If you own, wear and enjoy your Aerostich gear, please tell your friends about it. Our ability to continue as a solvent, successful business depends on your positive recommendations, stories and referrals. We all came back to work during this past week. Now we are busy making gear for the back-ordered sizes and colors which were not in stock when the orders were received when we were closed because of Minnesota’s pandemic quarantine. Everyone working here is now wearing masks, using sanitizers, sitting farther apart and taking a bunch of extra precautions. We each must take our forehead temperature every day when we arrive and make a written record of it. Lots of little changes but we sure are grateful to be back. We are now refilling our stock, making Aerostich gear, and catching up on back orders. All Aerostich suits, jackets and pants were literally the world’s first embodiments of an entirely new kind of rider’s gear, made using new kinds of materials combined in an entirely new recipe for durable and comfortable protective riders gear. Everything in riders gear today, made using modern synthetic fabrics with modern plastic zippers, using modern impact-absorbing foams and incorporating modern reflective materials, venting and pocketing, is a copy or riff on Aerostich gear. No matter how others promote their latest products every year as being ‘new and improved’. We continue refining and making Aerostich armored textile riders’ jackets, pants and suits here in America, and they are not marketed like most other consumer items which are constantly being ’New and Improved!’ for mostly either fashion or marketing reasons. We’ve been doing it this way for thirty-seven years. With some kinds of things, the original is best. Share your Aerostich gear stories with your friends. And with us. Thank you, and good riding. - Mr. Subjective, May 9, 2020   Learn More »  

For motorcycle accessory businesses like ours the good sales quarters are Q2 and Q4 and the slow quarters are Q’s 1 and 3. Most annual profit is made during Q4. This entire year will be an economic write-off, but hopefully Q4 will still be at least semi-ok. Much will depend on clinical/medical/science stuff. Many different kinds of medical things are coming on fast. For example, blood tests which will be quick and free for everybody so one can learn if one has had the virus or not seem right around the corner. And related to this will be figuring out if the plasma from those who’ve had it can provide useful immunity to those who have not. This and much more should be here very soon. On the political-economic side this pandemic is giving both sides (Conservative and Progressive) the leverage/scapegoat they need to advance their agendas and priorities much faster and more aggressively than usual. It’s going to be interesting to see which side’s agenda mostly prevails. Right now, the Conservatives seem to have the edge because of the generally more Conservative underlying biases of our current court system, and because they are (for the most part) in power across both the executive and legislative branches. But they may have overplayed their hand. Regardless of which side prevails, it’s certain that the other side will put up a very strong protest/fight. There will be lots of ‘gaslighting’ for sure. Maybe some violence, too. This would be exactly how the FDR presidency went when they were putting together their radically Progressive agenda during the Great Depression. At the time they were broadly hated by so many but regardless they were successful at setting in place most of the pieces of a style of governance which today is generally considered normal by a majority of Americans. It’s going to be almost exactly the same this time around, except it’s not yet known which side will prevail, or what the particular and specific details will involve. What this means for small businesses like ours is unknown. It feels like everyone from the 1% oligarchs and plutocrats, to the homeless, to the Nobel laureates and Pulitzer prize winners are all improvising. Which is what we are doing here, too. All of my co-workers, wife, extended family and I are going stir-crazy, but because of all the extra downtime my bike has never been this well prepared: New tires, oil and brake fluid, etc...even little things like twist-grip throttle free play re-adjusted. I expect to begin motorcycle commuting soon as usual, and to be able to take a mid-to-late summer trip somewhere. My guess is most of the mid-to-late-summer rallies and events will be well-attended and maybe even more-attended than usual because early summer events did not happen and most riders (if they are like me) still want to ride somewhere. Come visit us this summer. We’d love to see you. - Mr. Subjective, April 14th, 2020 PS – What followed the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 was the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Supposedly a pretty good time for everyone. PPS - ‘ATGATT’ and the Virus. During the months ahead living amongst other people IS going to be riskier than what we all are used to. Riskier compared to the normal we’ve experienced all of our lives. What do we do? How do we each manage the new added risks? With our elective activity of riding a motorcycle we use a bunch of smaller linked tactics: Don’t ride and drink. Use turn signals. Whenever possible avoid riding during atrocious weather at night. Wear helmets and bright armored clothing (ATGATT*). Think paranoid in traffic. Keep the bike well-adjusted. Ride frequently enough to be moderately fluent. Etc. We need to adopt this same sort of tactical approach with the new virus, and hope we don’t still get run over and killed by the dang thing. We are going to probably have to live with some increased level of ‘public health risk’ for at least another six or eight months unless there’s some kind of medical breakthrough. So the only way to approach this is with a quiver full of individual tactical measures. Which are now being presented in detail, ad-infinitum, just about everywhere. We all will get on with our living long before the added risk of this new virus will be back to zero. That’s how we’ve always gotten on with living with tradtional annual flu virus’s. There’s now apparently a brand-new genie and it’s probably not going to get back into its bottle for some time. Tactics. We’ll each get good with a bunch of small discrete tactics, and they will become normal. * ATGATT = All The Gear All The Time

