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With our Harley dealer gone (after over seventy years!), Duluth and adjacent Superior now have only one operating motorcycle store, RJ Sport and Cycle. They sell Hondas, Yamahas, boats, outboard motors, ATV’s, side-by-sides, snowmobiles and much more. I went there a few weeks ago to purchase a small item and noted they had far more boats, outboard motors and side-by-side ATV’s on display than motorcycles. For better or worse, Harley stores don’t currently have that option. (The local Suzuki and Kawasaki dealerships left town years ago. The SMSA here is somewhere around 150,000.)

I just ran across an online ad featuring a motorcycle being used as a prop to help romance and sell what appeared to be hipster laundry soap packets with many different scented options. Curious, I went to the company’s website...

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

(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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...