is how our individual taste in popular music is formed most strongly during this part of our lives, and for the rest of our years those are the songs and melodies we most enjoy hearing. For those just a few years older than I, it’s Elvis, Chuck Barry and Buddy Holly.  For those exactly my age it’s the Beatles, Dylan and The Rolling Stones.  For those a little younger it’s Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Prince.  Go way back to the late nineteen forties and you’ll find a few super-elders still breathing who prefer Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. Serious books have been written about how emotional brain-stuff like this works. Circling back to motorcycles, here’s the ad selling today’s young adults laundry soap using a studio picture of a traditional looking motorcycle: Yes indeed-y. Yeah. “Smell good. Look good. Feel good.” You go, kids. And that Enfield is a very good choice if you want to own and ride a good-looking classic to smell, look and feel good on. It is a modern retro-design which is made in India, so it’s available here at a very good price. Comes with a built-in versatility and all-around riding functionality every well-conceived standard motorcycle does. This example is big enough to load up and tour widely on, yet small enough to easily manage the traffic, parking and garaging necessary in typical day to day commuting.  It would be easy to maintain and take care of, too, because of its intentional simplicity. Over time and miles, it will wear whatever patina it acquires very well. Scratches and dirt won’t matter. This is a good simple all-around-rideable bike. And if fitted with mildly open-treaded tires it should easily handle gravel and two track dirt roads ok too, if you are not going nuts with the throttle. This is an Aerostich blog, so where does that leave our products? About the same place as that modern re-creation of a classic Enfield, I hope. Our goods are also simple, durable and all-around useful. They are modernized interpretations of traditional rider’s gear, which means they are not stylized moto-fashion masterpieces. If the work clothes company Carhartt made a high-tech textile riders jacket it would probably be as simple, durable and functional as our Darien. Same for pants: AD-1s or Utility. And our one-piece R-3 and Roadcrafter Classic armored coveralls are similarly basic, comfortable and functional as long-term working investments in gear. Just like Carhartt work clothing, Aerostich gear is ride clothing made to work for years, in all foreseeable riding situations. The rest is mostly details. Finally, there’s nothing wrong with owning and riding the latest-greatest bike, or any machine pinpoint specialized for whatever riding situations and applications you are pursuing. Your purposeful choices and self-projections onto such models power all manufacturers to continually innovate. The same is so for makers of rider’s gear, fashion-oriented or otherwise. Like Carhartt and Enfield, we are focused on all-purpose comfort, versatility, durability and utility, so our designs change only very slightly from year to year. If at all. They are more like equipment than fashion. More like a conservative formal suit you can wear for a decade or longer and it doesn’t get out of fashion.  And when (…or if) you ever decide to wash your Aerostich gear, you can probably skip the Laundry Sauce and just go with any old-school laundry soap. Just remember to first check all the pockets for forgotten items, remove the impact armor, zip all the zippers closed, and set the machine to do a double or triple rinse. - Mr. Subjective, Nov 22, 2024 PS - Everyone likes to “Smell good, Look good, and Feel good”, and if you ride a lot in your daily life, or on a long road trip, you’ll always get at least two out of three. Which, the more you think about it, is actually a pretty great deal. *“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – widely (mis)attributed to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

It's not the comfort as much as it is the contrast. On Jun 27, 2024, at 12:07 PM, Wiley Davis wrote: “I have two R3 suits...not sure that makes me a "great" customer, but I do love them. In fact, as weird as it might sound, there's something I really really enjoy (crave, even) about being on the bike on a day that's cold and/or wet enough to need layers under the suit and that feeling of mild isolation and detachment the suit gives me (which feels odd to say given that the antithesis of this is also one of the appeals of riding). Something about feeling swaddled in a tiny bubble of comfort while inches away the wind and cold and rain rages. It's not the comfort so much as it is the contrast, I think.” I could hardly argue and was so inspired by how Mr. Wiley Davis ‘gets it’ the same way I do, I was inspired to reply to him (at the following unforgivable length): Thanks, Wiley, I have two R-3s as well. Same model and color (Black, light, tactical) so they