An earlier Mr. Subjective blog post led to a long-ish email exchange between two old friends: Tom, a continuing blogger in ‘Geezer with a Grudge’, and Mr. Subjective. The ‘Sorta Sensible Trade Off’ essay was about the trade-offs between today’s safety-enhancing technologies like anti-lock brake systems, and the other important aspects of the motorcycling experience. Among other things, Tom is a retired MSF instructor. Below is our email exchange, time-sequenced for clarity. On Mar 5, 2020, at 4:35 PM, Tom wrote: Andy, Interesting article. Back in 2012, when I reviewed the R1200GS for MMM (Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly), I noted that BMW’s ABS was a pretty coarse device, especially compared to the Super Tenere that I’d reviewed earlier. I concluded that section of the review with “In fact, I'd be inclined to turn off ABS on a long off-road trip.” As usual, Victor and the editor took a verbal/email beating for allowing that criticism into the review. I’m not surprised that rattling caused downstream stress on the driveline and I wish I’d have suspected that for the review. ? It would make me seem almost smart now. When I was teaching the “Experienced Rider Courses” I was always entertained by the Harley and Polaris riders during the emergency braking exercise. The ABS on those hippobikes was so brutal and the jerking scared the crap out of most of the riders (who had probably never used their brakes before the class). Hope you’re doing well.Tomhttps://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/ From: Andy (Mr Subjective)Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 4:58 PMTo: Tom Subject: Re: Modern Technology & Trade-Offs Thanks for writing. Long time. All is well here. On the business side, Aerostich still mostly solvent and staggering along. Not much growth but holding steady now. Still a fun business and still enjoying both the customers and my co-workers most of the time. On the motorcycle side, have two running ridable bikes: 07 R1200R and 94 XR650L. Also a low-end electric bicycle and a regular pedal bike. None of these are fancy. They’re just rideable. Rode to NYC and back last summer. To Nebraska for the eclipse the summer prior. To the BMW RA national rally three summers ago. Not sure where I’ll go this year.Glad you wrote. Hope we’ll see each other in person somewhere this summer. On Mar 6, 2020, at 7:50 PM, Tom wrote: Hey Andy, At least in the US, motorcycling seems to be “staggering along,” too. The number of MSF courses offered by the state seems to be dropping 10-20% every year since 2007, when it peaked. I quit last year. The previous year every class I signed up for cancelled due to low student turnout. Century College went from 3 ranges doing two classes (morning and afternoon) each every weekend from April to September to one range intermittently doing classes; morning only. I don’t think Red Wing is doing any classes this year. Some kind of sea change is going on here that, oddly, doesn’t seem to be happening anywhere else in the world. I keep hearing the tameness of Millennials blamed for motorcycling’s problems, but my experience with that crowd doesn’t back that up much. My grandson, for example, commutes 12 months a year on a mountain bike or eBike (RadMini), he is into rock climbing, wall jumping, marathons, kick boxing, and all kinds of stuff I’ve never heard of and has lots of friends doing the same kinds of things. I’d put riding a bike 7 miles one way in a Minneapolis January over anything I’ve ever seen a hippobike rider do, adventure-wise. He sucks at maintenance, though. His eBike is in my garage waiting for a motor replacement. He beat it to death in 8 months. We did a full service on his mountain bike last weekend and it was pretty hammered, too. ? After last summer’s medical bullshit, I don’t know where I am as a motorcyclist. I didn’t ride a mile last year and missed a lot of the spring the year before. We’ll see this spring. It’s possible that I’m just a bicyclist now. My wife really got into her eBike last year so we do that together often now. A first for that. A good friend of mine from California was in Nebraska, somewhere west on US20 on my recommendation, for the eclipse. I thought about joining him, but copped out. I guess it was really crowded and nutty where he was, Valentine, I think. He crossed the country, west to east, on Highway 20 driving a Citroën 2CV that he’s owned for at least 35 years. Almost a motorcycle. Hope to see you soon,Tom From: Andy (Mr. Subjective)Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2020 8:11 PMTo: Tom Subject: Re: Modern Technology & Trade-Offs Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the MC biz and the current MC situation in American culture. It’s’ partly the “tameness of millenials” but there’s a lot more going on. A real confluence of factors. Sort of a ‘perfect storm’. We could have a long conversation or several conversations about this but the main thing is that it just ‘is’, and if one wants to ride badly enough one just figures out how. In a way it’s kinda neat that so few people are riding nowadays. I’ve always liked the oddball-ness of riding, without the traditional 1% outlaw part. Riding is going to come back, but it won’t be for a while and when it does it’s not going to look much like the riding we experienced. ADV bikes and HD’s and crotch rockets and luxe touring bikes might eventually look pretty stupid, but each of these branches of motorcycling will continue more in the idiom of nostalgia than mainstream riding. Like the old geezers today with their ‘collectable’ cars. Whatever is in fashion in collectable cars changes across time. All collectable things from artworks to old cars go in and out of fashion. Right now the hottest fashion in motorcycles are the very elemental, minimalistic customs. Bikes stripped to their essence. The younger consumers are looking for purity and not doing miles, not exploring, not going fast, not going far or any of the kinds of riding we did. Take an old airhead, remove everything: Body, saddle, lights, fenders, side panels, center stand, instruments, mirrors and air filters. Add back very small lights, very thin flat saddle, knobby tires and small mufflers and little else and you have the kind of bike that looks like the purified essence of a motorcycle. Unfortunately these bikes are better at looking cool in a garage or entry way of a McMansion than going on any kind of actual ride, be it a day, a commute, or across country. In a sentence, these bikes are reverent homages to the idea of what a motorcycle means. The core meaning. The symbolism. That's what’s cool right now, and to consume motorcycling that way you don’t need to know much about how to ride or much in the way of gear. All the gear we rejected as crap or in some way a pain-in-the-ass is now the height of fashion. Jet style helmets, bubble shields or goggles, jeans and windbreakers and flannel shirts and lace up Red Wing hunting boots. The young are always very self-conscious compared to old people like us. It’s very important to be recognized by ones peers as getting it. This was so for me when I was young, and it’s no different today. The manifestations are different but youth is eternal. This era of the purification of motorcycling will pass. When your brave grandson reaches 45 he’s not going to have the energy to commute on a bicycle or the time to use an e bike for this purpose. He’s going to look for a single track vehicle that is easy to use, safe and practical. Light and affordable and all-weather capable. And the gear to go with it. He will know that motorcycles are simply a bicycle with a motor, and that they are the easiest way to get from A to B with the infrastructure sprawl we’ve spent the last 150 years building. The power system will either be electric or ICE. That’s how motorcycling will look when it comes back.With one small addition. Most bikes made since the 1990’s are going to still be pretty good to ride twenty years from now if they were kept indoors. Crotch rockets, HD’s and everything in between. Lots of people like your grandson will get those running without stripping them down as art projects. They will lightly modify them for increased utility and use them for general purpose riding. It will all come together in 15-20 years. Climate warming will be a full-blown deal beyond what is going on today, and that will be a factor. Maybe the yet-to-happen ‘Great Depression 2’ will be over by then and some kind of ’New Deal 2’ will be developing. Motorcycles will become fashionable again for a bunch of reasons not associated with rebelliousness or luxury recreation or speed. I’m hoping. We won’t be around to see it, probably. PS - I’ve been commuting all winter for the last two years with a more-or-less crappy e-bike. Learning (and re-learning) all kinds of things at 16-22 mph. Last winter I commuted one day at minus 15. This year I think the coolest day was around minus 10. PPS - Still have the studded tire wheels on mine. Very anxious to go to the summer wheels. Probably next Wednesday or Thursday. Studded tires are SO NOISY!. PPPS - Yesterday on my way home from work I jumped a curb a little too hard and had an immediate rim-pinch flat. Two holes in the tube, one on each side. I run the tires pretty soft in the winter. It’s not a fat bike. The tires are 27.5 x 2.8. All patched up this morning. Now the tube has two new patches to go with the one I put on it last year. PPPPS - Tomorrow I’m going to try and bleed the rear brake and disassemble and clean and re-lube the twistgrip on my twenty four year old (16” wheel) lowered XR650L. I’d parked it about five years ago. These are the last two items it needs to be rideable for commuting again. Which is my plan. A bunch of stuff got done last fall. And my R1200R is ready to go. Somewhere. New tires, oil and full service at Moon Motors late October last year at $1000 cost. Only rode it back here and parked it after, hoping I’d survive the winter and be able to do something with it this summer. On March 9, 2020, at 12:04PM Tom wrote: I wish I could see more of the “oddball-ness of riding, without the traditional 1% outlaw part” in Red Wing. We’re the destination for all of the tame Boomers and 1% gangbanger pretenders from the Twin Cities and Wisconsin on their unmuffled Hardlys and trikes. It is enough make a lifetime motorcyclist hate motorcycles. On the odd occasion an actual motorcyclist rides through our neighborhood, I get reminded of how unrepresentative they are of the general population and remember why I like those folks so much. There are few things (most peds and bicycles) that are less obtrusive and attention-demanding than a quiet motorcycle cruising through town or a neighborhood. If motorcycling does become a rare thing, as eBikes and bicycling become more common, that could be a saving grace. If there are fewer riders there will be fewer fatalities that that will be, I think, the thing that catches the public and highway safety bureaucracy’s attention as cars continue to become safer. Motorcycles shouldn’t be anywhere near 2% of highway fatalities, based on miles driven, but we’re always hovering around and above 14%. I think if that number approaches 20% it will be the end of motorcycles on public roads. But even if the crash-per-mile/per-capita numbers stay the same, if the number of riders on the road drops that might even lower the overall statistic enough to keep motorcycles out of public attention. Collectable items are a fashion, but it seems to me that collections in general are fading. We might be the last generation of hoarders. I don’t see that as a bad thing, either. After purging stuff to move from 2600 square feet to 1100, we still have too much crap. I have tried to enforce a ‘1 in/2 out’ rule, but enforcing anything with my life is an exercise in self-delusion. My pile, however, is definitely shrinking. I just gave a load of test equipment (some was homemade gear that I’ve used in electronics since the 70’s) to a friend who runs a music store locally. I unloaded a recording studio and a lifetime’s collection of microphones, tools, truck loads of books, and a lot of audio test equipment when we left Little Canada and I have yet to miss anything from that huge pile. I’m probably too quick to hope for the end of collections/hoarding since one of my life’s goals has always been to be owned by a small enough pile of stuff that I could move in a small van and a few hours work. About 15 years ago, the hipsters I knew through the music college jumped on to that thing that inspired the Ducati Scrambler; with café racer’d 70’s and 80’s Japanese bikes. About a dozen of them regularly bugged me for maintenance and repair tips and some of them really got into stuff like tweaking carbs and pipes and suspension bits along with the cosmetic thing they were going for. Within 5 years, many were through that phase, several were also finished with music, and moving on with the rest of their adult lives. Most of them had some minor scary event on their motorcycles that convinced them it was more dangerous than it was worth, but some just realized motorcycles weren’t even as practical as bicycles for their purposes. At least a half-dozen of them moved on to become part of the Minneapolis bicycle 4-season scene. Several others had kids, started businesses, and became family guys. Some just sort of withered away into the Millennial characters you often hear about either working fast food, coffee shop, convenience store, or other menial labor jobs. “Some are mathematicians, some are carpenter’s wives. Don't know how it all got started, I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.” However, none are doing anything with motorcycles. I doubt that IC motorcycles are going to make much of a comeback in the future. I do a blog I’ve called “The Rat’s Eye View” for a little longer than I’ve done the Geezer-with-a-Grudge thing. One of my Rat’s Rules is “My theory is that as a technology approaches terminal, it gets really good.” Electric vehicles are, I think and hope, on the cusp of becoming a solid replacement for IC and that’s part of why we’re seeing all sorts of amazing innovation in a technology that is on its last gasp. I really don’t see my grandson ever getting interested in old motorcycles, could be wrong but if I am I really suck at knowing people. I absolutely can imagine him on a $5,000 Zero that can do 200 miles on a charge. We have done a lot of things together in his 22 years, but working on cars and motorcycles is not one of them. Weirdly, we’re seeing that shift in music, too. Guitars are definitely an old guy’s instrument. Guitar sales are down and have been going down for 20-some years. Music featuring guitars is less popular. Music stores are struggling, too. It’s not just that the music business is dead (which it is) but that music has become a commodity that people don’t expect to have to pay for. There is a wonderful book about this, Rockonomics: What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics (and Our Future) by Alan Krueger. I learned more about the industry I was involved in for 50-some years from Rockonomics than I had in my career. I’m pretty sure I won’t be around to see any sort of revival, though. It just feels too far into the future. TomRed Wing, MN

“Younger rider’s reactions to my suit (Roadcrafter Classic, R-3) are not entirely positive.” - Any number of experienced motorcycle journalists. That’s an understatement. I’ve thought a lot about why this is. First, youth-in-general looks very hard at the micro-granular details of everything but often has a more difficult time seeing the so-called bigger picture. Looking hard at each tree means one usually doesn’t or can’t see the forest so well. When it comes to rider’s gear this means having the ‘right’ kinds of gear and knowing this or that brand is fashionable or cool in-in-the-moment, and almost nothing else matters. I experienced exactly this youthful myopia when I was younger, just as most kids do to one degree or another. Fashion and fitting in matter a lot more to the young (and young-at-heart) than to anyone older. Personal note: When I was a kid, I remember desperately wanting a Schwinn bicycle, Jack Purcell tennis shoes and Gant button down shirts. Got the shoes but not the other two. Today’s younger riders are no different than past generations of young riders. Most hope to ride the exact ‘right’ bike, wear the exact ‘right’ gear and be among the exact ‘right’ peers. This socializing-stuff is as developmentally and neurologically hard-wired in most of us as are our physical features. Aerostich’s geeky one-piece coveralls, which enormously help make it easier, safer and more comfortable to ride a motorcycle more often, in more kinds of conditions and to and from more situations, doesn’t quite compute. For most young riders, this is not why or how they want to consume motorcycling. But after one has ridden for a longer while a few things become clearer: No matter what one rides or wears, street riding itself always makes you the oddball in traffic, and in almost every other situation. Riding can be a vastly better and more satisfying way to get from A-to-B than most people realize, if one doesn’t mind being that oddball-in-traffic. In other words, once one throws looking cool under a bus, one’s life actually gets a lot better in so many areas and ways. This includes riding more. Almost everything in our post-industrial-consumer-culture is sold to us on the basis of making us cooler -- From whiter teeth to better nutrition to you-name-it. The assumption is everyone wants to be a legend and live forever. When I was young, I did too, and to be honest a part of me still does. Bikes were more popular and much more mainstream-cooler back when I was in high school than they are today. My HS class had about six hundred kids and most school days there were maybe twenty-five bikes in the parking lot. All neatly lined up in a row. On a few really nice spring days there were three or four times that many. Back then my moto-interest was dirt bikes. I didn’t know much about riding, more specifically dirt bike riding, but after school and on weekends I’d find some trails to explore and a gravel pit to go practice in. This culminated ten years later in riding local AMA Enduros for a couple of years, but this level of commitment still wasn’t sufficient. I could not get enough riding only on weekends and practicing a night or two after work. During this part of my life I’d occasionally randomly encounter former HS classmates and they would sometimes ask: “Are you still riding those dirt bikes?” The implication being that at some point I would outgrow this phase. I half-believed it myself and unconsciously was waiting for this to happen but by around thirty I realized I was going to want to ride motorcycles for the rest of my life, as often as possible. Riding was simply too much fun. Even sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green was better on a bike than it was in a car. At that point most of my pretenses about riding's coolness and what-to-wear went under the bus. All that mattered was that I could be riding instead of driving and soon afterward the Aerostich coverall was ‘born’. Improvisation being a mother of invention. All these years later now I’ve become sort of an amateur anthropologist-connoisseur of social ostracization. Not that I deliberately seek out being uncool, it’s just the embedded cost of riding all the time and G-d or the universe has a funny way of arranging things to work out like this. So, whenever someone in a grocery store or any destination stares, giggles or asks a really stupid question about what I’m wearing, or if I was riding a motorcycle (after all, it is raining…), all I usually do is silently grin. Inevitably those dumb remarks, stares and comments are later remembered as the best non-riding parts of my day. So if today’s young riders want to be young riders, I say let them. A few will continue riding long enough to realize that it’s riding itself which makes you cool, not the color and model of one’s bike or if you wear the latest helmet, or what jacket or kind of boots one has. In the big wide world, nobody in any of the cars surrounding you in traffic cares even the smallest fraction about any of that. Riding itself is what is cool. - Mr. Subjective, 2020 Blog Survey Results from 3/11/2020: Thanks to everyone who took the survey!

