Guest post by Mrs. Subjective I saw husband tracksIn the snow the other day,Leading down a pathFor his own getaway. Those tracks of hisThey show me his grit;Being willing to ride in snowIs a whole other kind of lit. Preparing his bikeTakes work (and I’m sure some fun too),From siping tiresTo finding his groove. He said to me once,“The snow has to be just right.Better to have snow on the groundThan none in my sight.” He’s true to his motto —Ride to Work or work to ride,These words to whichHe will forever abide. The Suzuki Van Van,It’s his favorite winter bikeWith big, wide tiresThat’s what he likes. All bundled up,Facing the winter wind,His helmet secureAnd, I’m sure, quite a grin. Do I worry? Do I fear?Oh yes, but just a little bit,For I know he is clothed withThe best gear one can get. American-made —A Roadcrafter Aerostich!Equipment for ridersStraight from their pitch. His one-piece zip-in suitWith padding galoreGuarantees him the chance to rideMore and more… and more. Now you might think this is an ad,But no — I’m just a little savvyTo include a renditionOf my husband’s Duluth company. Although I must sayTheir products are quite stellar;Many a hideThey’ve saved from the gutter. But now back to the storyOf seeing husband tracks —I knew that since he left,He must also come back. It was nearing dinner timeWhen my belly cried out,So I texted him these words:“How about some takeout?” Pizza? Sure thing.So I put the order in.Away on his Van VanHe rode with a grin. It wasn’t the first timeHe managed a pizza on his bike,But this time aroundIt was quite a different sight. Opening the boxWas quite the surprise —Our perfect pepperoni pieSlid in that two-point-four-mile ride. Cheese off the slice,Pepperonis scattered about,I gave a little gaspAnd then laughed out loud. The way I look at it is this:If riding makes him smile,He should keep on keeping onmile after mile. If the only casualtyIs cheese off the slice,Well, I think that’s a win —’Cause it still tastes pretty nice. So get out and ride!Leave your tracks wherever you go,Whether you decide to rideIn rain, sleet, sun… or God forbid, snow.