look identical, but one is a size larger than the other and also has some fit alterations to allow slightly more room for insulation. A down puffy, usually. The impact armor is different also. The ‘3-season’ one has the stiffer ‘competition’ armor + optional back pad and hip armor. The winter one has the softer standard armor which works better in cold weather. Like you, I really enjoy riding when the typical recreational riders are not out riding. Partly because I have all the gear to do this, and partly because some of the attention from people encountered can be so amusing. Most of my everyday motorcycling is within a 15-mile radius. Once a week I’m in a grocery store restocking my pantry and fridge with one of our Lightweight Portable Bags. In a downpour, I’ll walk into the store dripping rainwater around my feet and start shopping while holding my helmet in one hand and the grocery basket in the other and at that point some intelligent-looking fellow shopper will sometimes smile curiously at my drowned-rat appearance and then seriously ask: “Did you ride your motorcycle?” One would think this was obvious. Despite a temptation to reply sarcastically I giggle inside and reply with a grin and a nod. As I continue shopping I’m thinking “That was the best part of my day (other than the actual riding itself).” Such comedy moments never get old. I also always try to ride to vote on election day on my way home from work.  I’ll arrive at around 7:45 PM, fifteen minutes before the polls close. The always-seriously-geriatric volunteer poll workers look bored, tired, and counting the minutes while waiting to leave. I like voting, and I especially enjoy not having problems finding parking near the polling place. My voting location is in the basement of a Lutheran church. Every day when I commute to and from work, I wear a backpack containing a small thermos, a notebook computer, some lunch, and maybe a sweater or something I’m reading. On one shoulder strap is a Velcro-on accessory pocket for a phone and a small aluminum carabiner with a miniature three-button garage door remote dangling.  On the other shoulder strap is an aluminum pepper spray thing about the size of a AA mini-Mag light. Below that is another small carabiner with a dangling key to a bicycle lock and a different mini garage door remote for another garage door. The stuff on the two carabiners sometimes jingles softly when I walk. I’ve been walking/bicycling/motorcycling back and forth to work most days this way for thirty-five years, nearly always wearing a well-used Aerostich one-piece suit. Next, I walk down a flight of stairs into the church basement and head over to the very tired and very elderly poll worker who has in front of him the big book of registered voters with last names beginning with the letters F-through-J and I smile.  “Goldfine,” I say, “Andrew”.  The room is library-quiet and there are half a dozen other voters sitting behind cardboard dividers concentrating on marking their machine-score ballots with their choices. The place is as serious as a library reading room when the tired fossil sitting on the other side of the registration table looks me up and down for a long careful moment and then croaks in a voice just loud enough to carry through the entire room: “Where’s your parachute?” All the concentrating voters hear this and some look up. Don Rickles would have been proud. I grin and reply: “Be nice. I’d like my ballot please.”  A moment later he points to the blank line beside my name in that big registered voter book and I sign it and collect the precious printed paper ballot, trod over to an open table, and do my best for two minutes to pick (mostly guess) the least objectionable individuals for the next couple of years. A few moments later I’m riding away into the dark and seriously frosty November evening smiling and thinking, “That geezer’s comment was by far the best part of my week (except for this actual ride)” Yup, the R-3’s “tiny bubble of comfort” is exactly what makes such moments possible. Rain, sun, heat, cold, snow, whatever. If I had been dressed as any traditional rider, in denim and leather, and had profiled to the non-riding public in that conventional way, nobody would have said anything, and my riding life would not be nearly so fun.  – Mr. Subjective, July 2024 PS – In old western TV shows and movies in the 1950s when I was a child, some of the heroes (The Lone Ranger and many others.) wore gun belts with two revolvers, one on each side. A cliché came into the language referring to these characters generically as “Two gun Pete”.  No idea where this came from, or exactly what it meant, but it would be fair to call me “Two R-3 Andy”.  Having two Aerostich suits sized and armored slightly differently makes all-year-around city riding in the climate around here (-15ºf to + 85ºf / -27ºc to + 29ºc) not only possible but easier than one might think. Having two R-3 similar-looking suits is like having a secret weapon.

