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 make, too difficult to ride and too tedious to maintain. Even today’s most fabulous and desirable bikes will meet the same fate as old-fashioned steam locomotives. They’ll be appreciated mostly as inspiring historical relics which required too much cost and effort for so little power and result.  Many younger people already view older long-time riders as "the last of a breed" (gearheads/petrol-heads or whatever…) and consider our beloved ICE machines too costly and requiring too much of an ownership and maintenance commitment. Future riders will aspire to own and ride electrics partly because of their far lower maintenance requirements*, magic-carpet smooth silence, and no gear shifting. Some of the future electrics will be a lot faster than the latest and fastest ICE bikes now available, too.  Speed, acceleration, efficiency, and synaptic-level nimbleness are all core reasons for the enduring appeal of motorcycles and scooters. It’s just hard to believe that the accompanying sweet tunable exhaust noise, along with all the vibrations and acoustical harmonics which have always been such an integral part of motorcycle experiences, are about to fade into history just as the romantic and inspiring sounds of a steam locomotive’s ‘choo-choo-choo’ hissing and chuffing, and the piercing shriek of their steam whistles has.  I’m already nostalgic whenever I hear (and smell) a passing two-stroke ICE bike “on the pipe” -- the narrow near-wide-open-throttle RPM range when the engine’s carefully engineered tuned exhaust scavenging hits its perfect harmonic, and the bike crisply leans itself out just a tiny amount more as it produces maximum power. In some ways I’m not quite ready to feel that way about the sound of a four-stroke ICE engine coming onto its cam, but it probably won’t be too long. After it’s mostly gone I’m gonna miss that music, but future generations of riders won’t. Two general ‘news’ moments during my lifetime stand above the rest: I’ll always remember with a kind of granular clarity exactly where I was when I first watched astronaut Neil Armstrong step onto the moon live (though delayed 1.25 seconds by the distance), and similarly I will always remember where I was when I turned on a television and first watched the terrible attack that destroyed the World Trade Center buildings in NYC. Seeing repeats of those two news videos will always stop me cold. Though not comparable in significance or emotional impact, two motorcycle-business ‘news’ moments have also stood out. About fifteen years ago I read a press release from Honda (of Japan, not their USA distributor American Honda) announcing they were going to put fuel injection, anti-lock brakes and catalytic converters on every bike they made. EVERY model, including all sizes and types. As the years have passed, they’ve done this. From their cute ‘Monkey bikes’ to their best-selling-motor-vehicle-in-the-world, the C-50 Cub (now both are 125’s) to the luxurious Gold Wings, everything they produce on two wheels has, or will soon have, these technologies. That long-ago media release was Honda saying there would always be motorcycling, for at least for as far into the future as they could see. Some of the very smartest people in motorcycling and ICE engineering telling everyone they believed it was worth the huge investment to redesign their long-ago-paid-for and highly profitable products like the Cub. It was Honda telling the world there would be motorcycles for as long as there were people, and they intended to always have some of this business. This news could not have made me happier unless they’d have also added they’ll be giving these updated bikes away free. Then there was the day several years ago when the late movie star Peter Fonda announced he’d hired the famous Sotheby’s (or Christies?) auction company to sell off all the props and memorabilia he’d kept from the movie ‘Easy Rider’. His ‘Captain America’ leather jacket and everything. This told me the market for Harleys was about to turn downward and that after their truly phenomenal thirty year run of success, from a struggling and near-bankrupt company to a $2 billion dollar plus ultra-profitable company which along the way became a global fashion-darling, that this growth, and the coolness of this brand, was about to start to decline. Which it has. The actual tipping point from ICE to electric bikes has not happened yet, but it is coming. The elements of riding which are the most fun and important are not all the cultural constructs, fashions and socializations surrounding riding. Rather it’s the physiological, neurological, and psychological experiences of actively balancing and guiding the machine. Riding feels as great at 5 mph/8kph as it does at much higher speeds, and most importantly, the benefits to riders -- and to the society which surrounds all of us -- remain the same, too, regardless of what technology makes the machine go. So even though someday not all that far off it may be unfashionable and impractical to ride an ICE bike for transport, leisure or sport, there are certain to be multiple super-fast and/or super-great electrics available for doing just such riding. They’ll be more affordable, more reliable, easier to ride and require less maintenance than the best bikes of today. And even faster, too. Many of tomorrow’s e-motorcycle riders will come into riding as a natural transition upward from a pedal e-bike just as they’d earlier moved upward to those pedal e-bikes as a move beyond their pedal-only bicycles. When they decide to become licensed motorcyclists, the transition from pedal e-bikes to electric motorcycles will have been notably smoother and easier than what most of today’s ICE bike riders experienced.  Pedal bikes have always been a gateway drug to motorcycles. Soon pedal E-bikes will be the gateway drug-of-choice to you-know-what.  And the rest is history. - Mr. Subjective, Sept 2021PS – There’s irony in the fact that earlier technologies which are relatively more challenging to operate and maintain are often (and maybe perversely?) more strongly loved by their users and caretakers. In a paradoxical way people seem programmed to balance more difficult physical, mental, and emotional challenges unconsciously yet rationally with correspondingly greater emotional attachments and satisfactions. It’s inversely proportional -- The more difficult something is, the more its seemingly valued. There’s a humorous eternal truth in the classic question: “Why do you keep banging your head against a wall?” and its inescapable answer: “Because it feels so good when I stop.” Future riders of electrics may not bond quite as strongly with those bikes as we do with our ridiculously and wonderfully antediluvian ICE bikes. Which I think will be ok. It will still be more than enough. *I’m far from a good mechanic, but still find the process of working on an ICE bike an enjoyable challenge, and the results extremely satisfying. Setting valves, changing tires, balancing wheels, changing fluids, bleeding brakes, replacing or mending broken parts, tuning, farkeling, setting adjustments for best operation and much more. I’ve accumulated a mixed assortment of the necessary tools and have always been able to arrange a small acceptable space to do this work. I get into trouble occasionally and must rely on shop manuals, friends and YouTube videos for support. It’s always too much work, and not for everyone, but with the luxury of time (though not enough is available sometimes) it generally feels nice to be able to take care of my two-wheeled friend.

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 miles on its odometer. Whomever sold it probably bought it to flip. He or she just made a pretty easy $600. Screen shot is from 5 seconds before the auction closed. When something in demand is scarce, this type of price-gouging happens.  At the start of the covid pandemic it was toilet paper. If you find someone to sell you one of these at MSRP you could do this also. Or you can ride it. Tough choice. Or, if you flipped six of these you could buy number seven for yourself with the proceeds. In an era when most motorcycle models are being discounted, this is the rare exception. - Mr. Subjective, 9-21 PS – This model Honda is I think made in their factory in Thailand, one of the world's largest motorcycle factories.  More of these are on the way as I speak/type. PPS - The history and origin of this fun and useful bike goes back to the 1960’s and is one of the most interesting stories in modern motorcycling. Much more than fashion was involved. Honda’s official history of it is here: https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/honda-ct-series-history

  - Said more than a few Roadcrafter suit wearers... When the Roadcrafter was first designed in 1983 it was intended to be an easy-to-put-on-and-remove armored coverall for commuting, constructed along the lines of a leather rider’s suit, but made using lightweight, breathable, abrasion-resistant waterproof textiles. Because of those priorities and considerations, it was never expected to be, or presented in our marketing materials as a perfectly waterproof rain suit, or to be ideal for extended rides and severe rain exposures.   We were looking for Roadcrafters to be able to handle about a 20-minute daily commute during a typical moderate rain, while still being much easier to wear on an everyday basis than heavier and harder to change into non-water-resistant leather gear. This is why all Roadcrafter and Roadcrafter Classic suits were (and are) fully lined like leathers, and why, because of the lining being stitched-directly-to-the-outer-fabric construction, and the easy entry zipper arrangement, they may sometimes leak slightly in the crotch in some wet-weather situations.   About seven years ago the original Roadcrafter coverall was superseded by a more advanced R-3 model, and was renamed the ‘Roadcrafter Classic’, and it remains in production today. Many riders still prefer its fully lined design even though it isn’t perfectly waterproof and does not meet today’s ‘Rainwear Without Compromise’ Gore-Tex waterproofness test standard. (That formal certification standard did not exist at the time this suit was created.) All Roadcrafters and current Roadcrafter Classics come with detailed instructions teaching how to easily apply a liquid seam sealer to a few vulnerable areas, which, if carefully done, almost entirely eliminates the wet weather vulnerabilities of this design. These instructions are also downloadable here. Even a slow drop-drop-drop leak every minute or two may cause a large, wet area after an hour or more in wet conditions. It can help to arrange the way the fabric folds across one’s lap in ways which do not help pool or gutter rainwater runoff directly into the zipper and its adjacent stitching. The newer R-3 armored coverall design is fully waterproof and meets the ‘Rainwear Without Compromise’ Gore-Tex standard. Because this design is unlined, a few internal high wear-points may develop after long and hard use which may allow small leaks.  But repairs, if needed, are simple, inexpensive, and easy. A heat-activated seam-sealing tape (or a liquid sealant as above) can easily be applied over any small worn areas which eliminates associated leak (or leaks). This occurs only after lots of hard use. Further information about this and all other maintenance and repair procedures is available during business hours (central USA time zone) at 218 722 1927 or repairs@aerostich.com. - Mr. Subjective, 4-21