Most riders today agree about the desirable complications of modern motorcycle safety features like ABS and Traction Control. I do, too, though at times still slightly struggle with some these high-tech enhancements. Electronic fuel injection is great and so are most other advanced technologies which improve a motorcycle’s efficiency and reliability, but the specific digital stuff which sometimes comes between me and my bike’s ride dynamics is occasionally more problematic. With ABS and Traction Control sometimes I want it on, and sometimes I want it off. Playing with the frictional limits of tires is, in a few situations, part of the fun of riding, but these days most ABS-equipped bikes don’t give their riders a fast and easy off/on switch option. A few years ago, my R1200R’s driveshaft needed replacement after less than 30,000 miles. This was both puzzling and expensive. Online research revealed it to be a fairly common late-model BMW problem, but this bike’s driveshaft failure occurred extremely early. Driveshaft replacement seemed to be rarely needed on bikes whose riders seldom got into the ABS, which I’d been fighting with since day one. Believe it or not, when riding older non-ABS bikes in certain situations I've always enjoyed being able to nail the rear brake hard and briefly deliberately lock the rear wheel. In dense traffic on asphalt roads this reliably produces a loud tire squeal/chirp which can in sometimes be far more effective than tooting the horn and is always more civil (and in-the-moment more practical) than giving some clueless driver the finger. I can’t help scaring them this way, just a little. But my fancy modern safe ABS-equipped R-1200R will tolerate no such nonsense, depriving me of this occasionally useful and always fun “You idiot!” tire-squeal expression. Instead of the usual short and loud tire chirp, on this bike you get a violent, jarring “knock!-knock!-knock!-knock!”, as its ABS rapidly cycles on and off, hammering away and rudely preventing the rear tire from breaking traction. I quickly became used to this ABS-knocking but out of habit still found myself triggering it fairly often. Yes, of course it was reassuring to have while riding on greasy wet roads or when I was half-asleep, but generally I just wanted to make it go away. The ‘off road’ GS version of this bike comes with an ABS-off button, but my R model is not so equipped. Converting mine to GS-spec looked costly, difficult and impractical. A few R1200R owners whose ABS had failed had chosen not to replace this heavy, expensive and complicated system and I decided I’d probably do that also, if my bike’s anti-lock ever failed. I like saving the weight, (who doesn’t) and especially value being able to deliberately skid the rear tire. I like being able to do that that just enough to accept the resulting diminution in overall safety. Similarly, I would not mind being able to try a few low-level stoppies once in a while -- but don’t get me started on those very efficient and durable Telelever forks. Fun is fun. Well now it is five years later, and this bike has accumulated many more miles and its ABS system is still functioning perfectly. Sometimes I still miss being able to scare rude drivers in traffic with a tire chirp, but I’ve learned applying the rear brake hard enough to trigger the anti-lock system is a no-no because maybe it’s the ABS’s hammering that wrecks expensive driveshafts. I imagine BMW’s bike drivetrain engineers designing them to take the engine’s maximum torque for a couple hundred thousand miles and in the next office the brake system engineers are doing the anti-lock development and the two engineer groups never talk with each other about this. Or maybe they cannot imagine there are any foolish street riders out there who may wish to deliberately lock a rear wheel while in motion? Foolish riders like me. Those BMW engineers worked hard to provide riders with ever-increasing safety while they were simultaneously taking away some of the finding-the-frictional-limit tire fun I’d always enjoyed having with my motorcycle. A sorta sensible trade off, I guess. Most of the time. But I’ll always miss that rear tire chirp trick used to scare the heck out of an unobservant driver. At least that loss provided a hopefully amusing story.    – Mr. Subjective

...Or, A Completely Stupid Situation (As appended to an email reply to ‘Gabe F’, January 4, 2020.) PS - I still have a car. Two in fact. I just don’t want to drive either in the winter. Here’s my car life-story: - 1971.  Datsun PU.  Red. New. Put larger tires and wheels on it (15”x7”, snow tires all around) and four driving lights on bumper. Small fire under dash due to not using a relay for the driving lights. Drove it 100K miles, cost $2000, sold for $1,400. Excellent car. Good dirt bike motorcycle hauler. - 1973. Land Rover Series III 88”.  Bought new at dealer in Minneapolis. Bank loan. Cost $4550 when Toyota Land Cruiser, Scout, Jeep ranged from $3800-$4300.  Self-maintained always — forced me to become a half-assed mechanic. Lousy car, drove 90-100K, wore completely out. Eventually sent to a specialist in these cars to have totally rusted-out frame replaced. Still have it. Did I mention it’s a really lousy car? About 1975 made a paint-matched bike-hauling utility trailer via rebuilding a small $150 (auction price) beat-up EZ Haul rental trailer. - 1990.  Used 85 Audi 4000Q sedan. $5,000. Great car. All wheel drive, five-cylinder engine, 5 spd stick, Porsche designed drive train with dash controlled manually locking center and rear differentials. Very fun to drive in snow. Rusted out badly and brought only $800 when I eventually sold it. Drove about 50K across fifteen years. (I’d begun bicycling, walking and MC-ing a lot more.) - About 2006. Used 01 BMW 325xi wagon. $10,000. 5 spd stick, straight six, AWD system not as good as the Audi’s. Everything else better. Sold 2016 for $3,000 just before rust got really bad. Lovely car. Drove about 50K across ten years. - About 2017. Used 06 BMW 325xi wagon. $14,000. 6 spd stick, straight six, similar AWD system to previous car, but slightly improved. Much more complicated electronic junk. No rust, California one-owner car. Bought online, sight unseen. Arrived as represented, which means ‘good condition’ and no collision damage. $700 delivery by car-hauler. Stored winters. So today I have this nice 06 BMW wagon and the crappy old rebuilt 73 Land Rover. Five cars spread across forty nine years. Plus a few short-term-uses of borrowed or rented cars. So far nothing crash-totaled or even too seriously damaged, and of course very grateful to have such ‘first world’ car-owning experiences in the first place. (Hope writing this story won’t jinx anything.) The LR’s body is unrestored and fairly banged up and weathered due to abusive ‘four wheeling’ activity during the 1970’s, and also to never being parked indoors until about ten years ago. After its frame was replaced it also has never been winter driven. The funny (?) thing about all of this is that for a motorcyclist living here in Minnesota, cars are most useful as winter-seasonal transportation, and now I have two of them which are stored during the winter. During the spring fall and summer seasons, I’ll either walk, motorcycle or bicycle 95% of the time. Rain or shine. Warm or cool. And now I’m bicycling through the winter, too. Half a dozen fair-season mobility options…but in winter I’m now down to only a studded tire electric bicycle and occasionally taking rides or walking. I don’t know what this means except maybe I don’t have too much common sense. Feels like a completely stupid personal transportation situation. Except to my insurance guy. What is your car-life story? -- Mr. Subjective

So far this has been a fairly mild winter, temp-wise, but we've had an above-average amount of snow. Which is fine. I'm quite happy riding my now three-year-old electric bicycle on its studded tires as primary transportation (made up a separate set of 'winter wheels' two years ago) but in hindsight I should have spent more to have one of the many more powerful but illegal models. They are widely available consumer-direct online and easy to final-assemble, just more money. (750w 'legal' vs. 1500w) My e-bike cost $2000. The price range of these things is between about $1000 and $8000. I should have spent about $4000 to have more power, which seemed completely insane at the time. Across level ground the one I have is powerful enough, but for bigger hills, which are an inescapable part of Duluth's geography, it's not. This isn't about more speed even though more of that would always be welcome in some situations. I'm now able to be comfortable riding in temps down to around 10ºF fairly easily, and with a small extra effort can get down to about minus ten without issues. This is my first winter without a backup automobile, other than having occasional access to my wife's car. Last year and the one before I was able to borrow junky old 'winter beater' trucks. This year that option wasn't available, so I am living car-less for the first time in fifty years. And it's not been too bad. There are semi-legal alternate bicycle route options (sidewalks, bike lanes, etc) in places were passing auto traffic is too scary, and the studded tires work really well on ice and packed snow, except right after the occasional larger snowfalls. The Park Department actually clears the bike lanes faster and better than the city's Public Works Department plows the streets. Snowbanks make the lanes everywhere much narrower. Accumulations of 4" or more take a day or two before everything becomes packed down, shoveled out and plow-cleared enough, which means I'm probably averaging one to three days per month when I don't make the effort to e-bicycle myself to work. My commute round trip varies between 6 and 10 miles, which isn't a lot. It takes about 20 minutes to get to work, vs. 12 on a motorcycle and just over an hour if I walk. There are two notably satisfying parts to all this. By far the best is riding something with no license plate. Riding anything is always fun, even at the lowish e-bike speeds of between 18 and 23 mph, and having no license plate easily doubles every ride's wonderfulness. Any path becomes fair game, even if technically illegal. One night forty years ago during college I received a moving-violation ticket on my Schwinn Varsity for running a stop sign. This required going to traffic court and then paying a healthy fine -- same as an auto driver. That ticket went on my driving record which means there is always a real risk to renegade hooligan e-bike misbehavior, but so long as one is observant (for police), and consciously patient and polite whenever encountering the few stoic cold weather pedestrians, the chance of actually receiving a moving violation ticket is very low. Eventually there may be surveillance cameras everywhere tied to monitors at police HQ's, so this kind of outlaw wintertime riding may come to an end. Or maybe not. Que sera sera. The second -- though far less satisfying -- aspect of riding plate-less, is watching other people struggling with their cars as you pass. Brushing off snow, scraping windows, warming them up, finding parking spaces between snowbanks, etc. Everyone simply puts up with all of it for safety and comfort, but when you look at the equation from outside it becomes obvious how much extra work (and cost) is involved. Those people in their cars seeing me pedal past all bundled up probably think it's nuts to spend five minutes putting on so much bulky winter gear each time I want to go somewhere, and then taking it all off when I come back inside at any destination. Much of the required gear IS ridiculous, and arguably useless for just about everything else: A pair of thicker sox. Some insulated lightweight ankle-high boots. A pair of fleece lined pants or 'longhandles' (the old-fashioned word for long underwear, today known as 'base layers', which are an either-or with fleece lined pants). A fleece or wool sweater. A down sweater plus a mountain shell, or a down parka. An 'ear flap' hat whose flaps (when lowered) can come together under your chin. A bicycle helmet with a lengthened chin strap to wear over the 'ear flap' hat. A balaclava and an old loose-fitting 3/4 style motorcycle helmet and ski goggles for the really cold days. Plus, three different pairs of gloves:  Cold, colder and choppers. You don't want to know what choppers are. Almost like summer ATGATT right? A pair of flip-flop sandals lives under my desk year-around for at-work footwear when winter (and summer) riding boots come off. With a little big toe sox adjustment they work fine. During the winter I would not feel as safe riding a licensed motorcycle in the regular traffic lanes as I do on the e-bicycle using my more convoluted (and longer) street/bike lane/sidewalk mixed routes. Three years ago, we did a winter of daily commuting on a stud-tire equipped Zero Motorcycle and it was mostly great, but you still feel more vulnerable moving among traffic along slimy streets covered with a dirty mix of sub-freezing ice crystal slush, snowmelt and chlorides. For several days after any serious snowfall here that is our reality. Roads eventually dry out in more extreme cold leaving a layer of gravel and chalk-white residual salt dust everywhere, but above about 25 degrees everything gets sloppy again. If I was forced to road-only daily-commute here with no excuses all winter, I'd probably want a Ural, which these days means a $15,000 commitment. If I had the budget and a bit more garage space that would be neat. But I don't. Love the winter, and it's been a pretty good one so far. But I am already looking forward to spring. -- Mr. Subjective

