Predictably a Blog RSS

A fair number of our customers agree about one looking like a dork/Road Grimed Astronaut if riding for transportation and utility, vs. when riding primarily for sport and recreation. These two different-but-related applications have at least this in common: they both...

The First Ride... Photo: Daimler Reitwagen. Wladyslaw, CC BY-SA 2.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons. November of 1885, 17-year-old Paul Daimler went for a motorcycle ride on the first ICE engine motorcycle, the Daimler Reitwagen (built by his father, Gottlieb...

VerschlimmbessernGerman verb, loose translation: To make something worse by trying to improve it. Long a favorite word of mine, though I've never known exactly how to pronounce it or use it in any actual conversation. Two forms, verb and noun...

Two high-mile riders meet: Brook Dain (left) and Paul Pelland at the Aerostich store and factory in June 2022. Brook Dain and Paul Pelland. Click to view full size image. What do these guys have in common? Both Brook and...

After experiencing three days of sweltering 98º highs during the BMW Motorcyle Owners Of America’s National Rally in Springfield Missouri, I headed homeward riding up state route sixty-five. First stop, lunch in Sedalia. Temp still 98-99º. Sticky hot. By Iowa...

A famous old saying goes: “Nothing clarifies the mind like standing before a firing squad.” The last couple of years have been like that for more than a few of us. Hopefully we’re now on the far side of a...

Last year an elderly friend emailed to inform me he’d decided to finally stop riding. A few months later he emailed me again about how he was missing it more than he’d anticipated and now was looking for one of...

If you commute every day or nearly every day, in all kinds of atrocious weather, this is for you. For those riders who are Road Grimed Astronauts and use their bikes for daily transportation, errands and last but not least, who commute...

...or like a sociopath? Almost nothing one can do during course of their ordinary daily life is as socially ostracizing as when one gets bundled up to ride somewhere for utility transportation through cold or crappy weather. You’ll receive the...

Thanks to the internet, a far-away and never-met long-time motorcycle friend (Paolo, who lives in Turkey and operates this interesting motorcycle, philosophy and culture website) recently emailed me an amusing short essay about the misleading environmentalism of electric power-in-general. A...

When I was younger (mid 30’s) I did two sort of endurance rides. Neither was specifically planned to be an endurance ride. I simply wanted (needed?) to see if I could get somewhere which happened to be fairly far away,...

"Good god no. I'm nowhere near old enough..." - Excerpt from a recent online (Revzilla Common Tread) discussion about "Building A Better Brand" and the R-3 and Roadcrafter Classic one piece suits    

Before we know it our ICE (internal combustion engine) motorcycles will be replaced by electrics. And not specifically because the bikes we currently buy only slightly contribute to the greenhouse gas effect, but more because they are too costly to...

A Short Mr. Subjective Blog Post See attached. This model Honda is in short supply, and high demand. Last night (Sept 6th) this auction closed at midnight.  Location: Chicago area.  The MSRP on these is $3899.  This one had 180...

“When you own your story, you get to write the ending.” Brené Brown Because Aerostich gear isn’t hanging in cycle shops, and is made in America, and is available only factory direct, media exposure is important. Almost any kind of...

An essay by Mrs. Subjective… Last week was the first time I rode on the back of a motorcycle in more than ten years. It was the first time I rode with my husband, Aerostich’s “Mr. Subjective”, whose life revolves...

If you want to ride a motorcycle often it’s always part of a system. Simply owning a motorcycle is great, but by itself that bike isn’t quite enough if you wish to ride a lot. Just like most individual recreational...

My reply, whenever people ask, “Aren’t you hot?” is “Yes I am.” But my favorite reply to any question about wearing Aerostich gear on a hot day came from my friend John Chase. Thirty years ago, we were riding back...

This post/essay is included in Section 5 of the book "The Riders" (pictured below) available for purchase here. The smaller and more obscure a road is, the more interesting it usually will be on a motorcycle. This size/interestingness inverse proportionality...

“Social media is less a reflection of who we are, and more a performance of who we want to be." - Drew Harwell and Shiori Okazaki, May 11, 2021, in a Washington Post front-page story featuring a life-long motorcycle rider. Here’s a...

Did you and your contemporaries ever call notoriously slow cars and bikes ‘stones’? For example: “That old van sure is a stone…” When I was growing up my pals and I always referred to all underpowered vehicles as ‘stones’ or...