“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 exposure in social or traditional media is good, which gives professional journalists and ‘influencers’ the space to take their Aerostich gear stories in just about any direction.Personally, I’ve always appreciated stories about Aerostich gear ownership which include the idea that riding gear can be a little more about the function, durability, and practicality -- than the latest ‘tech’ style and fashion stuff. This includes the idea that useful refinements and improvements are incremental and are not driven by a marketing need to announce “new and improved” redesigns every year or two. The idea that if you hope and plan to ride for the rest of your life, then having durable, functional and comfortable gear which is less influenced by fashion (because it was never ‘in fashion’) is a good thing. And the idea that an investment in quality gear one can wear for many years and still get a zipper fixed, or a little crash damage taken care of, is a smarter choice than chasing whatever is the latest-greatest.I also look backward at Aerostich gear as a unique and pioneering original. The still-popular Aerostich Roadcrafter one piece suit was first to combine all the important ingredients for what has become the standard recipe for armored textile riders gear. In the beginning this recipe was so unusual most motorcyclists were reluctant to try it because it didn’t look ‘correct’ in the accepted moto-fashion sense. Sometimes even the more experienced and expert a rider was, the more reluctant they were to accept this entirely new and different way to dress for riding. See this Steven L. Thompson story from a 1986 issue of Cycle World magazine.Today the Aerostich R-3 one piece coverall and the Aerostich Darien and Darien Light suits embody everything we know about making superior quality better wearing equipment and gear to help people ride their motorcycles more easily and comfortably, to a wider range of destinations, and through the widest range of weather conditions and situations.Many riders actually don’t want to ride more. Rather, their priority is to be able to ride better, farther, and safer and faster whenever they do decide to ride somewhere. They also like to look like they know what they are doing, regardless of if they do or not. Online forums are full of posts by enthusiastic and experienced riders strongly testifying how and why their latest ‘it’ jacket is well worth its (high or low) cost. I’m sure they all are. But when I look a little deeper, at least few of these online emperors-of-riding-expertise can seem slightly undressed, at least when measured against my well-known arbitrary Mr. Subjective goal of riding more conveniently, safely and often.If you are reading this far, you already know that in most of the rich and advanced parts of the world motorcycles are toys and riding is consumed primarily for sport or recreation. I too enjoy riding because it simply feels cool and is such great fun, even when it’s raining and/or cold. Riding helps me feel I’m somehow a bit superior to the nearly infinite masses of people which seem to require at least four wheels to get themselves from A to B. It’s so much fun I just want to do it as much as possible, thus the Aerositch coverall.And in addition…Consider that some types of useful gear may be a bit like those original and now classic denim work pants, the ‘Levi’s 501 button fly’ jeans. According to some skillful marketers these jeans can be even further improved with added decorative pocket stitching, or by adding pre-engineered torn, weathered, and distressed areas. All the better for fashion-marketing reasons, except those versions do not make functionally better all-around general wear and work pants. Yes, they may be excellent for signaling to others (and to oneself, when seeing one’s reflection in a mirror) how cool one is, and how directly connected they are with the latest fashion trend. But if one simply wants a good pair of jeans for a wide variety of wearing situations, those basic 501’s (and all the Wrangler, Lee and other very close copies) remain tough to beat.Specialized armored textile riders gear marketing is a lot like that, so don’t go to an online rider’s forum and call out someone who just spent $1,600 on the latest-greatest riding jacket. Those ‘latest-greatest’ versions really are good jackets, and their wearers will be offended the same way a teenager would be if a parent criticized her carefully considered (and costly) pre-ripped jeans. That fashion-aware kid will pout and be offended because how can anyone be so clueless to not understand the importance of looking cool? Peer approval is one of our most strongly hardwired needs.Despite all that, simply choosing to ride any motorcycle is one way to partly step away from our species-wide social-approval instinct. It’s a legal way to throw some of the societal norms about personal mobility under the bus (sorry…) and simply do what feels most right.So (in conclusion) I’ll always enjoy any media exposure for Aerostich gear which celebrates or at least recognizes the un-coolness-coolness aspects of riding a motorcycle, and the related un-coolness-coolness component of most Aerostich gear, because it is motorcycle and scooter riding itself which is so cool, and anything which helps us make it easier, more comfortable, and safer is cool. So, enjoy the ride, and from time to time take a few chances. PS – Here’s my first-ever vlog. The oldest vlogger and most boring vlog you’ll probably watch this week. About thirty minutes exploring and explaining an uncool old bike I ride.

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 activities, riding (and racing) require a support system of parts, tools and equipment. And the more frequently and longer you want to be riding, the more extensive a support system you’ll need. If you’re mostly a fair-weather and/or occasional rider, you may only need a place to hang a riding jacket and possibly a shelf for a pair of gloves, or gloves + a helmet. But if you want to ride nearly every day in all kinds of weather, and occasionally travel long distances by motorcycle, you’ll need more. Much more. Long-time high-mile riders usually have a closet full of old gear and a garage full of parts, tools, lubricants and assorted bike-related junk/crap/stuff. Maybe even an extra (or alternate) motorcycle or two. One for daily riding around town, and another for traveling. Or one for when the other one is broken and/or awaiting service, or perhaps another one as a “project bike”. It can be quite a commitment to ride a lot, year after year. For a few riders all of this extra stuff is worth it simply because it means they get to ride all the time. And this is important: every time they ride -- rain or shine, day or night, long or short, hot or cold -- it’s always fun. No matter what. Riding provides one with a nice subtle (but measurable) dose of neural and physical medicine. You feel a little better after riding somewhere, even if it’s just going to the grocery store or wherever you may work. Bonus: If you choose to ride this much, you are also doing the planet and everyone sharing the roads a little favor, too. One Less Car and all that. Road-builders, carmakers and oil companies won’t appreciate that, but they’ll probably manage to get along ok without quite as much of your business.  Side note: I’m fortunate to live in a single-family home, with a non-riding but extremely riding-understanding wife. Our house isn’t unusually large (+-1800 sq ft) but being in this circumstance makes having a system a bit easier. In an apartment or condo there’s a similar system, but it is necessarily a bit smaller since most apartments and condos are smaller. In these places your riding gear usually goes into the entry closet and your helmet and gloves go on the shelf just above. Having a system does not require living in a freestanding home. There’s this, too. I’ve lived in two residences over the past fifty years and my system hasn’t changed much. It involves a garage large enough for a single car, a smallish adjacent space for a few shelves and a clothes-hanging bar positioned high enough so even a one-piece coverall riding suit can hang without touching the floor. In some ways this personal bat-cave setup is as important as the motorcycle itself, just because it makes near-daily riding so much easier and quicker: Get up, out of bed, brush teeth, get dressed, make some tea, read email and/or watch some news while drinking that tea…and it’s time to go.   For me this means walking down a flight of stairs into a basement containing a furnace, water heater, laundry sink, a washer and dryer, too many boxes of stored items, and most importantly, a garage space with an electric door. (Side note: For many years this garage door was not electric. I’d open it, roll the bike out, put the bike back on its side-stand, then go close the garage door. Now that’s all done with a button dangling from a mini carabiner clipped to the shoulder strap of my small backpack.) Mr. Subjective's suit hanging set up: Previous house -- current house. On go the boots, then the riding suit, then the helmet, then the gloves and then (finally…) “I’m outta here!” Off and riding! Best part of any day, rain or shine. The clothes-hanging bar where my jackets, pants and riding suits hung at my first home was a water pipe which ran along the ceiling at a spot near the furnace, but still far enough away so there was no danger. Where I live now, I had to make a hanging bar with supplies from the local home/hardware store, but the job was simple. It’s a piece of wood screwed to one of the floor joists above, supporting one end of a closet hanger rod. The other end is held by a hanging-rod-saddle screwed to the adjacent wall. This whole thing took less than an hour to make and is only two feet long, but there is plenty of room for my gear. And it makes all the difference in how easy it is to go riding. The other bat-cave installation is a narrow set of freestanding shelves reserved for riding gloves, a couple of helmets and assorted small items like ear plugs, bike keys, face shield cleaner and other incidentals. At my first home this stuff was located in a corner of the garage right next to the bike. Where I now live it’s located about three feet from the clothing hanger setup with the riding gear. Both worked just as well. (The little shelving thing was fully assembled and came from an unpainted furniture store and cost less than $100.) That’s all there is to it. Same idea as Batman had for his bat cave, except my system doesn’t involve fighting evildoers. It’s simply about getting around on two wheels more often and easily. Nothin’ fancy.  Motorcycling is a system. What's yours?

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 roads and cross-country dirt trails heading diagonally north-west from Phoenix Arizona toward Yosemite National Park in California, and trying to ride about as close to an as-the-crow-flies route as possible. The route-chart guide for this journey was privately developed by an old desert-explorer rider named Allen Naille, who was an Aerostich customer. He ran one of those leased-from-the-park-service ‘concessionaire hotels’ on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and had a bunch of cool ‘Lucky Explorer’ Paris-Dakar bikes. (Alan, if you are reading this, I’d love to hear from you.) At that time colorful Aerostich and Aerostich-type armored textile gear was still uncommon. Our route hopscotched across the west, stitching together two lanes, dirt roads and two-track trails. In some sections getting gasoline was a problem. One section required us to detour about twenty miles up a dead-end road to a little copper mining town where there was a single small gas station. This combination C-store gas-station was just a worn-out metal building with a couple of small windows and selection of old worn-out tires on the roof. There were broken and/or junked cars over to one side and the entire town looked like maybe it could be movie set or a perfect place for some strange cult to hide out, except it was actually all there to house workers who were paid to remove underground veins of copper at as low a cost as possible. Every soul there (three hundred?) will leave the place as fast as they can, the moment the mine closes. As we were filling our tanks under a blazing hot sun a rough looking biker guy rode up on an older stripped-down chopper looking as if he’d just ridden out of a scene in one of those awful biker B movies made in the 1960’s. A rusty, greasy shovelhead, I think. He leaned the unmuffled machine way over onto its sidestand at the pump just ahead of the one John and I had just been sharing. As he got off and turned toward us, I could see strapped to his right thigh a holster carrying a well-worn 45 cal revolver hanging low on a wear-burnished leather cartridge holding gun belt. Hard to miss that kind of big hog-leg riding accessory. John and I were standing there sweating in our colorful Cordura-Gore Tex armored nylon Aerostich suits, almost ready to go, but both our helmets were still hanging from our bike’s handlebars as this rider turned directly toward us, and said in a disapproving challenging voice: “Hey, why are you wearing all that stuff?”. He might have waved a hand gesturing at the helmets. I instantly felt a little shot of adrenaline, and didn’t know what to say. But without missing a beat my friend John gave this guy his widest toothy smile and replied in a serious, sincere questioning voice: “Because I fall off mine all the time. How do you stay on yours?”. Silence. Then the dusty gun-toting outlaw chopper rider from Central Casting smiled and let out short laugh. A brief friendly conversation followed. Scene: Two riders in the middle of nowhere, standing under a broiling sun beside two beat-up dusty rusty gas pumps, sweating inside their armored sci-fi outer space Martian astronaut riding suits. Just another relentlessly hot Arizona summer day talking casually with some broken loner 1880’s cowboy-outlaw-biker who’d just ridden up on an old-school oil-dripping exhaust-belching hardtail chopper. Wearing a well-used Colt revolver. Another proof that you really do ‘Meet the Nicest People on a Honda’. On every other motorcycle, too. “Aren’t you hot?” You reply while smiling: “Hell yes I am,”, or, if you’d prefer to reply a bit more like ‘Forrest Gump’ might, then after a pause to consider this question, you use your slowest most serious and earnest voice: “Yes I am.” It works every time. People just want to know. They ask only to somehow reassure themselves that you are the idiot, and they are not. Mr. Subjective, 5-2021 The Best Aerostich suit for riding in Every Weather? For our first fifteen years, all Aerostich advertising was headlined: “ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY RIDERS CLOTHING” with the smaller sub-headline: “COOLER THAN LEATHERS”. Every suit came with a detailed four-page Owner’s Manual, and part of it explained how to dress in layers for varying temperatures. (Hot = shorts and a t shirt. Cold = base and insulating layers) Today riders still receive an updated version of this guide with new Aerostich gear. We now offer several completely different types of armored riders gear. Leather. Waxed Cotton. Synthetic textile. Basically, all the synthetic textile models, the Roadcrafter Classic, R-3, AD1, Darien and the ‘light’ versions of these suits, wear slightly better in warmer conditions, with the ‘lights’ being a bit cooler-wearing than the regular versions, and the lighter colors (tan, gray, Hi-Viz) also being a bit more comfortable when it’s hot and sunny. In extreme heat conditions all can still be very cool if you add ice to the outer pockets, but this is seldom necessary. (Note: Water from pocketed liquifying ice flows to the outside through the needle holes around the perimeter of each pocket, not to the inside of the garment.) When it’s over 95ºF the suits work best when all the vent zippers are closed. Especially in desert areas. This helps create a slightly moist internal micro-climate which is healthier than exposing your skin the desiccating/dehydrating wind blast. (Which is why for countless centuries Semitic and nomadic peoples living in the world’s hottest desert areas prefer wearing hot-looking long robes and tunics.) For cooler rides, and in order of their warm-ness, first is the waterproof leather Transit suit. The next warmest wearing (this is a tie) is the Falstaff and Cousin Jeremy waxed cotton suits. And like the synthetic textile models, this gear also has a wide comfort range thanks to multiple zippered air vents. Both the Corium leather and waxed cotton are relatively breathable if the ambient humidity is not super high. You’ll freeze in the synthetic textile models if the temps drop into the 60’s (ºF) and you are just wearing a t shirt and shorts, but worn this way the Transit, CJ and Falstaff will still be pretty cozy down to the 50’s (ºF). – Mr. Subjective, 6-2021