And Buying a Powerball Ticket. Good luck or bad luck supposedly comes in threes so I’m today buying a Powerball ticket for the first (or possibly second?) time in my life. I’m feeling lucky because this week Minnesota unexpectedly became the sixth state in America to formally legalize lane splitting. Separately, another bit of possible good luck may be about to happen at Aerostich (which will be described a little further below). That makes two. Perhaps a lucky Powerball number is out there waiting for me. How could it not be? There is a terrific story about how this new Minnesota lane splitting law suddenly became reality and it will soon be told elsewhere, but for now, a simple explanation is the planets all aligned and a few Minnesota riders in key legislative and leadership positions saw the opportunity and acted quickly, doing all the right kinds of things at exactly the right time. So beginning on July 1 of 2025, all motorcycle riders in MN will be able to filter through congested traffic as if they were riding bicycles. It will take years before many Minnesota drivers become comfortable with motorcycles filtering around them in congested traffic. To begin familiarizing them Minnesota is planning PSA announcements and other kinds of public information and education programs between now and next July. Essentially only two elements are involved: 1.) In congested areas worldwide the operators of smaller nimbler vehicles have always naturally and safely filtered through the interstices between the larger and clumsier vehicles. This is why lane-splitting is legal or well-accepted just about everywhere in the world except America. Millions of riders across the planet safely do this every single day, especially through the most road-congested densely populated cities in ‘developing’ areas throughout Asia, Africa, and South America. 2.) Only in America did almost everyone go right to cars, because a 1916 Model T automobile cost about the same as a 1916 motorcycle. People could get four wheels or two wheels for the same price, and everyone then in the market for wheels chose the Ford. This happened across America, and nowhere else. Since then, most bikes designed, manufactured, and marketed in the United States have been consumed as sport and leisure vehicles. Bikes became societally marginalized as leisure toys and sporting machines, and riding them came to be identified with rebellion, recreation, and sport, not useful utility transportation. Our unique moto-history continues to influence how motorcycling in America is understood and consumed, which is why there are so few motorcycle commuters and utility riders here today. But globally motorcycles are a well-established economically proven safe way to reduce road congestion, improve society, and place a lighter footprint on the earth. Very significantly, the behavioral differences between typical utility riders and recreational riders are immense and consequential.  People riding mostly for sport and recreation are far more likely to ride in ways that are unsafe, and those who ride for utility transportation tend naturally to ride as safely as possible. This is why lane splitting tends to be far safer than most Americans think it is. The second bit of potentially very good luck which came Aerostich’s way earlier this week is a lot simpler to explain. After fifteen years of fruitlessly trying to persuade the YKK zipper company to develop a slightly stronger and slightly easier-to-handle version of the main entry zipper in Aerostich suits, it looks like this may finally be happening. The zipper we’ve been using for about the past fifteen years is the very best available from any zipper company I am aware of, and it has worked extremely well for about 97% of our customers, but it isn’t quite perfect. Our long-time YKK zipper sales rep just sent me a photo of a new model that looks good. A sample of this zipper should show up on my desk next week. If it does work for us (?), then several months from now all Aerostich suits will begin to come with this new zipper and we’ll probably also figure out a way to offer it as a replacement upgrade to those with older Aerostich gear. Hopefully, I’ll soon be sending a bottle of fancy whiskey to our YKK zipper rep along with a sincere thank-you note. Good luck (and trouble) supposedly comes in threes. This afternoon I’m buying a Powerball ticket. Mr. Subjective, May 24, 2024. PS – Unfortunately, after writing this blog post, the ticket I purchased (shown here) had only one matching number. So maybe the old saying about ‘luck (or bad things) coming in 3’s isn’t as quite true as people believe. Or maybe some other good thing will still happen? Or maybe the new zipper won’t work out? Or? This is the photo of the possible new zipper: Here’s the text of the new Minnesota lane splitting law: PPS -- Also, unfortunately, when the possible zipper solution arrived, it won't work for us. But we'll keep trying.

An Email to A Co-Worker I’m not sure how we might use this photo, but I think it is funny.  I’m not sure why it appeals to me so much.  