A Good One... A customer wrote today and suggested we re-name the Transit suit after Neil Peart.  He was a great fan of the Transit suit and generously let us use photos of him riding wearing his Transit.  We have been selling his very good books about his motorcycling and life experiences for many years. (We ran out of them recently and are not sure when they will be available next. Many books periodically go ‘out of print’ and sometimes they come back in reprinted editions.) Neil was a genuine long-riding motorcyclist and a super bright, incredibly hard working, thoughtful, intellectually curious man. And extremely well-read. I met him once. Rush was playing in Minneapolis and he nearly always rode between tour venues in good weather and bad, usually with his friend and business associate Michael. His tour bus towed a double axle enclosed car trailer which was set up like a motorcycle garage for hauling and servicing the bikes and gear. I think a few weeks prior to that Minneapolis concert he’d reached out to Aerostich customer care (and order processing) for something and then separately via email invited my partner and I to come down and see the show. Which is what we did. Until we met on that night I’d never spoken to him. What follows are my notes about this experience, written the morning after to my co-worker Gail, who’d volunteered at the last minute to deliver some Aerostich heated gear for Neil and Michael to the show venue. This email has been edited for clarity and some background information has been added in italics: Gail, the show was really something.  Last summer we (my then-fiancé and I) saw Lyle Lovett at the Big Top tent over by Bayfield, and we also saw Bob Dylan at Bayfront the previous year, but the last time I was at a stadium concert was maybe ten years ago for Elton John. And I'd never been to a show like this, with the VIP treatment and seeing everything from the backside. We picked up (another Aerostich co-worker) about a block from the Excel center (concert venue) as we arrived. He jumped into the back seat and we went down the same side-street into the underground backstage parking area you did. We met Neil’s friend Michael there. He was inside Neil's Prevost coach, working with maps and a notebook computer transferring a paper-highlighted 330-mile backroad route from St Paul to their next show, which they are probably out riding to right now.  When I write backroad, I mean it. They were going to be heading southeast on the littlest roads they could find. Some were gravel. Neil draws the route on a paper map and Michael puts it into a notebook computer and then into two Garmin GPS's. Behind one of the buses is an enclosed trailer holding three BMW GS motorcycles and a little workshop area. One bike is a spare in case either of the ridden bikes breaks down or needs to be serviced.  After they finish playing a show the two of them get back on their bus and leave the venue while the audience is still applauding. They sleep a regular night as the bus rolls onward and sometime the next morning just after they wake up the bus pulls over somewhere and they unload the bikes and ride the rest of the way to the next Rush concert location. There were three semi-trailers and three other luxury/custom Prevost coaches with a fourth Prevost that could also have been theirs (?) parked at a slightly separate location. There was no opening act. Neil and two other performers did the entire show, with one intermission. Forty years ago, when I saw Elvis on tour there were always at least 15 supporting performers on stage with him. Some dancing, some doing backup harmony, playing instruments, etc. but no techno-show. No fancy lights, videos, electronics. The staging and technology setup here was spectacular. There were continuous projected videos and lighting…hundreds and hundreds of remotely controlled lights. Fans were mostly in their fifties, many wearing very old Rush shirts. The audience was also mostly male. The couple seated next to us in the premium seats (close to the stage but several rows back) follow the show. This was the third of a scheduled 33 date tour, which apparently could go a little longer if more dates were added. The theme was NP 40, 'The Fortieth Anniversary of Rush' tour. There were little plastic dinosaurs arranged atop one of the racks of Marshall amps. All the lights and winches and cables and speakers and electronic controls and stage props traveled with the band, of course, and it looked like it could easily fill the three 40' semi-trailers I saw. How they set it all up in a short period would have made a great time-lapse film. Maybe a crew of 20 persons (?) traveling with the show and a hundred local hires for security type work. A guess. After Michael had finished doing the mapping for the ride in the morning, he asked me if I knew anything about electric gear. "A little." I replied.  He went on to explain how one of their (brand X) electric liners had failed yesterday and they'd spent about half the day riding dry roads with freshly fallen snow on the surrounding landscape. I think Neil had given his still-functioning (brand X) liner to Michael and then toughed it out for the rest of the day. These two have ridden about 200,000 miles together over a couple of decades. Michael functioning as Neil’s riding partner, bodyguard and majordomo…he’d met Neil because he owns a security business used by celebrities and others who need extreme confidentiality. Sort of like the federal witness relocation program, but for people who are not guilty of anything other than being ultra-successful, famous or wealthy. And because he owns this company, he gets to spend a lot of time riding around with Neil. (It was about 5 PM and we were at the show. I thought we'd be able to have someone from Aerostich drive there with a couple of Kanestu Darien liners and electric vests to replace the brand X's, which is what happened.) Hopefully right now those guys are wearing and enjoying our heated gear. (Gail did this long delivery, arriving during the middle of the show. We coordinated by text. I think Neil and Michael had been unaware we produced our own range of heated gear. They had been using the ‘brand X’ which was the more popular heated gear at that time. Our gear is deliberately made slightly lighter, slightly more efficient and slightly lower-powered so it would work better with older and smaller bikes having less electrical output. Most cold weather long-distance riders owned bigger and newer bikes with large electrical systems and wanted as much heat as possible.) Gail, thank you for all the extra work you did for us last night! After you left, I opened and set up one of the liners, made sure it worked, and showed Michael what to do and how use it. Then I went back into the show using a borrowed 'all access' VIP credential hanging from a lanyard around my neck. Our seats were center row 11. I'd never seen a stadium show from such close seats. Felt almost like being in a small theatrical venue, except for the sound level, which was amazing. 130DB? A guess. (After first getting there and following instructions how to get through security and into the underground garages where the coaches were parked, Michael walked with us to the ‘green room’ where the band and some of the traveling staging and sound technicians were relaxing with an excellent catered dinner buffet. Maybe a dozen people? After eating I remember going to another smaller adjacent room and talking motorcycles and motorcycling alone with Neil for maybe five minutes, and then going to sit down in row 11 for the wonderful Rush concert.)

It has always been fashionable to possess and enjoy handmade things. In motorcycling this usually means waxed cotton or leather bags and old-school traditional rider’s gear. It’s all good. Most of our products are crafted by hand. Some are made in two equally authentic versions:  One using the absolute latest high-tech modern synthetic fabrics and components, and the other with old-school materials like waxed cotton. Each has a place, and each offers a unique mix of real +’s and –‘s. A few older motorcycle bums may remember watching the brilliant comedy performer and writer Bob Einstein playing a character he created called 'Super Dave Osborne'.  It was his razor-sharp parody of famous daredevils like Evil Knievel, and of obsessive gear nerds everywhere. Einstein was a Canadian and always got laughs talking about his specialized daredevil equipment which usually included “handmade moose hide mukluks”. That particular well-remembered joke repeated enough to become a core part of his act because everyone always laughed. Today (thirty years later) I own a pair of genuine, artisanal handmade moose hide mukluks, and my wife has them too. It turned out they actually are a lighter, simpler, warmer, easier-to-wear and more comfortable type of outdoor footwear in really cold and snowy situations. Which explains why they became fashionable where there’s lots of snow and cold. The small local Minnesota-based company which made ours has done well. Bob Einstein’s mukluk joke remains funny, though now I better-appreciate why simple handmade gear often works, wears, fits and feels better than more complicated similar items designed by people who don’t actually use an item much, and which for cost reasons are made using assembly line systems located far from where the products are being used. All of the world’s sewn clothing --  from mukluks, to high fashion and business wear, to cheap generic imported T shirts – is mostly handmade. Fabric cutting processes were robotized many years ago, including here at Aerostich, but even the best computerized sewing equipment currently available cannot manage to quickly and efficiently move a mix of soft materials through a sewing machine’s stitching systems as expertly as a talented human. Producing beautifully sewn compound curves and complex shapes when combining multiple fabrics remains an art requiring world-class skill, talent and concentration. There is a difference between mass produced fashion-branded garments made to be highly marketable, and Aerostich gear. Both are handmade, but one is produced on large standardized assembly lines in annually revised variations, while the other looks almost the same decade after decade, incorporating ongoing small detail improvements. One is available in six or eight easy-to-inventory sizes and the other is available in over sixty. When you have access to industrial sewing at a very low cost, it is tempting to focus on cramming as many features as possible into a given product until it ends up being complicated and expensive. Heavier, too because you continue adding more and more until it becomes almost a kind of costume like what ‘Super Dave’ always wore. For bamboozling inexperienced and insecure consumers, and for maximizing profit, that is just what you do. Over the long run usually whatever is simplest, lightest and most functional works best.  Examples include those amusing artisanal moose hide mukluks and the Aerostich armored coveralls. There is a wonderful brief scene making fun of overdone fashion clothing in the very old movie ‘Beverly Hills Cop’. Eddie Murphy plays a regular-guy Detroit cop named Axel Foley and he’s just arrived in LA to investigate the murder of his hometown friend. He’s walking down the sidewalk of a warm sunny west LA shopping street and passes a fashion-conscious couple walking the other direction wearing matching leather designer outfits. After he’s a few steps past them he doubles over in silent laughter. Fashions change.

Snow clean up at Aerostich after a blizzard came through last weekend, dropping over 20 inches of snow in Duluth. It's been a wild week. A couple of nights ago I discovered a slowly deflating rear tire on my electric ‘winter commuter’ bicycle. A little sliver of metal had penetrated the studded tire’s casing and innertube. This puncture was easy to find and fix. Sometimes ultra-slow leaks can be hard to find, even with a tub full of water, but this one made a nice stream of bubbles. After the patch had been applied and was ‘self-vulcanizing’ I looked around the garage for something productive to do start-to-finish which would take only a few minutes, just to be positive the patch would be solidly bonded to the tube before putting everything back together. Patching inner tubes is super easy. I’ve done this job too many times to count and being O.C.D. about these repairs is important. Now what to do for the next few minutes? Sweep the garage floor? Naah. It wasn’t that bad. Finish connecting in the Suzuki’s new electric grips?  No, that would be a longer job. What else?...What else? I was surrounded by half-done and long-procrastinated projects and was hoping something would appear which required only the very short time it would take to be sure this patch would be permanent. This waiting is probably unnecessary, but somehow it adds certainty, so any other small garage job requiring between two and fifteen minutes would be fine. Attempting to fix the sticky turn signal switch on my old (94) XR 650L was the most appealing option so I walked over to that bike with a non-JIS Philips to give it a try. Until then I’d never taken any turn signal switches apart, not even once. The button’s sliding action was terrible, with a pepper-grinder’s gritty feeling, and its on-center push-in-to-cancel function was sticky and slow to pop back up. After parking this bike five or six years ago I’d recently decided to start using it again. This involved taking care of the usual older bike-neglect items: replacing its battery, cleaning out the insides of its carburetor, changing out old oil and rebuilding both brake hydraulics. Until I was sure this bike would still be a pretty good commuter it was easy to not even notice its gritty, sticky turn signal switch. (And slighlty too-dry tires.) Fortunately, the Honda turned out to be a good commuter, except for it’s icky turn signal switch feel. Two unscrewed Philips’s later I was looking at a cad-plated internal switch cover held in place by a third slightly smaller Philips. After lifting that away the quarter-century accumulation of dirt and grit was obvious. The button-lever moving part of the switch was held in place between a spacer and a washer, and all three were mounted by a fourth little Philips. With those three parts removed the button lever simply lifted out. All that was left was a liberal spray bath of electrical contact cleaner, a clean toothbrush scrub, another contact cleaner spray rinse and paper towel wipe up, followed by some strategically applied dielectric grease and the sequenced reassembly.  What a difference! I hesitate to compare this little procedure with how people enjoy bathing, exfoliatingly drying themselves, and then sometimes applying various kinds of healthful skin lotions –- But this wasn’t all that different, and the little switch now felt almost as smooth under my left thumb as if one was stroking somebody’s well-pampered and well-lotioned skin. Don’t ask me how many times I stood there idly enjoying sliding that switch from side to side and turning it on and off. I didn’t count, but it was more than twice and less than fifty. Ten minutes later the studded electric bicycle’s winter tire was back in place, fully inflated, and that machine was also ready to go. After the tire patching kit and tools were put away, and my hands were washed, I left the garage wearing a helluva stupid smile, just as very small children sometimes do. It’s always the little things. -- Mr. Subjective, 12/2019

