True Confessions of a Helmet Hypocrite
Helmets are funny. A polarizing issue for many riders.  Forgive the length of what I’m about to write, but here is my complete history with helmets, starting with the first.  Right from Day One I was always a helmet wearer:...
The Perfect Hard-Sided Spinner Bag
1% Inspiration, 99% Perspiration “Maybe I’m being generally stupid, but I prefer that to being artificially intelligent.” - Tales from a Roll Top Desk, by Substack blogger Kent Peterson kentpeterson@substack.com on Friday, Sept 13, 2024 (Friday the thirteenth…) This blog...
Riding In Extreme Heat
A collection of useful online links and videos The key to managing high heat effectively involves adopting techniques used by Arabs and other desert peoples for centuries: wearing robes to cover yourself and create a moist, manageable micro-climate next to...
A Tiny Bubble of Comfort
It's not the comfort as much as it is the contrast. On Jun 27, 2024, at 12:07 PM, Wiley Davis wrote: “I have two R3 suits...not sure that makes me a "great" customer, but I do love them. In fact, as...
Legalizing Lane Splitting in Minnesota
And Buying a Powerball Ticket. Good luck or bad luck supposedly comes in threes so I’m today buying a Powerball ticket for the first (or possibly second?) time in my life. I’m feeling lucky because this week Minnesota unexpectedly became...
Riding There Was Worth It
An Email to A Co-Worker I’m not sure how we might use this photo, but I think it is funny.  I’m not sure why it appeals to me so much.  Maybe partly because it violates the PC stuff about never...
A Gear Arsenal, a budget, and a Bat Cave
If you live somewhere with seasonally changing weather, one big secret about being able to ride more often is the need for what amounts to a large arsenal of different types and sizes of riding gear, all kept wherever it’s...
Side Notes - Small and Large
The longer most rider’s gear is worn, the better it seems to get. Up to a point. Everything eventually wears out.  I bond with a new Aerostich suit after about three months of regular use. If I’m able to wear...
Poetry Corner
Long before internet commerce was mainstream, we enjoyed making and mailing print catalogs. Our idea was to present motorcycling, and Aerostich products, and related items, in ways that were not only accurate but also inspiring. We wanted to tell stories...
How Food Science is Like Transportational Science
Here’s an interesting 57-minute video about how highly processed foods connect to increased levels of obesity. This seems unrelated to motorcycling, but dig a little deeper and it is not difficult to connect a few core ideas to similar considerations...
A Serious Error In Judgment
(Thanks to Dr. Greg Frazier, who used this phrase in an email to dryly describe an especially difficult cold weather experience he once had, which inspired me to respond accordingly, as you’ll see here. We sell a couple of Dr....
Shortest Mr. Subjective Blog Post Ever
I love my iPhone, but apparently have almost no use for it. This is not a competition, just an observation. I see I’m using my motorcycle a lot more than my iPhone. Hmm. See image below. Wouldn’t it be cool...
Rat Races, Paradoxes, and Other Stuff I Don't Quite Know What Else To Do With
A Year-End Collection of Assorted Drivel “Riding makes every trip a bit of an adventure.” - Mr. Subjective Several years ago a couple of my co-workers encouraged me to start writing an Aerostich blog. This was about when we did...
Shiny Stainless Reflections
On December 8th of this year (2023), a week or so after the release of the Tesla Cybertruck, Road & Track magazine’s Victoria Scott wrote a wonderful short essay that included this: “…our vehicles reflect (widespread cultural) anxieties. More than...
Totally Rideable
After making the youthful transition from a bicycle to motorcycle, I often found myself daydreaming about motorcycle riding. Simply looking out over the countryside was enough to trigger a lapse from reality into moto-fantasizing. In reality, I was exploring my...
Not Another Paradox
We humans have spent the last few hundred years very earnestly, carefully, and diligently building a world where it is ever easier to move about efficiently, comfortably, and conveniently in order to obtain all of the things we want or...
A Funny Science Experiment
This link is to a write-up of a very funny science experiment. Back in 2014, someone wondered what would happen if a hamster wheel was placed in a forest. Would wild mice use it? And if they did, why? I...
Ice Vs. Electric
These days lots of people are thinking about the future of ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines) vs ‘electrics’ and are trying to make realistic projections about various things related to the widely anticipated transition. One personal thought experiment involves today's excellent...
By the Numbers
Based on over 140 years of record keeping, today, January 17th (2023), is supposed to be the coldest day of the year in Duluth. I think the average low temperature here on this day is something like minus two (ºf) and...
A Quirky Video
This morning (March 29, 2023) I watched this sort of tedious and longish educational video about traffic problems in the largest city in the Bahamas. Enjoyed it enough to think maybe you’ll find it interesting as well, if you have...
What Is Technology?
Technology is our creation and the resulting array of physical things that are useful. There are two types of technology: Physical and metaphysical. Physical technologies are things like making a fire, doing agriculture and husbandry, and making tools and buildings...