Maybe partly because it violates the PC stuff about never riding after drinking? Or maybe because it tells an important truth about the awkward clunky/bulky/pain-in-the-assed-ness of these suits unless one is comfortably inside one, in motion on a motorcycle. This photo would probably bring out the worst in some of our audience because so many people have been killed or seriously harmed by drunk drivers and riders. Or died due to driving or riding impaired. To be clear, I am very much against drinking and riding (and, of course, driving). So it’s tough to figure out a use for this image, even though it tells a real truth about one-piece armored riding suits. Maybe a ‘caption-this-photo’ contest, noting that: A) no drinking was involved, B) the photo was not set up or staged to be a provocative photo, and C) with an explanation about the actual circumstances of the creation of the photo to be revealed along with the winning caption? The title of the photo might be something like: "Here is one picture not worth 1,000 words.” The actual circumstances: I was invited to join my wife, brother, and brother-in-law for dinner last week at the OMC Smokehouse. Great BBQ food located only a block from Aerostich. The place wasn’t its usual busy normal. My three partners for this dinner had arrived by car a few minutes before me and were seated in a booth directly opposite this bar. Nobody was at the bar, so I draped my R-3 over an empty bar stool and joined my companions. My wife noticed the arrangement of the suit draped over the stool like a passed-out drunk and took the photo. After a nice no alcohol-for-me meal I put the suit back on and rode home. Compared to a riding jacket, these suits usually (and again) are a big pain-in-the-ass when going out for a social event. Before he died, the record-setting endurance rider John Ryan was famous for simply leaving his suit on all the time, wherever he was. But I always feel more comfortable if I can take my suit off when in a social situation like the one described above. Sometimes I can safely leave it on the bike, but in this situation and some others, that wasn’t or isn’t an option. When it comes to what to do with my R-3 after arriving at public and social destinations, there’s a wide range of inconveniences. Riders on full-dress touring and ADV bikes sometimes stuff their suit inside an empty saddle bag. Others drape it over the bike’s handlebars, about as shown in the above photo. This has the extra advantage of helping protect any cute handlebar-mounted farkels from opportunistic thievery but isn’t safe if it is too windy unless a bungee cord is also used to prevent the suit from kiting away in a strong gust. At the other end of the spectrum are places like the dance studio where I met my wife for lessons yesterday. She’s a great natural dancer who loves to dance while I’m nearly unable to keep time and memorize even the simplest steps and moves. “Opposites attract” is all you need to know about this. Anyway, right at the entrance is a bench and a big rolling coat rack. Upon arrival, I hang my backpack off the end of this rack and then drape my Aerostich suit over it, exactly like how it is draped over the bar stool in the photo, except this rack’s horizontal bar is high enough so the empty suit looks more like it’s fully standing. Then I sit on the little bench and take off my riding boots and I’m ready to…er, go ‘dancing’, if you’d call it that. But my wife always has a great time, and they have a nearly perfect place to hang the suit. I’ve known riders who will roll their suits tightly enough to be wedged under the bike’s frame against the rear tire, and those who use Aerostich Carry Straps to do the same, bungeed across a saddle, and there are a few riders like John Ryan who just keep the darn things on all the time despite everyone around them being in their comfortable street clothes. Unfortunately, there’s no sci-fi George Jetson press-a-button and it self-folds into a jeans pocketable size. (See 0:47 in this one-minute video for the idea.) An R-3 suit version sure would be nice. I wish I could write here we’re working on it. Maybe someday. Last week I went to a concert at the West Theatre which was part of the annual “Homegrown Music Festival” here. The place was standing room only, so when I did eventually find a seat, I just sat there in my zipped-open-to-the waist Aerostich suit, enjoying the music, and remembering the great John Ryan. For him and me, No matter what this might look like, riding there is always worth it. -- Mr. Subjective, May 2024

Long before internet commerce was mainstream, we enjoyed making and mailing print catalogs. Our idea was to present motorcycling, and Aerostich products, and related items, in ways that were not only accurate but also inspiring. We wanted to tell stories about riding which reflected a worldview I privately called ‘Andy’s Planet’. This was a small motorcycle-centric place that in my imagination resembled America fairly closely, except for one important difference; lots of motorcycle and scooter riders used their bikes in ways that went far beyond the narrow confines of recreation and sport. Those riders commuted, did everyday errands, and traveled to distant locations for both business and pleasure. Not by car but using their motorcycle. To help put this idea into the catalogs we divided them into sections like: ‘Off the Road’, ‘A to B’, and ‘Prevent and Repair’, and also included lots of non-commercial content: Short sidebar quotes I’d collected were at the bottom of many pages, and full-page guest essays and contributed stories were scattered here and there. I called this mixed presentation “the world writ whole” as if seen through a pair of motorcycling tinted rose-colored glasses. Maybe the all-time best guest content we presented in one of those Aerostich catalogs was a poetic essay called ‘Season of the Bike’ by a guy named Dave Karlotski. I contacted him in 1998 or 1999 and received permission to put it in the catalog in return for an Aerostich jacket. This was more than twenty-five years ago so I have no idea where (or if) those records might be now. Last year, the Progressive Insurance company started publishing Dave’s prose poem in pieces, single-line excerpts positioned at the top of full-page print ads selling motorcycle insurance. After seeing those ads for this past year, I thought you may also have seen a few, too, and might enjoy reading the entire work as originally written. Here’s a link to a video the Progressive people made about the ‘Season of the Bike’ ad campaign, and here is Dave’s timeless prose-poem: Season of the Bike By Dave Karlotski There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with coldhammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds. Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets. On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done. Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride. Here's a little more about this poem, and Dave himself reading it. And finally, here’s Dave’s website, with a large collection of his wonderful motorcycle writing. You will not find better writing about motorcycling (and moto-traveling) anywhere. Thanks, Dave. Audio Version (8:22), reader: Mr. Subjective