Yesterday for the first time this fall it got down to twenty degrees, well below historical averages here on this date. I rode to work from a heated garage aboard a recently re-animated -- but still seriously old -- 1994 Honda XR650L (photo, left). It didn’t take very long to dress for this chilly commute, either. Nobody else on my fifteen-minute surface street route was riding, but the road was dry, and the sun was shining. I was comfortable the entire way. Everything was perfect. When I came out the sidewalk after five PM it was already fully dark and still only twenty, and the bike just…barely…started. Lighting its ICE fire involved multiple stabs of the button and more than a full minute of worriedly listening to labored slow cranking, despite temp-stable synthetic oil and a brand-new Lithium battery. I was glad nobody was around to witness me standing there worryingly thinking about how I might have to push it into a warm place and then wait until everything warmed up for at least half an hour…and the engine finally caught. Whew! Exhaust condensation puff-puff-puffing from the end of its muffler did look cool. Once again, I’d partly forgotten how many kinds of motorcycles are simply not good for real cold weather commuting operations. Especially big carbureted singles like this nearly vintage XL, which had not seen a twenty-degree commute in probably ten years. A triumph of rose-colored-goggles hope over reality. And another reason to celebrate the near-universal adoption of electronic fuel injection. Engines like this can be harder to start at any time, much less in cold weather. When this model was created back in 1994 (yes, it is a first-year one, and yes it IS hard to believe how long these have now been continuously produced) it was made to be used as a dirt bike in sunny, warm places -- not for commuting through cloudy, cold, dark Minnesota winters. Thus, its efficient and lightweight electric starting system is far too small for winter commuting around here. Last winter my commute-solution was an electric bicycle on studded tires (photo, left) which worked more or less ok, but because it maxes out at 20-25 mph, the commute became ten minutes longer. A motorcycle’s average surface street speed is 30-40 mph, an electric bicycle’s average speed is 15-25 mph, and a pedal-only bicycle’s average commute speed is 10-15 mph. Wintertime = increased commute time. The scientific name for the average length of time people will tolerate when commuting is called ‘the Marchetti Constant’ and this time-value holds at about thirty minutes throughout all of recorded history, and everywhere in the world. This is what limited the footprint of pre-technological cities, and partly explains how modern suburban sprawl, shopping centers, hospitals and schools fit into discrete neighborhoods and boroughs, and how most neighborhoods and wards fit together within larger cities. It also partly explains how prior to the industrial revolution artisanal agriculture-centered towns and villages were separated from fields by ‘x’ distances, and how each of those little villages were ‘x’ distance apart. Thirty minutes, on average. Whenever I walk to work it’s just over an hour and this is always a great time-luxury. And when I motorcycle it’s usually just under fifteen minutes. Pedaling and electric pedaling splits this difference. Co-workers Randy and Kyle figured out their winter-motorcycle-commute a couple of years ago. They share an electric Zero. No matter how cold it gets this bike starts right up and takes them home -- no muss, no fuss, and no adverse impact on normal summer/spring/fall commute times. Reducing one’s carbon footprint is great but even better is not worrying if, at the end of a workday, one’s correctly tuned ‘old-reliable’ ICE bike will actually start when it’s Winter Time. - Mr. Subjective, Nov 2019

Question... “When you finish a long adventure ride, have you experienced strong emotions that you hadn’t planned on? If so, what were they and why?” -- Michael Boton (from the LinkedIn online forum 'motorcycle journalists') Many years ago, at age 43, I took three months off and rode 17K miles from Minnesota to Mongolia and back, via Siberia, China and Japan. I experienced this ride with another rider and learned a lot about myself, geopolitics and people. (1, 2 and 3…) At a basic level, I gained increased proficiency in many ‘adventure’ riding and camping technical skills, since most of the Asian parts of the trip involved long days of dirt roads, trails and rail line right-of-way’s, plus weeks and weeks of continuous camping. A lot of work but tremendously fun. Meeting daily-encountered-strangers as half of a pair of travelers was also a great self-awareness learning experience. Watching how people responded to each of us was a kind of comparative case-study experience which would never happen if one was a lone rider or were traveling among a larger group. Returning home brought what felt almost like a secret (and maybe childish?) kind of superiority, though not in a condescending way. For a couple of weeks processing all the familiar routines of everyday life was a bit more vivid. Lastly, every additional night I slept in my little tent caused it to become a larger and larger dwelling. By the end of the three-month trip it had grown in size to feel like almost a mansion, with abundant space for my every possession, thought and activity. This still occurs -- even after only a night or two on the road, and also when wilderness camping. Your little tent, and all it contains, becomes almost a palace. --- Mr. Subjective, 2-14

Our first product was the ‘Roadcrafter’, an armored coverall which has been produced, updated and improved continuously for thirty-six years. We’ve never felt the need to restyle it. Depending on how much one rides, and if they sit behind a windshield or fairing, and where they mostly ride, a Roadcrafter can function well for many years. Still, they eventually wear out. Nowadays there are riders on their third or fourth one. Last week one long-time customer emailed to suggest he might have the oldest one still in regular use. I replied: I don’t know if you are the longest continuously wearing Aerostich gear wearer or not, but it’s an interesting question. Maybe this would make a nice online contest? There already is a similar contest at our Very Boring Rally. Held every five years, one of the most fun events is a contest for the most worn-out and disreputable looking Aerostich suit. There is no shortage of entrants. (The next VBR -- number five -- should happen sometime during the summer of 2023, and we hope you’ll come.) Roadcrafters have always been simply ‘Equipment for Riders’ – a more convenient way to protectively dress to ride a motorcycle. They also unexpectedly became the recipe template for literally all of the world’s modern textile rider’s gear. Armored textile coveralls are likely to remain unconventional for a long time ahead compared to the traditional choices of denim and leathers. A favorite story about this difference happened maybe twenty-five years ago just as Aerostich was starting to become known among touring and commuting riders. I’d ridden with a friend to the old road race event held for a few years through-the-streets of Steamboat Springs Colorado. (The second night it was cold enough to leave a little snow on my tent in the morning, but by noon everything had warmed up nicely.) At some point this fellow introduced me to four other riders he knew, but whom I’d never met. The six of us were standing on a sidewalk in front of a row of small-town shops and I was wearing a somewhat grubby several-year-old one-piece Roadcrafter. My friend said: “This is Andy Goldfine, the owner/founder of Aerostich.”  Without missing a beat one of the four looked directly at me and replied: “If you are the owner of Aerostich, how come your suit looks like crap?” All I could do was smile and say it was well broken-in and comfortable, and I liked it better that way. The Roadcrafter coverall was created to help make motorcycle commuting easier, safer and more comfortable. It’s simply a piece of equipment. Wearing one always has been a little ostracizing. Roadcrafter’s don’t label you as a ‘biker’, ‘adventure motorcyclist’, ‘hip experienced moto-person’ or anything. I’m as sensitive as anyone about this, but because I only want to be able to ride more easily, safely and comfortably, I don’t care. This just isn’t a big deal if one’s priority is to ride more. --- Mr. Subjective, 11-19 PS – Earlier today under dark cloudy skies I rode to a scheduled meeting at the aquarium here. It was pretty cold, maybe 34º. I walked in wearing a black R-3 Stealth suit and holding my gloves and helmet. Another person at the meeting, a bright friendly woman who’s worked with me there for many years, said: “Did you motorcycle in a snowmobile suit?” After thirty-six years, all I could do was smile. PPS – Here is a short essay on ‘The Joy of Wearing Out A Piece of Gear’ which was recently published online by Outside Magazine: https://www.outsideonline.com/2283481/joy-wearing-out-piece-gear. And here is another slightly longer and slightly more philosophic essay about ‘The Life Changing Magic of Making Do’ (about the same thing) from the Globe and Mail website: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-life-changing-magic-of-making-do

A few weeks ago, I drained the fuel tanks and float bowls of my two long-ridden old (BMW) airheads, washed and waxed both, aired up their tires, and then put them away inside the basement, not the garage. Also pulled spark plugs and sprayed oil in the upper cylinders. First time I’ve ever formally ‘put a bike away’. Felt like an embalming. Depressing. Had not ridden either bike this year or last, and no plans to use either during the next few years. An admission I won’t be making time to work on or ride them for a while. So, they now rest next to the washer and dryer. They do look sorta cool there. Boxer engine width made both unexpectedly difficult to get through the doorway into the basement – the ‘naked’ R100 took 20 min of wiggling and the ‘naked’ R80 10 min. First snow is predicted this Friday. Goal: Before winter arrives fill the other three currently ridden bikes tanks with 100% no-alcohol gas and a little gas-stabilizer. They are rarely ridden after streets are winter sanded and salted. And I’ll continue to daily ride and commute via a rusty studded-tire winter bicycle. It’s not the cold or the universal winter grime. It’s more the corrosive damage. The two older bikes with petcocks are ridden a short distance with the fuel valves closed until their float bowels are empty. This takes slightly more than a quarter mile. The goal is to run the carburetor totally out of gas, so the engine dies just as you coast up the driveway. Then into the garage with a little fuel stabilizer in the tank and trickle charger for the battery. Last year the beat-up very old XL250 was chained up and left outside all winter beneath only a lightweight cover and about a hundred inches of accumulated snow. Hate leaving any bike outside this way because the range of the daily freeze-thaw cycle is so large. Minus twenty to plus forty. When April finally comes its petcock is re-opened and after giving the stabilized gasoline a few moments to refill the float bowel last spring it started ‘first kick’. Satisfaction (and a little surprised) that day as I sat there in the sunshine happily listening to its familiar engine sound. The other warm-garaged fuel injected modern bike electric-started fine, too. Best fuel stabilizer? Unknown. My friends and I all use one made for (private-labeled?) outboard boat gas tanks, and widely available at big box outdoor sports and marine/marina stores. The last time I kept a motorcycle inside the living area of a house was 1970. I was sixteen. During the first week after my birthday that year I quietly pushed my first street-licensed bike from the garage into my ground-level basement bedroom every night until my mother noticed and put a stop to it. When I asked my wife about the two old BMW’s now stored in our basement, she replied: “they look neat there…”, center-stranded next to the wall just past the clothes washer and dryer. Marry the right person. Always the sweetest MC ride of the year is on that one late-fall day when the streets have not yet been salted and sanded while more-than-a-few light snowflakes are dancing in the air you are riding through. Still mostly dry pavement. This occurs most – but not every -- year. And when you experience this, it’s magic. Especially at night. – Mr. Subjective, 11-1-19