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 is well known to experienced riders. Motorcyclists naturally want to find out what is just over there, on the other side of the horizon, and around the next few bends in the road. We do this again and again, often via ever smaller and less crowded roads. If enough reasons exist to get from wherever we are to somewhere over there, a small pathway will first develop, which, over the course of time as more people want to go there, will become a larger road. The more travelers, the wider and straighter a road will become. At one extreme are superhighways with as many as eight or more lanes in each direction, and at the other end of this spectrum are endless squiggly, seldom-used, single-and-double track trails. The genius of every motorcycle ever made is its unique ability to help us traverse and enjoy this entire range. No other motorized vehicle is able do this. Road networks develop in ways similar to the branch and root systems of trees and the evolved meandering pathways of river and circulatory systems. Mathematicians sometimes describe this natural branching using algorithmic formulas for fractals, and riders experience it more directly whenever they choose to head off down roads that become successively smaller and less commonly used. Thus, roads that don’t seem to go anywhere important often make for very desirable journeys on a motorcycle. I’m located in the north central part of the United States, and from here to the West Coast it’s about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) by road or about 1,500 miles (2,400 km) by air on the shortest-distance great circle. Covering this distance are three more-or-less parallel and reasonably comparable routes: Interstate 94, US Highway 2, and Highway 200. From top to bottom on a map, US 2 runs near the US/Canada border, Highway 200 does the same roughly 50 miles (80 km) farther south, and I-94 crosses similar country about another 100 miles (160 km) lower. “I-Ninety-Four” is the newest. It connects largish prairie cities like Minneapolis, Fargo, and Billings with a smooth kind of efficiency appreciated by engineers, accountants, long-haul truckers, and drivers with places to go and things to do. This road is about speed, safety, and making good time. At the other extreme is the much older “Two Hundred” that connects countless little farm and ranch towns and is occasionally intersected by even smaller crossroads and driveways, each unique. Lastly, “US Highway Two” evenly splits this difference in traffic, average speeds, roadway age, safety, and architecture. The Interstate (aka “Freeway”) is about as straight, flat, and smooth as is humanly possible to achieve. It comes complete with a wide, nicely mowed, grassy median separating the opposing lanes, of which there’s always a minimum of four, so it’s usually simple to safely pass other vehicles at any time. Its paved shoulders are extra-wide, and 50 feet (15 m) beyond them is a sturdy wire fence to help keep local wildlife out of your way. There are no stop signs; all crossroads involve bridges, underpasses, or on-and-off ramps. You simply lock down your bike’s throttle at the chosen speed and this endless slab of near-perfect pavement supports you and your bike until the machine needs gasoline, or you get hungry and thirsty, or you need to pee. The magnificent Great Plains pass by in the distance and produce an effect that is simultaneously awesome and soporific. Highway Two Hundred is at the other extreme. With a few exceptions, there’s little traffic and you’ll find only two opposing and fairly narrow lanes the entire way. The endless prairie, foothills, and mountains begin a couple of feet from the edge of a slim gravel shoulder and extend in every direction to the far-off horizon. There’s no median and no wildlife fences. You are right in the environment. Along one side of this ribbon, an infinite row of evenly spaced telephone poles has been planted. Every so often you’ll notice a hunting bird perched atop one of them. Each of 200’s small towns, motels, roadhouses, and gasoline stations is slightly different, and between them every few miles are occasional lonely-looking ranch mailboxes. You’ll also occasionally see someone out walking, riding horseback, or bicycling. Those you may stop to talk with will be polite and sometimes a little quirky. The quality of 200’s pavement is generally very good, but during the spring thaw, a few low places may be a bit flooded. You’ll see mountains, forests, rising foothills, small streams, rolling prairies, near-endless billiard-table flat areas, and great expanses of naturally variegated terrain—the Great Plains up close. Occasionally there will be a required 90-degree turn at an intersection in the middle of nowhere, so if you want to remain on this highway, you need to pay attention to signposts. Even out there with almost nothing else around you, it’s still possible to miss an important turn. Sometimes more than an hour will pass without seeing even one other vehicle, and it’s easy to run out of gas if you don’t stop to fill up where you need to. Though this road (like all roads) can be cannonballed, taking 200 usually means riding about 600 miles (966 km) each day, which makes either reaching or returning from the West Coast an easy three-day project. Both directions are a ride you’ll remember. It doesn’t take a genius to correctly guess which roads deliver the best riding experiences. When you have the time, it’s nearly always the road less taken. Enjoy the ride.

“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 link to the full article. The story is about a 50-year-old male rider in Japan who successfully pretended to be a beautiful young female rider on social media by employing a popular face-image altering app. This technology helped him develop a large social media audience. When he eventually revealed the truth about who he actually was, his social media audience became even larger. Missing from this exceptional article is how similar such online behavior is to traditional real-world cosplay, and, extrapolating further, how closely linked cosplay-in-general is to the huge commercial success of the Harley Davidson company as they provided a mass-produced river of carefully developed bikes and ‘costume’ gear which allowed a generation of average people (baby boomers) to dress up and enjoy riding around casually projecting the appearance of genuine 1% biker outlaws. At least a passing resemblance to those riders. Putting aside how actual criminal bike gang members may have felt about being elevated to aspirational fashion icons by thirty-five years of Harley’s brilliant marketing programs, at the bottom of this story is (…predicably) William Shakespeare and his famous stage-scripted line about how “…all the world’s a stage, and we are just players.” That is a paraphrase from the opening soliloquy in “As You Like It.” (which might partly be about how marketing works, but I’m guessing). There’s no place else to go with this except to note a sentence from Steve Thompson’s 1985 Cycle World Op-ed essay “Dressing Up”, which was written about his confounding and revelatory experiences using one of the very first Aerostich suits. At that time even the most enlightened and expert riders did not understand or appreciate high-tech armored textile coveralls. Summarizing this, he wrote: “…there is an obvious reason why riding gear for street bikers is so style sensitive: Riding a street bike itself is largely a matter of style.” We had always sorta hoped otherwise. Shakespeare knew better. All the world IS a stage, and this inescapably includes all of us Road Grimed Astronauts. Here’s the rest of Steve’s prescient 1985 one-page essay. - Mr. Subjective, May 17, 2021

Today, we're highlighting our top three favorite parks for motorcycle rides. Share your favorites with us in the comment section below or on our Facebook page! Location: Virginia and North CarolinaThis 469-mile-long scenic road connects Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. Features: Mountain views Wildlife Over 100 species of trees Rich in history Did we mention it's 469 miles of riding? Learn More » Location: Southern California"Two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado, come together in Joshua Tree National Park." - National Park Service website Features: 800,000 acres of park Camp, hike + more Desert wilderness Joshua trees (of course) Diverse wildlife - reptiles, birds, etc. Learn More » Location: Northern CaliforniaNamed for Lassen Peak, the largest plug dome volcano, it features many miles of riding through diverse terrain. Features: 30 mile parkway 3 additional roads to remote areas Waterfalls Lake views Steaming fumaroles Numerous volcanoes Learn More » About Riding In National Parks...All National Parks have their own police enforcement. They write their own federal moving violation (and other) tickets, so speeding or hooligan riding there is a bad idea. One pretty afternoon crossing Joshua Tree I was pulled over simply for riding blithely along standing on my bike's footrests. Not going fast, just enjoying the incredible views from a slightly higher vantage point. When you ride this way, standing up, your rear-view mirrors don’t work, so it was a quite a while before I realized I was being pulled over. This was embarrassing. Several other park visitors drove past the Park Ranger and I, frowning at the scofflaw biker. Fortunately I received only a verbal warning. Laws are strictly enforced in all National Parks. All of Blue Ridge Parkway is a National Park. When I last rode it I think the speed limit was only 45mph. For me at that time this was frustrating. It also seemed difficult to get on, or off, this road. Access points were limited. But the parkway’s pavement is manicure-perfect everywhere, and there are endless rows of pretty flowers planted along the shoulders almost the entire way. The earth right next to all those flowers was unblemished bluegrass, trimmed, mowed and groomed about as perfectly as the greens on a golf course. Hardly a blade of grass out of place. You almost need to see it to believe it. This is an unreal Disneyland of a road if you have the patience, and the views across the broad valleys are spectacular. And if, like Clark Griswold looking over the edge of the Grand Canyon for just five or ten seconds, you don’t have the patience, there are tons of fun and very curvy regular roads winding every which way around and through those mountains, with roadside scenes of houses, cabins, small towns and farms where real people are living real everyday lives. Lassen in California has a smaller footprint, but you’ll never see anyplace else in the USA remotely like it. Lots of steeply banked corners pirouette you and your bike closely around small and not-so-small bubbling pools of turquoise, orange, white and yellow mineralized water, bubbling up from the dormant lava-hot volcano literally only a short distance beneath your bikes tires. If this place wasn’t a National Park, half of Hollywood's sci-fi exoplanet movie locations would have been located here. Like most National Parks, every so often you’ll want to stop on the shoulder and just take it all in.- Mr. Subjective, 4-21