A Year-End Collection of Assorted Drivel “Riding makes every trip a bit of an adventure.” - Mr. Subjective Several years ago a couple of my co-workers encouraged me to start writing an Aerostich blog. This was about when we did the Zero Below Zero project during the winter of 2015-16. Here’s a collection of random topics from the past year which for one reason or another were not appended to one of our regular email offers. If you’ve read some of my blogging efforts over the past year, thank you. Happy Holidays from all of us here. We wish you and yours a good new year, with lots of riding. – “Mr. Subjective" 12-2023 Shiny Stainless Reflections On December 8th of this year (2023), a week or so after the initial release of the Tesla Cybertruck, Road & Track magazine’s Victoria Scott wrote a wonderful short essay that included this: “…our vehicles reflect (widespread cultural) anxieties. More than half of vehicles sold today in America are trucks and SUVs; this fueled a new all-time high for the average weight of a new passenger vehicle in 2022, which hit a staggering 4329 pounds. Pickup buyers, more frequently than other types of vehicle owners, say they enjoy their trucks because they are “powerful” and “rugged”. Most new vehicle buyers rate vehicle safety as a top priority in their purchases, and larger vehicles are indeed safer for occupants than small ones (although they have vastly more negative externalities, such as tire particulates and dead pedestrians).” Continue Reading... Totally Rideable After I made the youthful transition from pedal-bicycling to motorcycling I’d often find myself daydreaming about riding motorcycles. Almost anything could trigger a lapse from reality into moto-fantasizing. The moment I’d obtained my driver’s license and a small license-plated moto I was out exploring my local world by simply wandering around looking for interesting trails to explore, obstacles to overcome, and hills to climb. Even when not actually riding it was hard to be in the natural world without silently visualizing, evaluating, and projecting its ridable potential. Didn’t matter if the passing landscape was a smoothly mowed manicured residential lawn, a golf course or park, an overgrown dense forest, or a steep rough, rocky slope. I’d be sitting in the rear seat of my parent’s car going somewhere just looking out the side window daydreaming and constantly calculating what riding ‘there’, and ‘there’, and ‘there’ would be like. Suddenly I’d see a gap in the passing scenery which suggested a route and think: “That is totally rideable.”  A few moments later I might spy a forest with a relatively open understory and I’d look into the gaps and tell myself this forest was “totally rideable”. Continue Reading... Not Another Paradox We humans have spent the last few hundred years very earnestly, carefully, and diligently building a world where it is ever easier to move about efficiently, comfortably, and conveniently in order to obtain all of the things we want or need.  From groceries to manila envelopes to lipstick to health care to haircuts, to you-name-it, everything we seem to require or desire has become ever more interconnected via a superbly organized carefully constructed highly engineered system of roads, rails, and other mobility augmentation technologies. Including ever-improving motorcycles and rider’s gear. After centuries of work and an incalculably large investment, getting stuff and going places has never been easier, safer, and more comfortable. But in this pursuit maybe we’re about to be like the proverbial dog that chases passing cars until one day finally catching one and is bewildered because it doesn’t know what to do with it. If the car had been a rabbit, and the dog had been a wolf, it would be a meal. But those days for dogs are long gone. Continue Reading... A Funny Science Experiment This link is to a write-up of a very funny science experiment. Back in 2014, someone wondered what would happen if a hamster wheel was placed in a forest. Would wild mice use it? And if they did, why? I only fast-scanned this. I’ll spare you the effort: If you place a hamster wheel in the forest, wild mice will run on it when nobody is around. The scientists who set up this experiment are not sure why. Continue Reading... ICE vs. Electric These days lots of people are thinking about the future of ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines) vs ‘electrics’ and are trying to make realistic projections about various things related to the widely anticipated transition. One personal thought experiment involves today's excellent electric fireplace inserts, which provide both room heat and a highly realistic simulacrum of a traditional fire. Managing combustion is so old within us it may have become partly encoded in our human DNA. I recently read about an experiment done by scientists in the UK which slightly bears on this. They wanted to find out if wild mice in a forest would use a randomly encountered hamster wheel. They do, which means this behavior is something deep within the neural architecture and chemistry of field mouse brains. Aside from questioning how those scientists obtained the funding to do this crazy experiment in the first place, it probably