Getting Started: Notes On One’s First Bike Trip Packing your crap... The first few days of travel and dealing with the straps, soft duffels and bags will teach you if your setup is good for you. The idea is to have things secure, semi-easy to get to, and not too much of a problem to remove or re-load. If it takes twenty minutes every morning to load everything when you are wanting to get going, and twenty minutes at night to unload when you are tired and just want to be done, it can be frustrating. At least one pack should be easily opened at gas stations or on a roadside, without untying everything else. Into this should go rain gloves, a sweater, a wind shirt, a hat, and anything that you might need handy for varying weather conditions. And if you buy an extra banana or water bottle at a gas stop, it’s nice to have enough available space for it there, too. Soft bags and duffels are great, but nothing strapped onto the back of your bike is going to be as easy to deal with as hard pannier bags or boxes in terms of speed and convenience. Conversely, no hard bags are as light, simple and compact (and safe if you crash...) as soft bags and duffels. That’s the compromise. Writing journals... There are two ways I've kept daily logs. If I am carrying a laptop or tablet, I try to type a few notes in the evening or morning. Usually not more than the basics: Day, Date, Miles, Location, Weather and anything interesting I experienced or thought about. Some people like to keep exhaustive and detailed expense records, road and turn notations, bike maintenance records and meteorological information. Not me. If something broke on my bike, I’ll note it, and the circumstances involved in fixing it. If I experienced cold, wet or had headwinds, I’ll note those things. Perfect weather, too. Later I can fill in descriptions of briefly noted occurrences and scenes from memory, if I want to. If I am traveling light, I use a little notebook, always bound on the left side (because I write right-handed), and a grease pencil (for lining printed maps and writing on the tank bag window) or space pen (for everything else). Same things recorded as on the laptop or tablet, but longhand. It’s interesting to note the way one’s handwriting changes during the course of a trip. If it is your first-ever on a motorcycle (or on a new-to-you motorcycle), it will be especially good to capture your feelings and ideas. You can only do anything for the first time once. Years from now you may find yourself looking back, and you'll have some idea of the situations you were in, and what you experienced. Some may be embarrassing, but it will bring back the memories and smiles. The kinds of memories any journal brings back are completely different than the kinds of things a photograph captures. A journal holds what you were thinking, on that day. It helps me to write for some imagined reader: anyone you care about is good. Someone to whom you’d want to share with, and who cares about you, is the best. Keeping lists of things to do, post-trip... The other thing to keep in the trip notes is a record of things about your motorcycle and kit to pay attention to later. For example, list little easily forgotten items like: replace lost ear plug bag file off rough edge by seat bar shorten rear view mirror stem buy toothpaste This sort of a list is best kept separately from the daily notes, located above the daily entries in a file on your computer, or on a separate page of a written journal. A personal perspective on this stuff... I'm just trying to figure these things out the best I can, for myself. I always have a list of things needed on my bike, stuff I'd like to fix, upgrade or otherwise address. My personal Aerostich gear seems to work best after it’s a little more worn out and beat up. I go from one day to the next just messing around, and juggling too many things in not enough time. That’s why it always feels so good to finally be rolling away into the horizon...toward somewhere. Time to think, time to wonder, time to ride. (...And if you are heading out into the back country far from everywhere, don’t forget to take along one of these little trowels and some TP.) Share your tips or memories of your first motorcycle trip in our comments below!

If it can happen, it will (usually)... 1. The farther it is to the next gas stop, the larger the bug that will hit your shield exactly on the sight line. These may help... Cycle Wipes Effective, specially formulated wet wipes for cleaning bugs and grime from visors, shields and bikes. Convenient 12-count re-sealable travel pack stores easily in a pocket or tank bag. The ultra soft, lint-free mesh fabric pre-moistened towelettes are a durable, safe and ammonia free way to wipe helmets, visors and windscreens. They are also perfect for cleaning up your bug blasted headlights and turn signals. Pack of 12 wipes. 2. When you dry out after riding through some rain, it will start raining again just when you begin to feel comfortable. These may help... Aerostich Always-Ready Boot Raincovers Practical and lightweight, these ripstop nylon raincovers self-store in a small, flat pocket that secures via hook and loop to the inside shin area of the R-3, R-3 Light, Classic Roadcrafter, AD1 and Darien Suits and pants. The integrated storage makes them super easy to put on and ensures they are always ready when you need them. 7"×6.5" . M (7–9), L (10–12), XL (13–14). 3. The chance that your bike insurer will find out about that big ticket received in a non-reciprocal state is about 100%. This may help... Radar Detector Remote Visual Alert You’ll never miss this bright 3-LED flash when a signal is detected. Adjustable brightness for day or night conditions. Plugs in to 3.5mm headphone jack on most brands of detectors. Water resistant and compact design can be mounted to any convenient visible location with included straps. 1.25"×.6", 8’ cord. 4. If you run out of gas, no matter which way you decide to push, the closest gas station will always be uphill and in the other direction. Corollary: The likelihood of running out increases when all of the nearby gas stations are closed. This may help... E-Fill Siphon A self-priming fuel transfer system. No matter where you are, this ultra compact system won’t leave you stranded for long. Throw away that length of gnarly old hose and safely siphon fuel from any gas-powered device without getting a mouthful of gas. 5. The chance of your helmet dropping hard onto the rough concrete or asphalt surface is proportional to its newness and expense. This may help... Helmet/Jacket Lockstrap Great for strapping helmet, jacket and other gear to your bike and ensuring it stays there. Locking carabiner means no keys to worry about. Full length steel braided cable runs through strap for added security. 2' long. Sold individually. 6. You only realize the bike's keys are in your pants pocket after you've put on all of your riding gear. It's a good thing Aerostich suits have... Flap covered hip-side zippers Access your keys, wallet, chapstick, etc, through one of the hip-side zippers integrated into all our main riding gear. 7. The more riders around, the more likely you will: Forget the kill switch is in the off position while trying to start your bike; Ride off with the sidestand down; Ride off with the petcock closed; Ride along for miles with the turn signal on; Get stung by a bee and do a roadside crazy dance shedding your riding gear. These may help... BeeSting Ampules After doing said crazy dance, apply one of these disposable swabs. They contain enough Benzocaine to immediately relieve the searing pain so you can ride onward enjoying the rest of the day. 8. Your battery will die at the exact same time something else on the bike breaks and you will think they are related. This may help... Compact Digital Voltmeter Know the health of your bikes charging system in real-time with this compact, waterproof, digital voltmeter. Reads tenths of a volt (12.6, 12.7, 12.8, etc) and is easy to install. Compact, easy to read, waterproof, vibration proof and dust proof. 9. Your first successful multi-gear wheelie will be past a heretofore unobserved police officer who dislikes motorcycles. See #3 above... 10. A bad day of riding is better than a good day at work. This may help... You Are Traffic T-Shirt If you are not moving, get a motorcycle and break free. Make your commute better. Make your day better. Make your world better. Make a statement and ride there. Rain. Shine. Hot. Cold. It's all better. Made in USA. 100% Cotton. M-XXL. White. Share your "Murphy's Laws" moments or stories in the comments below!

"The Older I Get, the Faster I Wuz..." Back in the day when 'Smokey and the Bandit' was in first-run theatrical release, Fuzzbuster (cheap) and Escort (expensive) radar detectors were still pretty new stuff. Lots of drivers had them and also the CB radios needed for talking about all the 'Bears' and 'Countie-mounties'. The era's quaint cat-and-mouse games between speeders and authorities were lots of fun, and occasionally could even be epic -- hard as that is to believe today. Motorcycle 'Track days' and racecourse-based performance riding schools did not exist yet. The universally disliked 55 mile-per-hour energy-saving speed limit helped encourage widespread scofflaw behavior and civil disobedience. Supposedly fast riders would boast: "I never get tickets" and go on to describe in detail their combined stealth-riding tactics, methods, road-wisdom and technology countermeasures. A few even used highly illegal radar jammers. Name: Joe PasquarelloPhoto Location: Outside Anchorage, AKPhoto Credit: Mike NothomStory Behind Photo: Photo taken while I whizzed by our chase vehicle just prior to receiving a Performance Award from the local Sheriff. When asked why I was so far ahead of the group (of Harley riders) I exclaimed: "They're chasing me, they're chasing me!" He chuckled and wrote me up anyway...nice guy though. One time on a road trip to Bike Week in Florida I had a pretty fancy one of those jammers. Never could quite figure out how effective it was at jamming, but it sure was fun to play with other speeding dudes driving radar detector-equipped muscle cars. They'd fly by and get about 100 yards ahead and you'd flip the jammer on and their detector would like up like a Christmas tree and they'd nail the brakes really hard (which was tactically correct). A minute or two later you'd be half a mile or more ahead again and they'd take their Camaro (or whatever) back up to flank speed and blast right by. After they'd gone a little ways farther you'd hit them again with the jammer and the brake lights would pop back on and the entire scenario would repeat as I tried to keep from laughing. Once or twice I even got a puff of tire smoke from the outlaw dude's tires as the car tipped forward into its brakes a little too aggressively. Despite the great amusement of this game, I put this sociopathic toy away after that trip. Permanently. It was just too mean. To all those moto-speeders who liked to boast they were so skillful they could ride really fast most of the time, yet never get tickets... Well yeah, sure. After riding with a fair number of these boastful narcissists I eventually concluded their stories were largely BS, and formulated a private theory: If you think you are riding fast a lot but are not getting tickets once in a while, then you are not really riding all that fast. The only way to be sure you are riding illegally fast frequently and for longer distances is if you are getting tickets occasionally. Really fast riders all get tickets. They are unavoidable. Confirmation of this came one day at the old Jan Cutler - Steve Losofsky Reno BMW store. I was there once only, passing through on my way from somewhere to somewhere else. Jan and Steve were among the hardest-core originals when it came to long distance illegal high speed riding and their shop was a Mecca for many like-minded riders. It featured a wall where hundreds of fast riders had pinned up their tickets, or copies of them. This display was a thing of beauty. A shrine. I stood before and marveled. And today I wonder if anyone back then was smart enough to take a high-res photo of it? No phone-cameras existed so this would have required 35mm film inside a dedicated camera. If anyone has one (?) let me know and maybe we'll make and sell a poster-sized print. It was that inspiring. The only certain way to know you are a too-fast rider is if you are getting enough tickets to be worried about losing your license on points. I'm not there (anymore), and most riders today don't care very much about such outlaw horoics, but even now almost every speeding ticket has memorable story potential. Here's one... About twenty years ago, when the Aerostich company was about ten or twelve years along, I was riding a little too fast on some rural two lane road around southern Ohio. Or some nearby state. Heading back from Bike Week maybe. I've forgotten all these specifics but still clearly remember the exact roadside location, scene and situation. The cop had pulled me over and asked for and received my license and registration and had gone back to his patrol car to write me up while I sat there on my bike forlorn but also a little confused. He'd sure been looking at me and my bike funny while talking about my speeding as I was getting my wallet out. All law-enforcement firm and gruff, but there was also something slightly odd about his manner. I could not quite put my finger on it. He comes back with my ticket, hands it to me and I sign it. Then he says, brightly: "Isn't that one of those new Aerostich suits?" Our innovative riding suits were then getting a lot of coverage in most of the motorcycle magazines. Oh crap I thought, now stone-faced. This hick county cop was a rider! Aaagh! I'd missed it completely while he was talking with me after the stop. Post-signature and now we had a nice conversation (through my slightly gritted teeth) about his riding and the Aerostich suits. At the end I still had the stupid ticket. &%#*?!!! If only I'd been able to somehow figure out he was another rider BEFORE he'd gone back to the patrol car to write out that ticket. It could have been a warning instead. Except he was too professional and I missed it. Without that cop's Aerostich suit interest this ticket incident would be completely forgotten by now, just like so many other long-forgotten tickets from back in the days. One of too many. Now let me tell you about another one. A "100+ mph" big ticket received on the side of California's 1-5 when folllowing at-a-good-distance some guy absolutely flying along, driving a late-model BMW 7 series car...and about one from the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police aka 'Mounties') twenty miles south of Sudbury...and about the roadside warning received only fifteen miles from home on I-35 after deliberately (and very slowly -- only 1.0 mph) passing a MN Highway Patrol car which for some reason had been holding everyone else up at exactly 55.0 mph for the previous seventy miles...and about...and about...and... Share your speeding ticket stories in the comments below! We'd love to hear them...