…Another Autobiographical (too long?) Story Note: The short essay linked at the end of this blog post is about today’s economy and uses the history of the Erie Canal as the example to make the author’s point about how important government involvement in science, engineering, and ‘development’ is. After reading it I decided to write what follows.   When I was twelve, my father took my mother, my four-year-younger sister, and me on his 36’ Chris Craft cabin cruiser from Duluth, Minnesota, down the Great Lakes, across the Erie Canal, then down the Hudson River to New York City. My brother Ken was only four at the time, so he was left in Duluth with trusted family friends. After arriving at the Big Apple, the four of us spent a few days at the 1965 NY World’s Fair, then drove home using a borrowed car. Some other guys my father knew had driven a station wagon to NYC and then enjoyed cruising his boat back to Duluth. This trip took us around five weeks and remains one of the two most influential travel experiences of my life. The other was a three-month 1996 motorcycle ride from Duluth to Mongolia and back when I was forty-three. These bigger adventures caused a lifelong preference for self-made trips of any scale and length over all pre-packaged travel experiences. Watching my father manually and meticulously chart the next day’s courses on huge paper nautical charts at 11 PM after an exhausting fourteen- or fifteen-hour day running the boat was a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Children learn far more watching how their parents operate than from whatever lessons their parents are intentionally trying to teach them. Every morning at six AM, dad would fire up the boat's two engines (marine-ized versions of V-8 Chrysler 383’s maybe?), and the only thing I remember about them was my assigned job of crawling down into the hot, cramped bilge to check their oil dipsticks every day. Us two children were sound asleep in the “V” bunk in the bow when he’d warm up those engines while disconnecting the ‘shore power’ and casting off the dock lines. We’d always be awakened by their noisy vibrations and still pajama-clad would groggily stumble up to the stern just as he’d throw both engines into reverse and start carefully backing away from whatever dock he’d found for us the night before. Then, still in my PJs, I’d climb up onto the narrow deck beside the cabin to pull up the fenders and stow the lines, and we’d be off for the day. Breakfast for his crew was made and served about an hour later, and the rest of the day was mostly spent watching the water and shorelines go by. Sometimes, like when crossing Lake Erie, there were waves large enough to cause my sister to become seasick. Other times, like going through the Erie Canal, we could almost reach out and pet the cows calmly grazing in some farmer’s field right next to this waterway. Transiting locks was always fun, and each was a little different from the last. There must have been sixty or seventy of them between Duluth and the final one on the Hudson River. We’d started out at six hundred feet above sea level, and at the New York harbor, we were at elevation zero. Dealing with the unknowns about whatever may be just ahead is a key part of all self-made travel experiences. The fun of that trip was the endless moment-by-moment encounters with the unknown. Some of this involved walking around little towns along the way and meeting locals and other boaters when looking for a laundromat and a grocery store. Other times, some unanticipated problem came up that needed solving before we could proceed. For example, one morning, just as we were backing out of some tiny marina, a carelessly handled stern line slipped into the water and became tightly wrapped around the starboard propeller and shaft. Several tries reversing that prop did not unwind it. Fortunately for us, this place had a boat lift, so on one idling engine, we very carefully motored over to it and an hour or two later were underneath the dripping wet hull, cutting away the line with a sharp knife. We were on our way again by ten or eleven. I don’t know if we made it to the next charted harbor with such a late start that day, but eventually we did get all the way to the Flushing Bay Marina in New York City. “I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” - President Dwight D. Eisenhower on battle preparations. By then, we’d become experts at locking and general boat handling, but at the same time, my parents also had about enough of my sister and me after spending more than a month living with us in such close quarters. As always, Dad had a solution. He called a NYC cab from a pay phone that was conveniently mounted on the side of a pole at the end of the dock. When the cab driver arrived, he made a deal with the guy: “Here’s $50 (or something…). Take the kids to a movie.” I think he tore the bill in half and handed the smaller half to the driver. There were no cell phones, and this was a total stranger (and maybe that bill was the equivalent of several hundred dollars today…), but the cabbie was probably happy to get a break from driving that afternoon, and my parents appeared ok accepting the risk. I don’t remember what movie or double feature we saw, but after it was over, the driver brought us back to the marina and got the other half of the bill. Hard to imagine any parent doing something like that today (?), no matter how fed up with a kid they might be. What came out of this experience (and my three-month Mongolia ride) was a very strong preference for self-made travel. Especially via motorcycle. I love the logistical and navigational challenges involved in being a mostly self-contained back-road vagabond. Of having a loose goal, and some good maps, and the lightweight camping and cooking equipment needed to bed down in some never-before-seen location, and the near-daily experience of walking into some little grocery store for provisions, and sometimes buying things like canned beans to be heated later, or a fresh submarine sandwich at a three PM gas stop to be eaten a few hours later comfortably sitting in front of a tent by a small campfire. Maybe even washed down with a lovely beer of some kind. Experiencing and dealing with infinite unknowns ahead, mile after mile: All the perfect roads and the terrible roads. The odd little towns and sometimes unbelievable scenery. The sometimes capricious weather, from perfect to horrible. I’m now seventy-two, and I’m still able to manage such trips, but only just barely. My bike of choice is a bit smaller and lighter, and the kit I pack along is more refined and smaller and lighter as well, but the goals are exactly the same. They’ve never changed: Carry as little as is necessary while also being as comfortable and safe as possible within the constraints of ’traveling light’. Today’s smartphones and GPSs have been very worthwhile add-ons, but these powerful technologies have never been absolute essentials. What a lifetime of motorcycle trips has taught me is that having the gear necessary to meet the more predictable logistical challenges depends on the details of each particular trip. Consider pooping. Will you always be near restrooms along the way, or will you need to dig a hole behind a bush somewhere to do your business? Will you need a lightweight folding shovel, or will some small plastic or aluminum hand spade be effective enough for the types of soil you project you might need to deal with? So many questions. These are fun riddles to think about and solve. Each is a thread from which you are weaving a tapestry of memories, day by day and hour by hour, whenever you travel with only a loose plan as a backroad moto-vagabond. And after you take the first step of any journey, boy-oh-boy, does all this ever make you feel alive. Cruise ships and pre-planned motorcycle (and other) tour experiences can be wonderful, but gee whiz, do I ever prefer solving all the problems that come before me on unknown roads and trails. So thanks, Dad. We sure had our differences, and plenty of them, but when I look back at my life today, I wish you and Mom were somehow still around. Especially so you could have met my wife. She’s another hard-working, self-made real-world problem solver. Just like you.  -- Mr. Subjective, Oct 28, 2025 PS – This link is to the complete Substack essay about the Erie Canal that had me remembering that family trip. The writer of the Substack is a PhD college professor who teaches history at a university up in Maine, and she’s very skilled. If you have the time and are curious, you’ll learn some history that probably was glossed over or which you slept through back when you were a student. Basic subscriptions (which is what I receive) are free. Before you sign up, though, note that many of the essays involve tying US historical events to current and ongoing history-impacting events. Regardless, and trying to ‘stay in my lane’ here, she’s a very good writer and historian. PPS – Kids do not get to choose their parents. In this ‘boat trip’ story, I briefly touched on how children learn a lot more from their parents by watching how they operate, rather than from anything parents intentionally attempt to teach. At one extreme are those parents so hands-off that their self-directed kids become intuitive problem-solving adults, which (for better or worse) is partially what happened to me. At the extreme end of this parenting spectrum is the Johnny Cash hit song “A Boy Named Sue” which is a funny-wonderful ballad about this. At the other end are what have recently been called ‘helicopter parents’, those who, though well-intentioned, do so much for their kids such children can turn out ‘book-smart’ but not super able to take care of themselves so well as adults. Somewhere along this continuum is a happy medium, and if you were fortunate to have received such parenting, be grateful. Regardless of where your parents fell along that spectrum, riding a motorcycle frequently might be one of the best things you can do for yourself because it forces you to solve a very wide range of immediate and pressing logistical problems. Every time you wobble off on two wheels, you are on your own, taking care of yourself. You may encounter bad weather, heavy traffic, or challenging terrain (or all this at the same time!) before you reach your destination. Riding provides such problem-solving lessons every time you throw your leg over the saddle and head off somewhere. No other personal mobility technology is so practical, so useful, and so much fun as it teaches you the attitudes and skills which transfer so usefully to every other area of your life, and which you can be proud of mastering.   PPPS – One part of the Aerostich business has been to supply and support riders who like to explore some very distant locations and cultures. Many have shared great stories and images of their experiences, and I’ve become friends with a few of these riders, including several whom we’ve been able to help sponsor with Aerostich gear. Most recently Anna O'Neil (see her Facebook page). Most of these stories are now shared via books and online videos. The videos have become so numerous that it is impossible to view even a small fraction of them. Among the best are those made by a Dutch woman, Noralee Schoenmaker (www.itchyboots.com), who has been creating and sharing her motorcycle trip stories for (at this writing) eight years. She recently reached three million YouTube subscribers, and to celebrate and thank her supporters, she’s made a wonderful video summarizing the length and breadth of her experiences, which you can watch here, for free. Her story fits right in with the experiences and ideas I’ve described here.

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

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

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!