usefully informs lots of other kinds of mammalian things like, for example, why we enjoy riding motorcycles, making and hearing music, dancing, why we seem drawn to fire, why some run for recreation and why dogs put their head out the window of a moving car. Continue Reading... By The Numbers Based on over 140 years of record keeping, today, January 17th (2023), is supposed to be the coldest day of the year in Duluth. I think the average low temperature here on this day is something like minus two (ºf) and the average daily high is nineteen. Instead, what we actually got was a high of 37º under dark cloudy skies. This after an unusual two-day steady and sometimes hard mid-winter rainfall which cut our five feet of already fallen snow down by at least half. Continue Reading... A Quirky Video This morning (March 29, 2023) I watched this sort of tedious and longish educational video about traffic problems in the largest city in the Bahamas. Enjoyed it enough to think maybe you’ll find it interesting as well, if you have the time... Continue Reading... What is Technology? Technology is our creation and the resulting array of physical things that are useful. There are two types of technology: Physical and metaphysical. Physical technologies are things like making a fire, doing agriculture and husbandry, and making tools and buildings and machines. Metaphysical technologies are ideas and beliefs. Things like (for example) religions, which are useful for raising good children and dealing with the forever unknowable vastness and neutrality of the universe. Mathematics is a kind of bridge between the realm of physical and metaphysical technologies. What is Morality? The creation and application of metaphysical technologies. Continue Reading... Happy New Year, 2024! Let's hope it's a good one. - Mr. Subjective, 12-28-2023 PS – A note about blogging and vlogging. I have some good help. I never thought of myself as a blogger or a vlogger (video blogger) but these days print catalogs are largely obsolete and everyone does business online, so I have been forced to adapt. Still, I miss the challenges and fun of making print catalogs. Now that Aerostich’s pioneering recipe for modern rider gear has gone worldwide via many others, one way for us to differentiate our brand and ideas (simplicity, non-fashion, many sizes, etc) from all the other constantly “new and improved” (mostly marketing BS) gear is to tell stories by blogging and vlogging, in the hope that our audience will find us and our products and service more appealing than someone else’s. This is working, in the sense that we are stable in our niche but most recreational riders are vulnerable to the marketing claims of "new and improved”. And again, we are grateful to be where we are.  Apart from most of that.  Despite developing/designing many rider-gear products, I’ve never been a “new and improved” person.  Last week I was grocery shopping and picked up a bag of my favorite chips (blue corn chips) which I’d been buying for many years.  The bag read “Now even better tasting!” and I silently wondered if I had been eating bad-tasting chips all these years without realizing it, and regardless of that, I was perfectly happy with the way the chips tasted before. Marketing is ridiculous. People are so vulnerable to techniques like this. If you have read all of this, you know marketing. You know this. Audio Version (30:53), reader: Mr. Subjective

On December 8th of this year (2023), a week or so after the release of the Tesla Cybertruck, Road & Track magazine’s Victoria Scott wrote a wonderful short essay that included this: “…our vehicles reflect (widespread cultural) anxieties. More than half of vehicles sold today in America are trucks and SUVs; this fueled a new all-time high for the average weight of a new passenger vehicle in 2022, which hit a staggering 4329 pounds. Pickup buyers, more frequently than other types of vehicle owners, say they enjoy their trucks because they are “powerful” and “rugged”. Most new vehicle buyers rate vehicle safety as a top priority in their purchases, and larger vehicles are indeed safer for occupants than small ones (although they have vastly more negative externalities, such as tire particulates and dead pedestrians).” Humpf. I get it. She’s 1000% correct. It’s easy to see, literally everywhere. One would have to be heavily sedated or sleeping like Rip Van Winkle to miss this, and importantly it’s not wonderful news for everyday street motorcycling riders here in America. While some places in Europe have recently noted increases in lightweight and mid-sized motorcycle and scooter sales, here with few exceptions (dual-sport and ADV bikes), sales of most kinds of motorcycles have been flat or declining for several years. Editor Scott’s wonderful short R&T essay helped me better absorb the zeitgeist surrounding motorcycling in America. Her full essay is here, and it’s not behind a paywall. And, for a slightly deeper dive into the increased popularity of light trucks and SUVs, this is another excellent essay. Adding anything to this without mentioning political aspects probably isn’t possible. For example, on March 4th, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt in his inaugural address to the nation famously said: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Those were dark times as most Americans struggled through the depths of the Great Depression. Consciously and unconsciously motorcycle riders confront a diverse range of fears directly and in real time. Motorcycling teaches riders the ‘nothing-to-fear-but-fear-itself’ lesson in so powerful a way riding is not only good for individual riders, but is also good for society. Is there independently verifiable evidence for this? No. Can I offer documented historical support for such a claim? No. Only my years of personal riding experiences, which