This is a great question. We don’t actually know much about this, and very little useful information is available online. What we’ve found there is not precise. The Gore-Tex® membrane on the back side of the Cordura fabric does not seem to have a wear-limit in normal use. It’s good as long as it’s cared for and the outer Cordura fabric is good. All fabric durability varies by fabric type, weight, weathering and wear. The Cordura we use is fairly heavy weight, which helps it last longer and resist wear and UV exposure better. Our direct material and workmanship warranty is for two years, which I felt would cover the most severe wear scenarios. I.E. - Someone who rides over 150,000/miles a year for two years, on a bike without a windshield or fairing. Only a very few Aerostich customers ride that much. Based on what we see every day in our repair department, wear varies greatly, and this is very different than age. Some garments still look almost new after ten or even twenty years, but on average most begin look fairly used-up after about 12-15 years of ‘typical wear’. For those ’typical wear’ scenarios we see come through our repair department, we know the Cordura 500 provides effective crash abrasion-resistance for approximately 12-15 years. We know this from examining many crashed garments which have been sent to us for repairs. Obviously the newer the garment the better, crash-wise, but for ’typical-wear’ garments the protective performance difference between 'brand new' and '10 years old' seems pretty negligible. If you visit our facility, you can see this yourself by looking at a display of about fifteen crash-damaged suits hanging on the wall. These days we occasionally receive very old garments which show much more age and wear than ’typical wear’. Our repair expert (a co-worker with years of experience) evaluates all of them. If the fabric feels too worn-out based on overall experience, our expert will tag the garment as ‘unsuitable for protection’ before sending it back to the customer. We may still repair a broken zipper (or whatever) even if it no longer meets our protective-function requirements. I’ve forgotten precisely what the ‘unsuitable for protection' tag reads, but it’s something like (paraphrasing): “This garment no longer meets our minimum requirements for rain and crash protection.” In summary, we don’t know the exact life of the fabric without first inserting all of the above qualifiers. Separately, there also is a rider-psychology aspect to this: ‘Fonzie’ (of TV’s ‘Happy Days’), famously imbued his old worn leather jacket with a kind of special quality protecting him from harm in some kind of magical way. Many riders do this to some extent. It’s natural. Riding produces happy-chemicals in one’s brain, and some of this happiness-feeling is transferred to a rider’s favorite gear and also to their bike. All motion activities produce this happiness effect, which is why skis, bicycles, surfboards and the like are usually also extra-special to their users. Similarly, most very small children (including me when I was very young, and Linus Van Pelt from the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon strip) imbue a favorite blanket or something with a similar kind of special magical value in exactly this way. So, when we see a twenty-year-old well-worn suit, which is all faded and floppy and looks like it’s ready to fall apart, it probably is. After its zipper (or whatever) is fixed it is tagged as no-longer meeting our functional requirements and shipped. When the customer receives it back, it’s out of our control. -- Mr. Subjective 4-2021

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 ‘slugs’, so I’m not sure if the new ‘Moto Guzzi V7 Stone ’ is an example of truth-in-advertising, or if someone at the company was unfamiliar with twentieth century midwestern American slang, or maybe they felt a reverse-psychology name for this bike would attract younger, hipper irony-craving buyers. Those youthful sophisticates who call their cars ‘whips’. How cars and bikes are named is one of the minor mysteries of the universe, and so is how some models receive affectionate nicknames from the public. Such nicknames are usually better than the original manufacturer-given names. For example, a ‘flivver’ is a much better name than ‘model T’, and a ‘Bug’ or ‘Beetle’ are both leagues better than the official name of that original Volkswagen car, which was ‘Type 1’. Fiat named it’s similar tiny car the Tipolino, which in Italian is ‘Little Mouse’. The Italians have flair. This name is better. Several of my favorite vehicle nicknames involve motorcycles. The old Suzuki GT 750 (with its capable three-cylinder liquid cooled two stroke engine) was universally known as the ‘Water Buffalo’ (in the USA) and the ‘Kettle’ (as in tea kettle) in the UK. Its unusual idling exhaust burble sounded almost like water boiling in a stove top tea kettle, but I have no clue about the origin of ‘water buffalo’. While this model was in production, and for many years afterward, one could go anywhere in the world and tell any other rider you had a ‘Water Buffalo’ and they would instantly know exactly what you were referring to. Same as ‘Hog’, which of course identifies all larger Harley Davidsons, and ‘Airhead’ for all older BMW’s and ‘Lead Wing’ for all Honda Gold Wings. ‘Water Buffalo’ might be the best affectionate bike nickname on record so far. Several of these old Water Buffalos have in recent years actually been ridden in the famous Ironbutt 11-day endurance event. Many people simply enjoy pronouncing those two incongruously joined words. ‘Water Buffalo’. My wife has a quirky tradition of naming her cars after characters from the movie ’Napoleon Dynamite’. Her last car, a black Toyota Corolla which she’d purchased new eleven years ago, was always named ‘Kip’. For the past several months her new black Volkswagen Tiguan has gone back and forth between ‘Uncle Rico’ and ‘Rex’. At the moment it looks like ‘Rex’ is winning. I’ve never named any of my vehicles, except when they are not cooperating with my pathetic efforts to repair their occasional faults. At that point they all temporarily receive this name: ’The Pig from Hell’. It’s a name never to be spoken aloud just in case they can hear. If there is one company with a gift for coming up with great names, it would have to be Rolls Royce, with names like the ‘Phantom’, ’Silver Ghost’, ‘Wraith’, etc. You can’t do much better than those. The Mercury ‘Zephyr’ name comes close, but it was a fluke. Who wants to drive a Marauder or Grand Marquis? Moto Guzzi makes some great motorcycles. One long-produced nearly indestructible early model featured a large forward-pointing horizontal cylinder with a massive external flywheel attached to the left end of its crankshaft. This was a bit of an odd-looking bike in a military-steam-punk-meets-antiquarian-moto-technology way, but everything worked well, and the bike was apparently quite good. I’ve seen a couple of them at random bike nights. Their very long production run ended about a dozen years before I began riding. That big spinning external flywheel is spectacular when the engine is running. A higher-performance version of this model had a superb name: ‘Falcone’ which is Italian for Falcon. They probably also had some cool nickname, likely referencing that huge naked flywheel, but Falcone was such a great name whatever the slang name might have been could hardly top it. Moto Guzzi has long had a knack for model names. Their larger contemporary sport bikes have frequently been named ‘Le Mans’ after the famous French racetrack, and the smaller sporting ones are called ‘Monza’s after another famous Italian track. The Monza race facility must be a bit smaller than Le Mans. Guzzi’s luxury-class bikes were long called either ‘Eldorado’s or ‘Ambassador’s. Those models were popular world-wide as police bikes and also for ceremonial or parade escort use, so those names were appropriate to the institutional use these models often served. I remember them being Harley-solid dreadnaughts which were easy to maintain, super durable, comfortable long-distance bikes. They competed most directly with alpha-numerically named BMW’s. If you were a daily-riding motor-officer, which would you rather tell someone you rode? The tutonically-named R-75, or an Ambassador? (Side note: Both of those good names were also used on popular automobiles. Cadillac once sold lots of Eldorado’s and a few years earlier American Motors/Rambler also sold a fair number of Ambassadors.) The new Moto Guzzi ‘Stone’ seems like a nicely modernized mid-size old-school bike. Well-engineered, practical and a bit uncommon. If you are shopping for bikes and believe any particular model is likely to remain in production for a long time, uncommon-ness is a real virtue. Earlier versions of the ‘Stone’ have been produced for many years, so it is likely future versions of it will be made for a long time ahead. This is a good thing. If you happen to be looking for a bike about like the Stone, you could do a lot worse. Say (for example) you were comparing it with a Triumph Tiger or Speed Triple (great names, great bikes), several of the excellent Ducati ‘Scrambler’ iterations and, for good measure, also the wonderful Suzuki SV650/Gladius. All are current versions of long-running models. Your choice might simply come down to if there is a better Guzzi, Triumph or Suzuki shop nearby. As a thought-experiment imagine answering the common question: “Hey, what kind of bike is that?” with: “It’s a Stone. A Moto Guzzi Stone.” (“Bond. James Bond…”) Does that seem like it would be more fun than pronouncing the names of the similar machines? “It’s a what?…A Stone?” Maybe “Stone” is a cool bike name after all. Not quite in the ‘Water Buffalo’ coolness league, but definitely in that same ballpark. I double-dog-dare any Japanese, Korean, Indian or Chinese bike manufacturer to name a new motorcycle their XYZ ‘Slug’. “So, what are you riding?” would receive this great deadpan reply: “It’s a XYZ Slug.”. You couldn’t say that without grinning inside. This would seem to be difficult to top, though Renault-Nissan once offered an overly cute small car called an ‘Escargot’ (Snail), so maybe there are no absurd name boundaries. Perhaps in the future some boring nerd book will be written about the universe of interesting, cool and odd bike and car names. Bikes like the ‘Monkey’, ‘Concourse’, ‘Ninja’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Hurricane’, and ‘Rune’. Already there’s this random bike name generator out there on the internet three languages. Whatever you call your chosen conveyance, its name is cool. -- Mr. Subjective 2021 PS – As far back as I remember I’ve had a soft spot for the vehicle name ‘Roadmaster’, which Buick used for decades on one of its larger cars. And long ago my younger brother gifted me the luxuriously chromed plastic model badge you see here (right). On Buicks this badge added about five miles per hour to the top end, and on this home-made garage boombox I’m positive it has always added two or three more decibels.