The Ultimate Poach Camping App. Motorcycle vagabonding in the United States usually involves some camping, occasional couch surfing and a few cheap motels. The camping stuff divides between authorized and unauthorized campsites. Unauthorized means poach-camping. Stealth camping. Finding someplace to pull off the road for the night where nobody is likely to bother you, and hopefully also in an open-enough space so as not to be also appealing to hordes of mosquitos. Hard to find camping spots that are both open and hidden. This app (onX Hunt, illustrated at left) is the ultimate tool for poach campers, and this story is all about poach-camping, which you need to know is illegal and scary. Just how scary and how illegal depends on the site’s particulars, some of which you can see directly, and some you can only see via this app. Regardless of what you know about an illegal campsite, you always need to be ready to leave in a hurry, and stealthy equipment like an Aerostich black ultralight motorcycle cover can help conceal your bike. A blaze orange tent isn’t such a good idea (not to mention that inside such a highly visible structure the orange-colored light filtering through the fabric makes your skin look so cadaverously gray it will make you nauseous). A quiet-ish bike that is lightweight enough to be ridden into a completely undeveloped site is helpful, too. The quieter and lighter, the better. Poach-camping sites will not have showers or pit toilets like an organized legal campground, but when you do find a nice site where nobody has ever camped before it will actually be cleaner than any paid campsite. Paid commercial campsites range from popular and heavily over-used, over-priced, and dirty to seldom used very remote sites with honor-system pay boxes administered by the Corps of Engineers which can be pristine, quiet, scenic and wonderful. There are apps, guide books and directories of all campgrounds to help you find and sort out the options. Experience and common sense means you’ll need to start looking for a suitable poach-camp site with enough time before sundown. Noticing what you are riding past during the later part of the afternoon, and not focusing on squeezing every last possible mile out of the day. You’ll need to think about the story you may have to tell if anyone comes by with questions (hopefully not with an attitude and a shotgun). Once in a while that could happen. We are a well-armed citizenry these days with more tribal and risk-averse paranoid people than ever, thanks (in my opinion) to our near-universally consumed advanced technologies like digital media, digital social networks and enclosed air-conditioned automobiles. Blah, blah, blah. In any encounter with a local you’ll either be asked to leave immediately, possibly angrily, or told to leave in the morning, or invited to their place for a home-made dinner. The outcome may be influenced by the story you tell. It can be helpful to travel with a GF or wife. Next best is to be with one other rider, and third best is to be alone. Three riders sometimes can be ok, too. Once, after a long riding day and a failure to locate a non-existent campground indicated on a Garmin GPS, my riding partner and I decided to camp very late behind a small grove of pine trees on the side of an access road into a rural cemetery just off a country road in Montana. This fairly well hidden site was high on a bluff that overlooked the Platte (or Missouri?) river just outside of some small farm town. The location was deserted but had been recently mowed. We pitched our tent close behind three medium size pine trees, covered the bikes with black Aerostich stealth lightweight covers and fell asleep, thinking we were safe in a perfect poach-camping spot. At 5:30 AM the next morning we awoke when a car went by, heading into the cemetery. Fifteen minutes later, another car, then another two cars. By 6 AM half a dozen cars had driven past our secret spot right into this little cemetery. I looked at my watch, confused. My partner asked me what day this was. “Monday.” I replied. Uh-oh….it was Memorial Day! Yikes! We shook our heads. This place was about to become crowded with people. Of all the nights of the year to poach camp on the access road into a cemetery. We packed and loaded our gear up quickly and rode away before anyone saw us. Or if they did, before someone decided to stop and ask us what the F we were doing there. There are all kinds of poach-campable places where one isn’t likely to be discovered, but poach camping will always be risky. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some kind of app that told you who owned every plat of land in the country? You’d be able to see state and county owned land, parks, and everything else. There is, About a month ago I was reading a story in an outdoor magazine written by a young couple living the modern wilderness life with a couple of mountain bikes and an off-road lifted Airstream travel trailer. The author mentioned an app that would exactly ID every parcel of land in the entire country, instantaneously. On the app store this app was $99 a year. Holy-c_ap! All my other apps were either free or $2.99. This one sure must be something to be worth a hundred dollars a year. Guess what? It is. If you want to poach-camp, it can be game-changer. Look at this: It’s the one in the lower right, ‘onX Hunt’. Designed for hunters who want to know ahead of time whose land they are walking across as they pursue their deer, partridge, or feral pig quarry. Every land owner is listed in the entire country, as is every piece of state, county, city land. Parks, abandoned lands. Everything. It’s important to note that property owners living adjacent to vacant city, county and state lands often consider those places ‘theirs’ so be careful. There’s a couple of these kind of vacant lots next to my residence and if I noticed a tent and a bike in there for more than a day I’d probably call the police. Still, with common sense and this app you can greatly increase your chances for a successful poach-camping outcome. It comes down to being stealthy and unseen, and leaving your site clean. No open fires, burying your waste, being quiet, etc. Here’s a quick zoom-in set of screen shots from near our facility. Note the public and vacant land along the ‘North Shore Hiking Trail’. If you think like a homeless person, poach-camping is doable. In fact, when poach-camping in and near cities you may encounter a homeless person. They are not there willingly. Whenever you decide to poach-camp you become a traditional old school ‘motorcycle-bum’, or ‘poverty rider’. You are joining a long and not-particularly-noble tradition of homeless, vagabonds and hobos. Times change. Practice at your own risk. What's your poach camping story? Be sure to leave a comment below.

Riding from Pickerington, Ohio to Duluth, Minnesota. Between 2000 and 2007 I rode from Minnesota to Ohio and back several times a year, always aboard a 1981 BMW 800. These were wonderful bikes with famously weak electrical charging systems. My outbound route was east across US2 to the Mackinac Bridge then south on I-75 to Columbus. The route back was via a matrix of little roads up to the Ludington Ferry, then across Lake Michigan and then a bunch more little roads across Wisconsin northwest to Minnesota. About nine hundred easy miles each way, spread over two nice nine hour days. 55 and 65 mph two lane speed limits across sparsely settled northern Wisconsin and the U.P., then 75+ freeway south of the bridge all the way down to the Ohio border. Tuesday, August 7, 2007, Pickerington, Ohio Fed Ex arrived at about a quarter to eleven. Spent the morning in the hotel lobby, typing e-mails off line, waiting. Just as I’d unwrapped the bike parts Ken comes down. We have a good fifteen minute talk. He suggests the high speed ferry that takes only two and a half hours and lands at Milwaukee. He looks up the scheduled Muskegon depart time on his Blackberry, and I program the GPS and it says I can make it with 45 minutes to spare. So we forgo breakfast and I take off, zooming along following the purple line of route directions on the GPS and taking only a single fast gas stop (11 minutes from exit ramp to refill, to peeing, to back onto the entrance ramp…) and no food. I think I’ll just make it. Still my mind begins to gnaw on the timing, and the alternator warning light gets worse and worse. Hardly ever coming onto charge mode now, but at least I have a replacement diode board, and hopefully brushes (I did not see them, but assume they are there, inside the bubble-wrapped diode board package…). Things should be ok. After thinking about the time the ferry leaves, 4:45pm, I wonder if it is on eastern time or central time? If it is central, I’m early by 45 min. If eastern, I’m late by fifteen. After pounding butt for six hours, it turns out I’m late by fifteen. I remount and ride along the shore toward Ludington, another 50 miles north to the old Badger ferry and a four hour crossing, arriving in Wisconsin at about 11pm. Twenty miles before town the bike goes onto reserve so I stop to fill it’s tank. Aboard the ferry I buy a salad and bottle of water, and read magazines. I also call ahead for a room at the dockside Best Western in WI. The only thing they offer is a smoking room, at a special rate of $98. Yeah, right. I ask if the windows open, and they say “yes”, so I’ll find out how stinky one of these smoking rooms really is when I get there. It’s been a few years since I was in one. After the magazines were read, I typed this trip journal. The lights of Wisconsin just came into view. I’ll probably try and take the now full gas tank off in the motel parking lot in the morning and see if I can replace the brushes and diode board before riding the last six hours home. If I can’t, I can buy a battery or battery charger and ride home in the daylight in total-loss mode, so there is a ‘plan-b’. That gas tank will weigh about 80 pounds. I don’t remember the last time I took off a gas tank that was nearly full. Eight or nine gallons. Yuck. I hope I don’t drop it or break one of the petcocks. The tone of the Badger’s coal-fired triple expansion steam engines just changed. Must be getting near shore. Wednesday August 8, 2007 Up at 7, clear, sunny, about 75º. Last night, after the ferry landed, I’d rode the two blocks to the hotel with the headlight off, in the dark, hoping there was enough juice still in the battery to keep two spark plugs sparking, and fortunately there was. After checking in (and opening the room’s window wide…) I unwrapped the bubble-wrapped BMW parts and found only the diode board. No brushes. Crap. So I went to the hotel bar and ordered a martini. Then back to the now-slightly-less-stinky room and into bed, where I fell asleep in about ten seconds. The next morning right after showering, I went out to the parking lot wearing shorts, sandals and a fresh shirt, carrying the diode board and the small zippered ‘miscellaneous junk’ pouch from the tank bag. (It has a Leatherman multi-pliers-tool, some bits of wire, a cigarette lighter, a hot-melt glue stick, a small compass, some rubber bands, a mini-roll of duct tape, and various other odds n’ ends.) It’s seven thirty AM on a very fine day. First, I roll the bike about five feet so it is more directly underneath a shady tree branch partly overhanging the pavement. Then I take the front cover off the engine, and remove the outer part of the alternator, called the stator. This is the part that holds the brushes. One of the brushes, the forward-most one, was much shorter than the other. The spring behind it was fully extended, so it was not making a continuous direct contact with the copper ring on the rotor beneath. I was sitting on my butt, cross legged, right next to the front wheel, facing the engine while doing all this. On the asphalt next to me was the bike’s unrolled tool kit, the motorcycle’s unlatched saddle, the tank bag’s ‘junk’ pouch, the Leatherman pliers, and half a dozen engine cover and alternator assembly fasteners and washers. Everything except the saddle was neatly laid out on an Aerostich envelope bag. Right next to all of this and directly on the asphalt was an unused wooden kitchen match. I picked it up and stared at it. With the wire cutters of the Leatherman, I nipped about half an inch from the end. Exactly the right size. Using the tool kit’s small screwdriver, I positioned it behind the worn-out brush, re-installed the brush’s spring, and then put the alternator and engine back together. Then I rolled up the tools, put away the Leatherman, stood up, clicked the bikes saddle back into position and turned the key. Immediate vroom. Immediate 13volts of charging power. Fixed!! Yeayyy!!! This whole MacGyver job took less than thirty minutes. I went back to the room, packed, dressed, loaded the bike, checked out, and was riding north toward Green Bay by 8:15AM, with a nice tail wind, the XM radio on a forties channel playing thru my ear speakers, and a song in my heart. ‘Zip ah dee doo dah…zip a dee day…’ was literally playing. By two thirty I was at Ashland, where I gassed the bike, ate a banana, a hot dog and drank a bottle of water, and then rode the last fifty miles to Duluth. At five minutes to five I stopped at Aerostich and worked there until seven. Then home to read and enjoy a Subway veggie sandwich. The bike will get it’s new alternator brushes and probably a transmission gear lube change this weekend, and then should be ok for a while. The day before leaving for Ohio I’d changed it’s engine oil. – Mr. Subjective. What's your best bodge story? Be sure to leave a comment below.