for better or worse, helped form those beliefs. Riding, even for short distances, and regardless of the model, style, or age of the machine, always helps me feel better and better understand and appreciate more completely and gratefully my place in the universe. My body naturally craves the neural endorphins released by all kinesthetic activities, from walking to skating to skiing to sailing to riding. Among these, motorcycle riding is the most easily incorporated into routine daily life. I can’t sail, ski, skate or surf to work and for errand-running. Do I admire the new Cybertruck? Yes, without reservation. It’s an amazing machine from an amazing company led by an amazing fellow. Would I want one as a gift? Nope, at least for any purpose other than quickly selling it to provide money for other things, because whenever I try to imagine myself using one, all I can think of is the unwanted attention I’d receive. For the record, whenever I’m motorcycling, other than the conspicutity aspect, I don’t appreciate whatever non-traffic tactical awareness’s may be directed toward me by drivers of four-wheeled vehicles. But there’s a difference. For the moment using Cybertruck evidences one’s strength, wealth, bad-assedness and coolness – and to most non-riding people any motorcycle, no matter how technically or artistically interesting, evidences its rider to have a bit of immaturity mixed with an unwise disregard for personal safety. Production Cybertruck at Tesla Fremont Factory parking lot, taken by Lcaa9. We are all evolutionarily pre-disposed to admire, celebrate and follow heroic, strong, confident leader-types. Not individuals who may be compensating for some kind of unknown missing psychological piece. Unfortunately, this is probably how motorcycle riders in general are  being understood by the largest majority of car, SUV, and light truck drivers. It is a profound lack of understanding. Regardless of how many are ever sold, the innovative Tesla machine is a great halo-vehicle for that business. Way back in 1953 the Corvette sports car provided a similar halo-effect for Chevrolet. Just as its creators had hoped, the two seat sports car drew more driver-consumers to the brand, who then bought sedans and station wagons. In 1964½ the fresh Ford Mustang did this same halo-thing for Ford. All three machines captured the zeitgeist at the time of their introduction perfectly, and cast a bright halo around the brands they represented. For Chevy, back in 53, most Americans were enjoying rising postwar affluence and the beginnings of the interstate highway system. New roads were opening everywhere and all of them seemed to lead toward exciting experiences. For Ford, the 64½ zeitgeist involved new levels and kinds of self-fulfillment, liberation, a sexual revolution, and the seemingly unlimited potentials of an approaching aquarian age. For Tesla in 2023, the dominant mood is everone’s broadly underlying fear that everything is falling apart, so a Cybertruck could be your aspirational personal tank: a powerful sci-fi car for safely driving through a presumed oncoming apocalypse. Today we apparently have everything to fear. All technologies exist to improve our lives and increase our personal odds for longer-term survival. They do this partly by protecting and insulating us from the unknown difficulties, discomforts and uncertainties surrounding us. But there’s a Catch. The less we know about the people and situations around us from shared direct first-hand experiences, the greater is the potential is for us to become more and more afraid. Cars, light trucks and SUVs, as wonderfully useful and enjoyable as they are are, provide an everyday example of this simple truth. For multiple reasons, compared to conventional light trucks and SUV’s, the Cybertruck dials this up to eleven. Side note (now a word from our sponsor…): The various digital technologies which so recently have given us the internet, social media, email, online gaming, and many other powerful and useful tools, do this as well. Despite the increased ease of connecting and working with others (by phone, text, email, etc)  these technologies provide, we are all increasingly being isolated each other and from nature.. Most technologies come with this same double-edged blade. Enclosed motor vehicles and digital simulacrums inescapably dissolve some of the glues the traditional less-sheltering and less-siloing human experiences provide. Those experiences nourish all of our social contract protocols, and those in turn are foundational for broadly civil behavior, and for advancing civilization-in-general. Back to the Cybertruck and motorcycles. Most riders are well aware the average age of American motorcyclists has been increasing in a kind of weird synchrony with the rising popularity of well-sealed, infotainment-enhanced, slab-sided pickups and SUV’s. These parallel yet intersecting deltas not only make it more difficult for those working at providing motorcycles and related goods and services for riders, they also make a few things worse for everyone. Riders and non-riders alike. A Cybertruck teaches its owner to be ever more fearful on each drive because it is so superior at isolating its driver and passengers from the rest of us, and from nature. No motorcycle does that, despite many riders choosing gear seemingly stylized to be a means of amplifiying this result (Example: a flat black helmet with a de-humanizing mirrored face shield, etc). Every motorcycle teaches its rider to be a bit less afraid on every ride. This is especially true if one figures out how to ride more or less safely and comfortably through lousy weather. In most circumstances, I selfishly prefer riding my motorcycle and what it does for me: biologically, neurologically, and philosophically. Regardless of the thickness of your wallet, the choice is yours.