Read the next sentence channeling “the Most Interesting Man in The World” from the old TV commercials for Dos Equis beer: “I don’t always read in the bathroom, but when I do, I read from a book, not a screen.” No idea if that guy ever sold much beer, but what a loveable old narcissist. (“Stay healthy my friends...” is what he’d say if he’d been talking about reading in the bathroom.) For most people there’s only a minute or two (?) available for such reading, but this still is a predictable enough time span to benefit from keeping something to read there. I like having just a single bookmarked book. Not a library or a pile of magazines or catalogs. And my smartphone only goes with me into the bathroom if it was forgotten inside a pant or shirt pocket. I don’t want any kind interruption. The reason one is in there is already a bit stressful, at least subliminally, so more potential stress is the last thing anyone needs while taking care of themselves in a bathroom. Magazines or catalogs are popular in bathrooms because those types of stories and descriptions are generally brief and there's never a plot to remember, but I still prefer a bookmarked book. Books take many months to read this way, which is why choosing the right book and using a bookmark is important. The last book I read this way was ’Stalking the Wild Asparagus’ by Euell Gibbons. It probably took me over a year, though I didn’t actually keep track. It’s an old-fashioned guide to foraging and preparing natural and wild-found foods like Dandelions and Mushrooms, so there’s no plot to remember from one day to the next. Again, you just need a bookmark. Bookmarks are the key to reading books in the bathroom. A pen or pencil clipped to the cover can also be useful for marking a passage or making marginal notations if you are so inclined. My current bathroom read is a book called ‘Across America By Motor-cycle’ which is a nice memoir by some British guy about his solo unsupported and unsponsored 1918 coast-to-coast ride. We sell it. He’s traveling westward and has just reached Flagstaff Arizona, which means it will still be a while before I finish. I doubt I could have read either of these books normally, a chapter or two before bed or whatever. But taken in very small sections of only a few paragraphs or pages these books read just fine. And like all the printed books ever made, they are guaranteed to never ring, chime or buzz unexpectedly. -- Mr. Subjective, 1/2021

This is a short essay about what the Apple company might be planning for their Next Big Thing. First, please note I am not an Apple 'fan-boy’ and have not spent even one second doing any actual research on this, so what follows is mostly made-up storytelling. I was recently daydreaming (thanks pandemic!) when a bunch of ideas came into my imagination sort of all-at-once and suddenly I thought I might somehow be able to guess what this new Apple car might be like, why it would be good for motorcycling and about when it might be introduced. Maybe sometime in 2022. The background for this fantasy starts with how it is semi-generally known that for the second time in the last decade Apple is working on creating a car. Based on their history it would need to be revolutionary. Projecting forward from that, here are five background pieces: Apple historically likes to mashup existing technologies to create entirely new kinds of consumer products. Co-founder Steve Jobs was an intuitive genius at this, and his goal was to create spectacular new things. This still is a core part of the company culture, and at the moment Apple has huge money available for developing complex new things. Creating an all-new kind of car would certainly be that. A few years ago (five?), Apple spent a lot of time and money researching and developing an Apple car then suddenly shut the entire program down. The impulse to make cars has been within the company for some time. The first time around maybe they didn’t quite fathom the kind of mashup needed, or they felt the timing was wrong, but for a bunch of reasons maybe now they believe they do know. It feels to me like this might be the right time. Timing is everything. The incredible success of Tesla has completely and unequivocally validated consumer acceptance of, and interest in, revolutionary kinds of electric cars. Three wheeled road vehicles have never been widely popular and thus have never been as intensely regulated as four wheeled vehicles (safety, emissions, everything), but Polaris and a few others have taken advantage of this quasi-loophole by successfully producing a variety of recreational road-legal three wheelers. Apple has long enjoyed strong IP, industrial, political and manufacturing trade relationships in China, and China has a great political and economic interest in dominating the world’s technological future. The result of the above (and other items not listed) is that Apple may fairly soon enter American and world car markets with a very advanced electric powered three-wheeled car mostly made in China. This all-new vehicle should be just as sophisticated, fast, comfortable, fully self-driving and ‘cool' as a Tesla but in some intentional ways it should also be even more revolutionary. It could be slightly less costly, though not a lot, because its content, innovation and feature levels would be substantial. It should probably seat four, have about a 200-mile range and a top speed of around 100 miles per hour. The CEO of Apple today is one of the world’s best logistics people. Co-ordinating the near-instant roll-out of an all-new type of car would be a perfect make-a-dent-in-the-universe assignment for such a logistical genius. Right now through some shell company having no obvious association with Apple they may already be quietly buying and leasing locations for a bunch of wholly Apple-owned car stores, and also to support all the recharging infrastructure which would be needed. Apple’s three-wheel cars would need to look and work a lot better than all prior three-wheel cars. The full Apple-Bauhaus design ethos would be applied, so much so the first examples appearing in teaser marketing would be odds-on favorites to be painted (and molded) in white. And even though crash-testing is not required for three wheelers, these cars should be fully air bagged. Some impressive videos of how well the vehicle performs in crashes should be available, for anyone curious enough dig a little. What does any of this have to do with Aerostich and motorcycles? Only one thing, but it’s a ginormously huge thing: Any three wheeled Apple car probably would be engineered to lean into corners. It would ride on three regular profile car tires which would always stay more-or-less perpendicular to the road, but it would also contain a Segway-like balance chip connected to an instantly adjustable suspension which would automatically tilt the body and its ‘skateboard’ chassis far enough during cornering so everyone riding inside would feel safe and comfortable. Maybe as much as fifteen or twenty degrees if one was really hurrying. Imagine witnessing an Apple car weaving through traffic and taking corners by leaning just like a slaloming skier or motorcycle rider. That’s the key. Almost everyone seeing this from their conventional vehicle should want to experience the feel of that ride. Thus, it’s easy to project Apple’s pioneering corner-leaners instantly becoming a cult-curiosity and then fairly quickly transitioning into an “I want one of those” thing. Mainstreaming should soon follow. These fully autonomous-driving electric three wheeled leaners would inferentially and by example teach almost everyone to accept (and possibly enjoy) a fundamental reason why we love our inherently unstable motorcycles and bicycles. Apple’s revolutionary leaning three wheeled cars, if they happen, and if they’re as successful as many other recent Apple products, would help normalize leaning into turns, and this (normalization, finally!) should lead to even more motorcycle and bicycle riders. I wonder if Jay Leno will have the opportunity to purchase the first one. Ok, now I’m done. Thoughts welcome. PS – Important analogy: 3.2 beer is very nice, but most beer drinkers prefer the full-strength stuff. I’d probably be among those who would want to own a snazzy Apple self-driving electric ‘leaner’, but no matter how cool that ride (and everything else about it) might be, I know I’ll continue to prefer leaning into corners full-strength. By riding there. PPS – This was typed on an Apple MacBook Air. Mr. Subjective, 1-15-21

All is well here. Nothing unusual or good or bad to report. Mostly staying home awaiting the vaccine. Aerostich open and generally solvent. We are making good incremental progress on past debts and correcting past mistakes. Yesterday our bank let us know our PPP loan was forgiven, which is a pretty big deal for us. Next is applying for a second round PPP loan which we qualify for. Wife is fine. Family members all fine. Co-workers all fine. New Years and Xmas stuff fine. Have ridden my old 75 XL250 on the bay twice so far. Its 25-year-old studded Trellborg tires and tubes are ancient, but they still hold air. Have not had these winter wheels back on this bike for many years but it’s been a goal to get it going on them again ever since moving to this location three years ago. Now waiting for a blizzard so I can go out and play around in traffic a little. Note: During blizzards there actually is zero traffic, which is why it’s fun to hoon around on the street during them. Probably will never put the summer tire wheels back on it again. The bay ice is now between 8” and 11” thick in most places, and is covered with 2”-5” of crusty snow. About 14” minimum is needed to be considered safe for cars and trucks. Lots of ice fisherman out there now anyway. Maybe 50 every day. A couple have ATV’s to help them drag their tents and gear out, but most just walk a block or two pulling the plastic sled-tubs behind. They strike their tents every night, come in, and do it all again the following day. Fishing is mostly walleye moving into the bay from the lake, heading upriver so they are pre-positioned for spring spawning. Keepers by law must be 15” or longer and the catching is pretty good, I guess. Walleye are a tasty eating species. A few Sturgeons and Northern are biting too, but they are not sought after. Not planning to invest in the equipment even though this place is perfectly located for convenient ice fishing. My wife does not like eating fish or even the smell of fish cooking, otherwise I would be tempted. But I probably wouldn’t invest in the pop-up ice tent, just a hole auger (electric) and some tip ups. Simply walk out there in the morning and put a few lines down and then come back in and watch for the flags through a binocular from the comfort of our living room. It would be perfect. And so easy. Also just put studded tires on my old fat bike about two weeks ago for the first time ever and have had that out on the ice too. Works OK but not nearly as much fun as riding the old Honda. Not even close. Very slow huffing and puffing pedaling it through the crunchy snow layer. (Wife took photos of me riding the old XL and put them up on the Aerostich Instagram a few days ago if you want to see.) Last night coming back from Aerostich I got a flat on my studded-tire electric bicycle, which is now on its third winter with just over 2,000 miles of use. It’s starting to develop a nice worn-beater patina. This wasn’t a fancy high-end model to begin with so no regrets. Only 36v with an older Bfang electric motor in the frame but still good for 23mph across level ground with light effort. It’s crappy rechargeable battery pack now much diminished from when new. Range on a cold day is down to less than ten miles, so it will soon need to be rebuilt or replaced. My one-way commute is about 4.5 miles, so we’re getting close. The battery pack is made like all of them -- a bunch of individual cells tack-welded together then encased. The cost and quality of these sub-cells varies greatly, up to 90%, depending partly on country of cell origin and brand. Not a do-it-yourself job to fix this. Haven’t decided what to do yet. Walked the bike home the last mile and a half at around 8PM and 22 degrees, which is warm for this time of year here. This morning I took the tire off and found the leak was caused by a ½” sliver of steel which maybe was a snowplow shaving. That’s what it looked like. Also discovered this will be the fourth patch on this inner tube. It’s probably been a year and a half since the last one, which is so long I don’t remember exactly when or any other details. I knew I’d previously patched it, but not how long ago or how many times. So, there’s nothing spectacular going on here, just day-to-day life, which, in the broader stressful societal/economic/political/governmental/climactic context is pretty darn good right now, I think. So much to be grateful for. Sick of wearing a mask when going out for work, groceries and everything else, but other than that I could get used to winter pandemic-living pretty easily. Plenty of time for reading, household and workshop projects, etc, and also riding (and pedaling) around on studded tires. -- Mr. Subjective, January 8, 2021