Back in 2009 I had two flats, both at highway speeds and both due to using dry-rotted innertubes. Luckily no crash resulted. All because of my own negligence and ignorance. Somewhere along the way I’d forgotten that one should always put a new tube in when installing a new tire. In hindsight I don’t know what I could have been thinking. For many years I replaced a worn-out tire on this bike about twice a year, and not the tube. How did I manage to forget or un-learn this? Today I had a flat tire on my motorcycle. The first in more than ten years. I was traveling southbound on US 53, just north of Wascott. This road is now fully four lane divided with a 65 mph speed limit and that’s about the speed I was going. Sunny and nice. Light traffic. Mid-afternoon. At first the bike started to steer funny. It was subtle — as if I was riding on a worn-out road with depressions where heavy traffic had thinned the pavement. The highway looked perfectly flat so I moved over toward the center of the lane to see if it was my bike or the road. A flat tire was the very last thing on my mind. Hmmm. Bike still wiggly. I looked again extra carefully at the road surface. Still looked pool table flat, so I slowed down to about forty five and it seemed to go away. When I sped back up the wiggles came right back as if the frame, swing arm or a wheel had somehow broken, so I slowed back down to about 30 and started riding on the foot-wide paved shoulder. In about two blocks there was a little gravel side road and I took it. Ten feet in I stopped and looked down. The rear tire was nearly flat. I slowly and carefully rode another twenty feet to a nice spot on the side of this gravel road and now the tire was fully flat. The next stuff was routine but it had been a long time since I’d done most of it: Switch bike off. Get off bike and hoist it onto center stand, harder than usual because the bike was now 4" lower. Gloves off. Helmet off. Jacket off. A nice pile on the grass. Saddle off. Tools out. Wheel off. Spare inner tube out. Tire irons out. Tire off rim on one side. Tube out. No apparent flaws. No nails in tire. Just a giant tear in the tube maybe a foot long. 30 minutes elapsed, but I’m not hurrying. Just keeping track. It’s a warm, sunny perfect day. Spare tube in. Tire back on rim. Dig clearance hole in sandy dirt beneath where the tire will go and slide the wheel onto the hub. Bolt on loosely. Get out engine inflator - a hose that goes from one spark plug hole to the tube’s Schrader valve. (You start the engine, which runs fine on only the other cylinder, and in a minute the tire is full.) Except the attachment that screws into the spark plug hole is ruined. Twelve years rattling around in the bag on the rear fender have removed it’s threads. There is no way it will work. Plan ‘B’ is an old bicycle tire pump zip-tied to the rear frame, hidden beneath the saddle. It doesn’t work either. I fiddle around with it for fifteen minutes but the rubber ‘o’ ring seal that goes on the tube’s valve stem was all dried out and would not make a seal. Now it’s back to the thing that works off the spark plug hole. I wrap duct tape a couple of layers thick around the worn-threadless end and connect the other end loosely onto the tube - twisting it only a single turn and then I put on my riding gloves. Ready. Feel slightly like Mr. Spock working on the dilithium injector alignment trying to save the Enterprise. Key on, start the bike. Chuff! Chuff! Chuff! strong blasts the air out the open spark plug hole. I’d forgotten. The bike idles good enough on one cylinder. With my left gloved hand I force the duct-tape-gasketed pump device as hard as I can against the spark plug hole while with my right hand I’m screwing the other end onto the tire valve stem. It works! 34 psi and two or three minutes later I have done what felt like the impossible. Boy that little chuff-chuff inflator gets hot really quick. Even with a glove, it was hot-potato-drop-it as soon as I unscrewed the other end from the valve stem. Now I can bolt the wheel back up tight, put away the torn tube and tools and I’m off, gingerly at first. An hour twenty, start to finish. “Luckily no crash resulted. All because of my own negligence and ignorance.” Midway through this job, but as I was levering the tire’s bead off the rim, a Subaru Forester passed heading into the adjacent northern Wisconsin forest. (Forest? Forester?). That was the only vehicle passing on this little dirt road the entire time. I could see and hear traffic on the nearby divided four lane Hwy 53 whooshing past. The Subaru went about forty feet past me and then I hear gear whine as it reverses, so I stopped levering and looked up. An old thinnish, long-bearded man was driving and as they got next to me his wife was looking downward out her just-lowered window. I was on my knees by the tire, looking up at her. “Need any help?” the old country hippie-ish looking guy asked. “No, I think I’ll be ok.” I replied. Steady eye-to-eye contact. Pause. Then we smiled at each other and nodded very slightly. A moment of bilateral reflection, then they drove off to their presumably reclusive homestead hidden somewhere farther into the deep northern woods. My guess is he plays a fiddle or guitar and every fall she cans produce from their garden. I rode the rest of the way to my destination without incident and enjoyed a nice dinner with some friends. After I got home at about 9 PM I took the tools out of the fender bag and removed the rear wheel again and let the air out and then reflated the tire to make sure the earlier-replaced tube was straight inside. I also got out a new spare tube and left it on the saddle, ready for it’s place inside the back fender bag. Tomorrow after work I’ll replace the ‘plan B’ bicycle pump and the threadless ‘chuff’ thing with new, and probably will also the tube repair glue and patches. The old tube went into the garbage. I bet it had been taken out, inspected and put back in ten or twelve times as I’d changed tires over the years. Never changed that tube. What a dummy. “I can’t be having a flat again — I just had one.” While fixing that tire I never took out my mobile phone to check if there was a signal. And when I reached my destination, a lake home a few miles farther down US 53, I was really glad I’d not needed to ask anyone for a rescue. Happiness is, among other things, the ability to successfully fix a flat tire on motorcycle out in the middle of nowhere. It had been a long time. The lesson was simple: Twelve-year-old inner tubes are neither reliable or safe. They wear out from age just like the tires do from wear, even if they don’t show anything visually like a tire does. This tire repair happened on a Sunday and the following Thursday I’m riding down Interstate 35, heading to Minneapolis at five at seventy five miles an hour. About five miles north of Hinckley the back tire goes flat again. This time I instantly know what is happening and just ride along for half a minute in disbelief, thinking “I can’t be having a flat again — I just had one.” This time there’s no nice quiet gravel side road available, just a sorta steeply sloping mowed shoulder. Freeway traffic is much more intense, too. I am traveling with another rider, and get the bike pulled over safely, but with the suddenly flat tire the bike won’t go onto it’s side stand so I’m holding it up and directing my friend down into the steeply sloping ditch to see if the ground down there is wet, dry, hard or soft. He finds a semi-dry, semi-firmer place about five feet from a semi-wetter semi squishier place and I roll the bike diagonally down the shoulder, stopping right were the mowing ends and the tall grass begins. At least I’m not going to be inches from the continuous high speed Interstate highway traffic. This time the tire change goes much faster, just fifteen minutes start to finish. Right before leaving Duluth I’d packed a fresh new inner tube, a new replacement ‘chuff chuff’ device (it’s spark plug threads protectively taped) and a new bicycle tire pump. I’d picked these up on Tuesday and Wednesday and had rushed to pack them as I was getting ready to leave on this ride. The new ‘chuff chuff’ thing worked fantastically well. What a breeze. The other rider was impressed, and so were another motorcycling couple who’d stopped to see if we’d needed help. They were from Texas, heading home aboard a newer BMW, and I was smiling as I worked because I knew I was giving this little audience a lesson on how to manage a quick flat tire repair on the side of a road. And was doing everything so easily it looked as if I’d just been practicing the moves. As I pulled the still-warm four-day-earlier-replaced ‘spare’ tube from inside the tire it literally came apart in my hands. It tore in almost every direction, as if it were paper. During the years it had been packed inside the little bag strapped on the rear fender it had completely dry-rotted just like the tube that failed inside the rear tire four days earlier. What a dope. From now on, I’ll know better. I’ll become an inner-tube-fanatic, always changing tubes whenever I change tires. No exceptions. This whole experience had me thinking about the knowledge-base which underlies this tire/tube changing skill set. It’s a near-obsolete collection of information about task sequencing, physical manipulation and material science, and performing before these other riders it all felt like I was the operator of a steam locomotive or some other type of archaic technology more than a character in a Star Trek movie. Nowadays car and motorbike mobility involves so little of this kind of knowledge. Vehicles don’t come with tools or inner tubes. Many tires are ‘run flat’ so there’s not even a spare. New motorcycles use cast wheels and tubeless tires, so inner tubes are only necessary with old-fashioned spoked wheels. When tubeless motorcycle tires go flat it’s usually due to a nail in the tread, and they usually deflate slowly enough that there’s plenty of time to find a safe place to pull over and stop. Today’s roadside tubeless tire remedy doesn’t involve removing a wheel and levering a tire from a rim. A simple pliers is used to pull out the offending nail and then a reaming tool is used to clean out the hole and another reaming tool is used to jam an adhesive-coated plug into the hole. The insertion tool is then removed and the plug’s still protruding rubber is cut away flush with the tread. A small electric air compressor is connected to the battery and the tire is reflated. Much less fiddling around. Times change. What's your flat tire story? Be sure to leave a comment below.

Nearly everywhere you’ll ever camp you’ll find all kinds of combustible hot-burning biomass. Sticks and twigs the size of your thumb and smaller. This stuff is way faster and easier to light and to cook with that you’d think, burns nearly smokelessly, and will reliably provide more than enough heat for all kinds of trail cookery. But why go Neanderthal now, with all those ingenious little gas stoves available? Because A) it’s less stuff to carry so you’ll travel lighter, and B) it’s nearly as fast to gather the fuel and then heat a liter of water as it is to do the same job with a hissing stove. And C), it’s a lot cleaner than you’d think. Soot is confined within the ‘chimney’ of samovar-kettles so you never touch it, and flat-folding stoves come with fabric storage sleeves. What if it’s been raining all day and everything is wet? Uhh…Dead limbs still attached to trees usually remain dry enough to ignite quickly with only a little help from an accelerant like a small piece of dry paper or a few drips of gasoline, or one or two Esbit fuel tabs (#4133). After they are going the heat provided will dry wetter stuff added later. But when it’s really raining super-hard find a motel and eat at a diner -- (even if you are carrying a gas stove). About the only places you cannot quickly and easily find sticks and twigs are a few high desert locations. —Mr. Subjective