Or, "I sure with it would stop raining." The ancient Greeks had a useful story about a guy named Sisyphus, who forever strained pushing a large heavy ball up an inclined plane.  In our time, the famous (but little-known in America) long-time (1960s-80s) president and CEO of the Toyota automobile company, Kiichiro Toyoda, lived, wrote, and spoke this Japanese aphorism: “To shoulder a heavy burden down a long road — such is life.” Across centuries of history, many wise people have presented this same idea in similar ways.  Not so long ago motorcyclists were generally regarded as rebels. That was mainstream thinking in America through much of the post-World War 2 era, when social conformity and broadly increasing prosperity were the order of the day. Suburban fathers would not allow their daughters to go out with motorcycle-bums and many motels and restaurants would not serve them. State and local police harassed them. Much of middle America was afraid of them. Hard to believe now, but true. Back then many good motorcycle bums chose to ride simply because it felt great and was tremendous fun. Plus, it was affordable. Those riders knew riding was cool for many reasons; It was the perfect way to get from A to B enjoyably while also showing a little rebellion against the era’s dull social conformity, and also mildly rejecting the era’s rapidly expanding commercialized hype. Win. Win. Win. As those years went by much of riding’s rebelliousness became co-opted, sanitized, and commercialized. By the early 1960s, all those small high-quality utility-transportation Hondas, and the many similar imported machines that had all become hugely popular across postwar Japan, became tremendously successful here as simple leisure toys, and then shortly after that in variations that were more specialized for performance, sports, and recreation. “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” was the ascendant commercial story, while on the traditional biker side, Marlon Brando’s scary rebellious “Wild One” cleaned up and morphed into Henry Winkler’s mega-popular “Fonzie”. Meanwhile, year after year there came more better-quality cars and light trucks, moving along broader and straighter high-speed roads, with larger numbers of well-stocked retail stores, an increasing number of nice places to visit and eat out, and many additional ways to entertain ourselves. Everything was measurably becoming better and better. Earlier motorcycling expressions of rebellion faded and were replaced by new variations and forms of rebelling, most of which didn’t involve one’s chosen mode of transportation and/or recreation. Today’s roads are filled with larger and taller slab-sided vehicles providing their occupants both with a better view and a more securely sealed and climate-controlled internal environment, so much so that even during perfect weather nearly all the openable windows on nearly all of these vehicles are nearly always fully closed. Primary control interfaces recognizably remain for steering, braking, and accelerating, but today interior ‘climate control’ and ‘infotainment’ systems are of seemingly equal importance. It’s not a stretch to imagine a future where the first three of these will become less important than the last two. Long-time New York Times writer/opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie recently wrote about the sudden sharp increase in pedestrian and bicyclist deaths, under the title ‘The Path to Reducing Pedestrian Deaths Is Steep but Straight’. He correctly attributed the cause to today’s greater numbers of tall, slab-sided, climate-sealed, infotainment-maximized cars and light trucks. Duh. That shift, more than anything else, is probably partly why street and touring motorcycling has been experiencing a decline across most of the advanced and rich parts of the world. Just as with walking and bicycling, moto-riding has become noticeably (and statistically) riskier, which translates to less urban and distance-traveling road riders, and more off-road sports and recreational riders. This is because at its essential core motorcycling will always be attractive in one form or another. This is a lot like how domesticated horses transitioned from centuries of utility applications to becoming recreational pets because of the wide adoption and popularity of automobiles and motorcycles. There now are a greater number of horses in the latter role than the total number of them back when they were near-exclusively bought, sold, and kept (enslaved?) as functional work, military, and transportation tools. A classic story from the near beginnings of automobility goes like this:  It’s 1916. It’s pouring rain. The driver of a fully enclosed period car and the rider of a similarly period motorcycle each arrive at the exact same destination at the exact same moment. The driver looks at the soaking-wet rider and says unsympathetically: “I bet you wish you had a car!” The rider smiles back and replies: “No, but I wish it would stop raining!” Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote: “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.” He was one of the greatest writers and thinkers in history.  Today’s wonderful high-tech, safe, comfortable, well-sealed cars and trucks have become pretty good at breaking this link. Yuval Noah Harari (1976- ), a contemporary Israeli author, historian, and professor in: "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" | Talks at Google, said: “The way we design technology can make us less compassionate.” Today’s wonderful high-tech, safe, comfortable, well-sealed cars and trucks have perhaps unintentionally (?) been designed in ways that may be doing this. Combine these two important ideas with the old “…bet you wish you had a car!” parable and it is something to think about. Now, add an idea from French philosopher, author, journalist, and political activist Albert Camus (1913-1960): ”What is a rebel? A man who says no.”  Ok, campers, for extra credit what would you call a utility transportation + commuting motorcycle rider today?  Or, for that matter, a transportationally-dedicated pedestrian or bicyclist? - Mr. Subjective, Oct 2023 PS – “I don’t want a pickle; I just want to ride my mo-tor-sicle.” – Arlo Guthrie (1947 - ) American folk singer