Here’s an excerpt from an emotional essay about the recent ending of some good special interest outdoor magazines. Not the print motorcycle titles we all knew and have recently lost, but almost the exact same scenario: “...And what’s left is too often shit. I don’t mean Bike, Powder, Snowboarder, or Surfer, I mean junk shows like Men’s Journal. Is this really what you want from your outdoor media—a firehose of pandering, listicles, lowest-common denominator pap, and nakedly commercial gear roundups designed to get you to click on affiliate links? Magazines like Men’s Journal exist only to enrich their CEOs and shareholders; rather than enrich the culture they purport to serve; they treat it as a commodity from which to scrape their profits.” He’s a better writer than I. Here’s the entire wonderful essay. My sadness is not only for the decline of specialty magazines as viable businesses, including most of the popular motorcycle titles which I grew up enjoying*, but with the broader decline of print in all its forms: daily newspapers, monthly magazines and books. The main reason I am concerned about this has to do with the disappearance of useful contexts, which for me has always been of value. Search algorithms provide a lot of information incredibly conveniently, but almost no useful context. This narrow perfection is precisely what makes them so great, though at the same time something is lost. When you hold a physical magazine, newspaper or book, even a so-so one, the words you are directly reading moment-by-moment are surrounded by other elements which have little to do with whatever is being conveyed by the words your attention is directed at decoding. The physical proximity of all the other stories and advertisements in that newspaper or magazine, and of all the other pages of any book, are inseparable. This makes it obvious that whatever you are focusing directly on is only a small part of something larger and broader. Search algorithms give you (for example) fantastic information about every kind of pencil eraser in .2 seconds, but usually provide little else. In contrast, any printed office or school supply catalog (even a lousy one) probably presented their range of pencil erasers within a broader context. This inferentially taught the reader something important about pencil erasers: How they fit within the world of schools or offices. The very best online webzines and media websites do this, but imperfectly. The search algorithms we use countless times a week (everyday) do it barely at all. When I was a kid hiding motorcycle magazines between the pages of oversize social studies and civics textbooks during 7th grade study hall periods I learned a lot more about motorcycling than just the focus of my immediate interest at that time: small displacement street-legal dirt bikes. By providing inescapable tangential context, print motorcycle magazines did a lot more for me -- and for tens of thousands of other young riders -- than any search algorithm today ever can. Those print magazines helped me begin to identify myself as a motorcyclist, as someone apart from the mainstream. I was becoming something more than another kid wanting to move from a bicycle to a street legal dirt bike. This same is effect is at work in realms covered by the newspapers, non-motorcycle magazines and all the printed books I grew up reading. Until recently almost everything one read came with physical context, and even if I wasn’t paying conscious attention to it, I always absorbed something important from its presence. You cannot watch a pretty sunset and be in awe of it without the inescapable context provided by an unmoving horizon. Physical context is important. Context is difficult to achieve on a screen when scrolling and searching. It’s more like looking at whatever the specific subject is through a telescope, but backwards. You get a kind of tunnel-vision view of everything. The philosopher Marshall McLuhan once (famously) wrote: “The medium is the message.” and I sure believe this is true. Communications technology itself can be as impactful on meaning as whatever information is objectively presented. Digital is not categorically better or worse than print though. They are essentially complementary. This essay would be incomplete if I didn’t mention two other (maybe obvious?) things about physical print: 1.) Print can be durable and energy-efficient if the ink and paper are engineered to be long-term stable. Acid-free parchment, etc. One can easily read five-hundred-year-old bound bibles, and many of those recovered scrolls which are ten times as ancient. There are text files in my computer which are completely unreadable by any kind of easily obtainable software after only twenty-five years. 2.) Anyone who asserts that using physical trees and inks places a heavier overall environmental load on our planet than does the ultra-precise processing and management of elements and electrons is full of baloney. We humans are generally comfort-seekers who don’t (or won’t) change our thinking or behavior unless there is a gun directly at our heads. But when this does happen, we are also extremely good at thinking clearly and working together. So maybe at some future time print may come back. In my view this would probably benefit the planet and our still-evolving human social contract. Regardless, we should not throw our search algorithms under the bus in some kind of either-or formulation. Search algorithms and print are, at the end of the day (and again) complementary. *Two personal stories about print magazines: Once on jury duty I was selected to be a juror. The attorneys involved asked each potential juror questions to discern any hidden bias which would be unfavorable to their trial goal. I was asked what magazines I read regularly and started reciting the titles. After I was finished, I was rejected as a juror possibly because I’d admitted to reading too many magazines. Once, during a big snowstorm that occurred here years before the internet existed, I was driving around late at night and it seemed like there was a chance everyone could be snowed in the following day so I stopped at a C store to pick up some magazines just in case. (This was also before cable TV…) After browsing the rack, I laid a thick stack on the counter and as the clerk started totaling them, he started talking: “Oh, Road & Track. I read that.” And then “Oh, Dirt Bike. I read that.” He continued this way, magazine after magazine, and seemed rather smug about it. A few moments later they were all bagged and paid for and there wasn’t anything to say so I thanked him, picked up the bag and headed for my car. The little store was empty except for the two of us. Halfway out the door and standing there with snow blowing in, I looked back over my shoulder and said with a smile: “I think I read more magazines than anyone I know, but I don’t know very many people because I read so many magazines.”. Then the I stepped outside smiling from ear to ear as I got into my car. That moment was: A) the most perfect spontaneous circumlocution I’d spoken, ever, and B) 100% True. Print magazines are great. Especially motorcycle magazines. – Mr. Subjective, 10-2020

This is such a common back-to-school English-class homework assignment it became a cliché. So here is my little pandemic-summer story. This past weekend I replaced the ignition sensor in my 1994 Honda XR650L and now it runs again. I’ve ridden this bike since new. Over the first three years I gradually converted it from dual-sport configuration to something set up for urban street riding, though after the conversion was done I also rode it to Los Angeles once (in 2001), camping out most of the way because I’d wanted to experience ‘traveling light’, which at the time was more uncommon than it is today. No saddlebags, just two size ‘M’ Ortlieb waterproof duffels strapped across the back: one with a tent and sleeping bag and the other with clothing, miscellaneous items and a basic food bag: Canned Tuna, canned beans for a campfire, etc. No stove or cooking pot. Vagabonding. The modifications included a lowered suspension at both ends, wide 17” wheels with stickier tires, a larger gas tank, a throttle lock and a bunch of other lesser personalizations. I’d stopped riding it four or five years ago when one day it mysteriously had no spark and I was too lazy and distracted to diagnose and fix this fault. It just sat over in the corner of the garage with the right handlebar end leaning against the wall. Waiting. I decided to bring it back to life last fall: Carb and brake rebuilds, an oil change, a bright modern LED headlight, and a new fuel petcock and battery. All done by an independent motorcycle repair shop. Over the winter I did a bunch of additional smaller, easier things myself: Cleaning its sticky turn signal switch and throttle, etc. That strange no-spark thing had disappeared as mysteriously as it had come. Everything was working well for a twenty-six-year-old bike. In the spring when I began to ride it again the no-spark thing came back. Fortunately, this time there was a pandemic handy, so I wasn’t distracted by other temptations and immediately put it up on a milk crate and started following the Honda shop manual’s “no-spark troubleshooting” instructions – a sequenced fault diagnosis plan: Bad spark plug, cap and wire? Nope. Bad CDI? Nope. Bad coil? No. Next on their list was the ignition trigger thing which is inconveniently located beneath the right-side engine cover where the clutch lives. It tested bad (via the external wiring to it) on a little VOM so I ordered a new one. Last Saturday morning my ultra-slow amateur-mechanic skills meant three hours for disassembling and carefully cleaning everything and then about the same amount of time on Sunday replacing the failed component and reassembling everything. It had been around ten years since the last time I’d done anything inside an engine. Tune-ups, tire changes, farkeling and general maintenance doesn’t count. After putting everything back together there were no extra parts left over and the bike started right up, so I was happy. This job had involved the mess of an oil pan beneath the engine and a long time spent tediously scraping away the old hardened gasket material, which came off in little flakes and scraps. As I worked around the sealing edge of the case with several scraping tools, I imagined a dental hygienist removing stubborn calculus from all of the little spaces between a non-flossing person’s teeth. This task seemed about that fiddly. Except one’s bi-annual tooth cleaning goes quickly – you’re done in less than half an hour. After electric cars and bikes eventually become common, those who grew up with electrics will find it difficult to believe people not only put up with, but actually enjoyed dealing with the dirty, messy and burdensome complexities of normal combustion engine repair and maintenance. It will seem to them like we suffered the crudest rinky-dink, unreliable, antediluvian, primitive engines to serve our necessary automobility needs. When you use any newer car or ride some of the recent luxe touring bikes now, the fundamental Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang nonsense is almost entirely camouflaged beneath multiple layers of NVH-eliminating (Noise Vibration Harshness) engineering -- but it’s all still there, all the filth, fire, drama and precision-managed explosions so many motorcyclists love. Including me, at least most of the time. Future riders will say you are “Doin' it old school” as they smile, admire and slightly condescendingly regard your surviving ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) machine. In summary, the pandemic has meant almost no longer-distance motorcycle traveling anywhere and lots of house, yard, domestic and garage projects, plus electric and regular bicycle transportation-pedaling for the majority of my riding. For the first time in thirty years I didn’t ‘go’ anywhere. I guess it’s nice to be more caught up on all the previously procrastinated projects, but it is even nicer to be moving along an empty road somewhere, listening to the wind and feeling the vibrations of riding. So please come soon, summer of 2021. How did you spend your summer this year? Took far longer than anticipated to get this old XR650L running right again: 2019, Sept 20, bike given to independent MC service technician for oil change, carb and brake rebuilds, no-spark issue, etc. 2019, Oct 17, 18, bike serviced and running again, rode to work two or three times before it got too cold for it to start reliably. (Not a good cold-starter below about 35ºf.) 2020, January-April did a bunch of fiddly ‘winter’ maintenance, turn signal and throttle clean and lube, etc. 2020, May-June rode bike to work two or three times before no spark problem occurs again. 2020, July, ordered replacement CDI, Coil, Trigger. 2020, Aug 29-30, tested and replaced all three items, but it was the trigger that was bad. 2020, Sept 3rd, finally started motorcycle (not bicycle) riding to work again. Fun.

Item the first: Thanks to COVID I recently enjoyed about the nerdiest YouTube video ever -- an 18-minute presentation about why Timex wrist watches are considered neither valuable nor collectable by watch experts. You would think such arcana would be boring, especially to people with only the mildest interest in watches. Like me. And you’d be right. But in addition to motorcycles and riding, I am also interested in the relationship between culture and technology, and this Timex watch video is all about that. Since it has nothing to do with motorcycles directly, I sort of hesitate to recommend it, but because so many are more-or-less locked down, and since wristwatches are, like motorcycles, examples of a mechanically engineered technology, here it is. Warning. It’s boring and nerdy. Prepare to be geeked out: Spoiler and executive summary – The reason Timex watches are not collectable isn’t because they are inexpensive and common. Lots of people happily collect things which are neither rare nor valuable. Collecting, sorting and categorizing things is partly human nature. No, these watches are not being collected (according to this video’s narrator) because they were never intended to be repaired or rebuilt after the inside mechanism wears out. They were made to keep pretty good time until they died and then you were supposed to go out buy another one. Yet lots of other avidly collected products are exactly like that. Vintage Levi’s denim pants are collectably valuable. Old worn out hand tools are collectable. View an episode of ‘Antiques Roadshow’ (or any of television’s syndicated riffs on this formula) and you’ll see plenty of other examples. It’s unbelievable what kinds of things have a collectable value. The reason this Timex wristwatch video is part of a motorcycle blog is because it caused me to think about old motorcycles, and my irrational emotional attachments to my own stuff. Especially to things which embody mechanical and digital technologies. For example, I’ve always written, read and surfed the internet using a notebook computer. I get between four and six years of use from these machines and after they become worn and obsolete, I replace them. But there are now five of these old notebook computers stacked on a bookshelf here going back to one from 1992. Hard to believe the first one cost $2,300 and featured a gigantic 33mb of memory, while the notebook purchased six months ago, and which I’m typing this on right now, cost almost the exact same amount in non-inflation-adjusted dollars, and it has 2TB of memory. I never loved these computers, so why did I keep them? It can be difficult to understand why some no-longer-made bikes are so well thought of, and others (like old Timex watches) are not. The difference doesn’t seem to correlate with any objective machine-itself thing. Racing accomplishments? Sales popularity? Aesthetic beauty? Sometimes a bike which was successful by more than one of these measures still becomes forgotten. Compare the wonderful and historically important Honda Cub and Vespa scooter with the equally brilliant ‘Bee’. All three were created to be small utility-oriented personal mobility products at about the same time. And all three are recognized as truly great designs, but only two are well remembered today. Again, why? The virtue or divinity of any particular motorcycle (and many other engineered artifacts) may lie partly in the intentions of the engineers and designers who created it. If the device was intended to be ‘forever’ in some functional way so it’s user could in theory employ it for the rest of their life should they stubbornly choose to, maybe that is an important intangible ingredient. I’m thinking not just motorcycles and wristwatches, but also about Stonehenge and the Brooklyn Bridge. Consider a now-ancient BSA 441 Victor motorcycle, known by old guys world-wide as the ‘Victim’. Light, spare, elemental and pretty -- but what a piece of crap to own, ride and maintain. Yet just like the Honda Cub and Vespa, they’ve became beloved and iconic. These three very different bikes are easy on the eyes and straightforward enough in design and engineering so almost any rider can see (and in their minds eye, accurately imagine) how to take them completely apart and then more-or-less completely reassemble them using little more than a few simple hand tools. My own vehicular example of this kind of quasi-timeless ingenuity is an old 4x4 car. I purchased it brand new forty-seven short years ago and still enjoy looking at, driving, maintaining and fixing it. But dang if I can explain why. (With benefit of age, wisdom and hindsight maybe I was subconsciously thinking of it as a brutalist rebuke and an aesthetic critique of the popular pimped-out overly chromed cars coming out of Detroit at that time?) Before I’d driven it 100 miles, I knew it was crap, but this did not stop me from falling in love with it and driving, repairing and maintaining it as my (very slow) ‘daily-driver’ whenever I was not going to be riding or walking somewhere. Funny thing is, it’s now gone over 105,000 miles and with the further benefit of hindsight my stubborn commitment to it probably is partially due as much to its flaws as its virtues. Today this no-longer-produced model (after a run of more than sixty years…) has strangely become an aspirational and iconic fashion accessory for millennial hipsters, though not because it represents a brutalist rejection of mass-produced cars-in-general, but because it visually looks relatively timeless in sort of doomsday-prepper way. And just for the record, most motorcycles also provide this same sort of brutalist rebuke of the universality of automobiles, if one chooses to overly intellectualize about them. Which brings this back to old Timex wristwatches. The only thing my high-tech modern motorcycle and low-tech old 4x4 car have in common is how both can be nearly infinitely rebuilt. Whenever the makers of our machines attempt to create something which potentially could (with care) have a life-long relationship with its user, they achieve a special kind of immortality. Just like Stonehenge, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Mona Lisa, and even an ordinary 10,000-year-old flint knapped knife blade. Those Timex people were not going for that, while the crappy old 4x4 car, the wonderful Honda Cub and Vespa and lousy BSA 441 people apparently were. One cannot help but fall in love with such vainglorious embodiments of engineering (and artistic) idealism. At this point any half-assed amateur philosopher might continue by making a pretty good argument about how a disposable Timex has more in common with a banana than those great watches admired by wristwatch nerds. Not me. There are too many other things to do. ---------- Item the second: If you can make it past the first five or ten semi-awkward minutes, this thirty-five-minute interview with nerdy engineer/futurist Sandy Monroe is pretty fun. Mr. Monroe first came to my awareness a few years ago when he made some videos promoting his engineering-and-testing-for-hire company. They do stuff like taking apart and analyzing electric cars and their batteries to see how they work. I’m not a subscriber to his channel, though. It’s been a few years since the last time I watched one of his YouTube videos. Until this one, just now. ---------- Item the third: Before writing this blog essay I sent both of these links to about ten friends, the first one by ‘cc’ a few weeks ago and this second one earlier today by ‘bcc’ to nearly the same group. These days many people prefer to not have their email address available to unknown persons, and some of my friends don’t know each other. Nowadays fewer people share links-in-general with their like-minded friends, at least compared to how internet and email cultures were ten or fifteen years ago. This change makes me feel like such a clueless geezer. I don’t know why email forwarding-and-sharing activity changed, but I sense it’s a loss. Decades ago, my mother and her siblings would snail-mail mail each other clippings from newspapers and magazines, and later photocopies of stories they’d read and enjoyed (or found interesting in some way). There would sometimes be a follow-up face-to-face or telephone conversation about the shared story. I remember rolling my eyes when an envelope containing a few clippings from my mother would arrive, but I’d always give her a call and thank her for sending them, and sometimes a clipping-topical conversation would follow. Why has this kind of social practice, which was such a large part of early emails, declined? Too much spam? Facebook? Twitter? Other social media? Social media is probably part of the reason, but regardless, I’m not too excited with the depth of intermediation and content tracking which are an integral element of today's popular social media forms.

Note: This is an excerpt from a longer email I’d written to a very old friend last October. When he recently replied at similar length it caused me to re-read what I’d written and realize you might enjoy reading it, too. Remember, this was written late in the fall of last year. Nope, I’ve not had any new, or new-to-me used bikes during the past nine years but continue doing things with my small motor pool of older motorcycles which keeps riding at the center of my mobility life. After letting my two old (78 and 81) airhead BMW’s collect dust in the corner of the garage for about the last eight years, I finally put them away semi-correctly only a few weeks ago: Washed off layers of accumulated dirt and bugs. Waxed. Drained the gas tanks and float bowls. Put oil in the cylinders. Moved them from the cold dirty garage into a corner of the basement not far from the washer and dryer where they can sit safely for years. I like looking at them there. Squeezing them in through the door between the garage and basement was difficult because boxer engines are extra-wide but after about ten minutes of wiggling, they fit through. One has around 350K and the other probably about 150K. I rode one for roughly ten years and the other for twenty while doing nearly all of the work caring for them mysef. Tires, tune ups, fluid changes, repairs, adjustments and modifications. Seeing them now on their center stands near the washer and dryer sure makes me smile. I always wanted a bike inside my home, and now I have two, and both carry lots of memories. When I was young, I remember fantasizing about someday possibly owning something exotic to display next to an umbrella stand in the foyer of a fantasy McMansion. Well that never happened but this little private two bike museum down in the corner of the basement of our small home feels just as good. When I was sixteen my first street-ridden legal motorcycle was a 90cc Honda and my bedroom was located on one end of the basement in my parents 1,800 sq. ft home. At the other end was a built-in garage. For the first week I owned that bike, after everyone else was asleep, I’d quietly sneak out to the garage and carefully push the bike from there into my bedroom, then softly close the door. I still remember falling asleep with my hand on its gas tank. A few days later my mother caught on and no motorcycles were ever allowed inside her home again. No matter how wonderful and special. Today with those two old BMW’s safely inside my own home things have come full circle and I’m as happy with this arrangement as can be. My current ‘long distance bike’ is a 07 R1200R with about 50K on its odometer. I’ve never taken care of this one myself except to do some easy stuff like changing and balancing a front tire once and replacing a brake rotor another time. Plus a few very minor modifications. The rest has all been done hooked up to an O.B.D. (On Board Diagnostic) computer at an excellent multi-line BMW dealer called Moon Motors. I know it’s a cop-out to say it’s “too modern for me to learn to work on” but that is the truth. My priorities have changed. A month ago, this one got it’s 48K service, plus some little repair items and two new tires, at a cost of just under $1,000 (which is one reason why I used to do this sort of thing myself). But at least it’s now ready to go for next season and maybe beyond. My old XR650L commute-bike (the world’s slowest and least powerful motard-converted Honda) was also recently oil/brakes/battery serviced so it’s already set for next year, too, though I’m still riding it for probably another month depending on the weather. When winter comes road salt ends that and I’ll switch to a rusty-from-the-past-two-winters electric pedal bike with studded tires. After all of these years the biggest question about riding remains, “why don’t more people do this?” It is a stunning, flummoxing question. Riding for me is such a happiness-generator that every time I ride to work, or anywhere else, it easily is he best part of the day. Every F’n time, regardless of weather. Bicycle or motorcycle. I just cannot believe more people are not doing this. It’s absolutely pure joy. One possible reason, which I don’t like to think about, is maybe my neurology is a little different than the average persons(?). Everyone is unique. We all exist on numerous spectrums. Height, hair color, weight, introversion/gregariousness, etc. It seems that maybe there is also a spectrum of human affinity for kinesthetic experiences. I guess I don’t mind admitting I might be a bit to one side of the median in this area, since I have two motorcycles in my basement. – Mr. Subjective, October 2019

As far as this company goes it literally was mis-spelling the name "Aerostich" when making the master artwork for the first printing of letterhead stationery and business cards, and when opening the business's checking account and applying for the Minnesota corporate registration. You probably thought I was going to write something facetious, funny or philosophic here. Nope. I’m an idiot when it comes to many things, and spelling is near the top of that subset.The correct spelling, as I learned later, is "stitch", not "stich". I wanted a generic name to avoid being embarrassed if the business failed, so I didn’t use my own name like Leon "L.L.Bean", Hirotake "Arai" or Louis Comfort "Tiffany". Whatever. The word "Aero" seemed appropriately generic because motorcycle riders are always in the wind, and "stich" was added because we were planning to sew a completely new kind of rider’s armored coverall. Commercial printing and advertising artwork were made a lot differently back in 1983. Personal computers and desktop publishing did not yet exist. To make letterheads you could use a razor blade and a product called Chartpack, which was an adhesive graphic and lettering system that any local printer could use to produce and print something. It took me a couple of hours with an X-Acto knife to create the Aerostich logo artwork. Our first print order came to 1000 cards and 500 stationary sets at a total cost of maybe $35. I proudly showed the results to my mother a few days later and she immediately told me I'd mis-spelled stitch. "Thanks mom…" was all I could say. After worrying about that for a couple of days I went to a library and looked up the meanings of the word "stich" in an unabridged dictionary, and in the end decided to save the money needed to reprint everything. A "stich" is what you call a single line in a poem. Riding and great sewing are both sometimes a bit sublime and beautiful, just like a good line in a poem. That's the story I told myself to save us the $35, so Aerostich kept its mis-spelled name. Our generic made-up name really didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t now, either.  Riding more is what matters. – Mr. Subjective 5-2020 Addendum: Regarding ‘desktop publishing’, I should have written “for me”, as in: “back in 1983 desktop publishing did not yet exist for me.” The first-ever Macintosh computer went on sale in 1984. This was the one with the mouse and the GUI (graphical user interface). I probably saw my first one in 1985. For our first catalog we did the layouts on stiff paper with faint blue grids, carefully hand waxing in place hand cut out laser-printed text paragraphs and artwork. To generate that text we used a 1984 Macintosh a friend had just purchased. But he did not have a laser printer. The least expensive models of those were in the $3-4,000 range, which was well beyond our means, so we took a floppy disc (?) from the Mac to a computer retail store and gave the sales person $20 to let us print out the text on some regular copy paper. It printed dark and perfect letters. I think it was an Apple branded laser printer…I only remember walking upstairs to this little store located above a mainstreet clothing store and seeing the laser printer sitting there dramatically on a pedestal in the center of the space under a spotlight. Along one wall were shelves with various kinds of personal computers. After we got back to the Aerostich shop with our crisp laser-printed text we started cutting up the printed copy paper and making catalog page layouts with the waxing tool. After those were all done they went to a printer.

My first bicycle was a 20” Huffy. Deep candy red with white pinstripes on its triangle-shaped fenders. I remember it so perfectly because this was the bike I first learned how to balance without training wheels. I can take you to the exact spot where this miracle occurred. My mother held the bike up by the back of its saddle and then released me. The thrill of that moment was like nothing else. It felt like I’d just learned the greatest magic trick ever. Many kids learn to self-balance today using a very small pedal-less 'balance bike’, a type of miniaturized bicycle that did not exist when I was a child. Whenever I see a child using one of these it looks so natural and easy. It’s automatic and happens so early that kids who learned the miracle of balancing this way won’t remember the magic moment when they first could do it because they acquired the ability at such a young age. For me there was much anticipation and for several weeks prior some discussions about removing the training wheels. Was that what I really wanted? Was I sure? Did I feel ready? This was serious, important stuff. What I didn’t know at the time was when my mother had been around my age, her mother had witnessed the horror of a small bicycling child being killed in a collision with an automobile, so she was never allowed to have or ride a bicycle. She never learned how to ride like the millions of people all over the world who somehow never learn how to swim. It’s probably why she took my learning how to ride very seriously. My first self-balancing riding moment was on a regular sidewalk only a hundred feet from the house we were living in at the time. The training wheels had just been removed, but I don’t remember by whom. I don’t remember ever riding my Huffy with training wheels, even once, but I’m sure I must have, and many times. That day was a bright, clear sunny warm spring day. Probably a Saturday as my dad was at work and I wasn’t in school. The street in front of the house ran slightly downhill and there wasn’t the usual grassy boulevard between the sidewalk and the street. Directly to my right was a curb with a drop of several inches to street level. There were no parked cars which meant everyone who had a car had already driven off for work or somewhere else. Not everyone had a car during the late 1950’s. My mother and I walked up to the corner, and I was pushing the bike. I’m sure she wore a simple cotton house dress, as was her custom in those days. Or maybe Bermuda shorts, which were very popular. I don’t remember some details. Only that ‘Mom jeans’ were nonexistent. Still decades in the future. And I was on the sidewalk, not in the street. There was one home between our house and the corner. White. Clapboard siding. Porch. Both the street and the avenue were residential-quiet, and the intersection was uncontrolled from all directions. You were supposed to look both ways before crossing, which probably I wasn’t yet allowed to do. But my limited little world was about to radically change. This neighborhood had been built out thirty years earlier during the mid 1920’s. The street and sidewalk surfaces were all concrete, not asphalt. Up at the corner I turned the bike around, my mother grabbed the underside of the saddle and I climbed on. There were a few brief words of discussion or encouragement, but whatever they were is another forgotten detail. A low hedge bordered the immediate left side of the sidewalk, along the front yard of our neighbor’s house. Maybe two feet high at most. Focus. Concentrate…  GO! She let me free with a light push. I made it about fifty incredible feet and then don’t remember exactly what happened next. For some reason I think maybe I crashed into the hedge and cried (?) but was uninjured and immediately got back to the top of the street and did it again. Successfully. Or maybe I got going ok that first time and came to a safe (Bendix!) coaster-braked stop in front of our house. Whatever it was, all I know for sure was that suddenly I could actually balance, perfectly and easily, and in that one magical instant my life was forever changed. And thanks to a huge dose of adrenaline right at that exact moment I can still remember this as clearly as if it just happened yesterday. I can still go back to the exact moment when I first acquired wings and began to fly. To leave the nest behind. From that day on I could not stop riding. What is your memory of learning to balance? Share below!

Year after year this is co-promoted by both the AMA and the Motorcycle Industry Council, and almost nobody cares. The AMA is the American Motorcyclist Association and is the largest membership motorcycle rider political group (PAC) in the country. Sort of like the NRA (National Rifle Association) but for motorcyclists. They also provide racing sanctions and rule books and oversee a large amateur racing program. The MIC is a small but important (important = well financed) group supported by the large motorcycle companies like Honda, Triumph, Yamaha, etc., and via a related-yet-independent foundation they also finance and organize most of the rider-training materials and curriculums used by state-organized rider training programs. My cynical side never quite knows what to do with ‘motorcycle awareness month’. I think it’s mostly pretty silly but maybe it helps prevent a few crashes, injuries or deaths, so it’s not entirely without basis or benefit. I doubt it helps sell many more motorcycles, though. It’s just the kind of thing special interest trade associations such as the MIC like to do. How we might present this to our Aerostich audiences of (on average) experienced higher-mile riders without seeming to be jerks is a little tricky. On one hand I’d like to acknowledge this promotion seems a little trite, but on the other hand if it saves even one rider’s life it’s an immeasurably great thing. What informs my cynicism is the idea that when one decides to ride one is forced accept how if one ever is in an accident when riding, the entire legal system in most crash scenarios biased against the rider. This is simply because almost every legislator, judge, jury member -- and every attorney on all sides – all most likely drive a car to their jobs. Thus, it’s almost impossible to get a fair trial with any kind of significant punishment for the guilty, or fair compensation for the injured. With bicycle riders it is exactly the same. See these stories from Outside Online: What to Do if You're Hit by a Car and Cycling Deaths. Somewhere buried in the embedded links within this story* was a statistic that more than 85% of car drivers who kill a bicycle rider are never charged with any kind of crime. This travesty is not so different for motorcyclists and pedestrians. I’ve always been in favor of laws with increased penalties to force a bias against some kinds of misbehavior. Similar to what MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) accomplished thirty years ago. Similar to how in some states there are laws explicitly providing very strong penalties for any driver who kills a highway construction worker. In Michigan the law requires a minimum $10,000 fine or a year in jail. I don’t think Minnesota or Wisconsin has such a law. These kinds of laws have real teeth that strongly discourage irresponsible driving. They forcefully say: “Don’t text and drive!” and “Pay attention, slow down!” and “Don’t drive impaired!” If the MIC and the AMA wanted to do something meaningful for increasing awareness of motorcycling and motorcyclists, instead of promoting ‘motorcycle awareness month’ they could work together to try and get strong ‘vulnerable road user’ laws passed in every state. An even grander and far more effective coalition would include all of the state and national motorcycle rights groups (like ABATE, Ride to Work, others), all of the bicycle clubs (like the Adventure Cycling Association, National Bicycle Dealers Association, League of American Bicyclists, others) and all of the all of the hiking and walking clubs (like the America Walks, Partnership for a Walkable America, others). There are a few dozen ‘umbrella’ organizations in these areas, though some have hundreds of affiliated sub-groups and chapters. Co-ordinating such an effort would be a tremendous challenge and cost real money. And any even mildly biased ‘vulnerable-road-user’ protecting laws would probably be fiercely resisted by well-organized and well-financed opponents. Enactment would also depend on fickle political circumstances, just as the enactment of the civil rights and school integration laws of the 1960’s did. Those laws were also biased in favor of the disadvantaged and vulnerable. Regardless of any kind of possible opposition, today’s riders and walkers have already got something far more powerful: more dead martyrs to a longstanding pattern of civil injustice than anyone would ever want. A “Hit, injure or kill a bicyclist, pedestrian or motorcyclist and get a mandatory XXX fine or XXX in jail.” type-law would discourage and reduce bad driving. This message would look great on roadside markers, billboards, and in driver training manuals, too. These types of laws work. They are constitutional. And they would make riding safer. The result would be more people choosing to ride -- And more people choosing to ride would lead to a better, cleaner, healthier, nicer world. ‘Motorcycle Awareness Month’? Meh. - Mr. Subjective, March 2020 (Mr. Subjective is Andy Goldfine, the founder of the Aerostich rider’s equipment company and organizer of the annual ‘Ride to Work Day’.) *According to data collected by cycling advocate David Cranor for the nonprofit Greater Greater Washington, between 1971 and 2019, there were 132 cyclists killed by drivers in the Washington, D.C., area. 87% were not charged with a crime, 13% were charge and 8% served time.