Cheat Codes in Life

Subtitle: And Other First World Problems

“If there is a cheat code in life, my Aerostich suit lets me arrive in style without the anxiety of wearing (or not) gear. Every day I wear my Aerostich to work makes me happy. I love the fact that I can wear my street clothes under the suit and take it off in 10 seconds.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Here’s a link to Cong’s RoTM (Rider of the Month) full profile.

There are many cheat codes in life, big and small, within motorcycling and without. Things like finding a good spouse is this, because despite the added complications they make one’s life better, richer, and in most ways a lot easier. Same for finding an occupation you can do fairly well and which you like doing, at least most of the time. Same for finding and adopting a useful spiritual and faith-based belief system and finding and keeping a good life-long friend, and on and on.

But this is a motorcycle blog, so let’s try and stay between those narrow topical guardrails and list some of the motorcycling cheat codes here.

• Owning a useful and daily ridable bike is at the very top of my list of moto-cheat codes. It doesn’t need to be a humble, modest or slow bike, either. Almost any bike, as long as its tires hold air, the engine or motor runs reliably, and you can afford to insure it is a mobility cheat code. It’s also important you don’t need to feel it must always be kept pristine looking, and that it be something which will wear the patina of real-world day to day use reasonably well. It helps a lot if it has decent lighting and somewhat effective fenders so it is rideable at night and in the rain, too. Not super noisy is another plus.
• Having a good place to park said bike where you live and work is another cheat code. These places need to be secure enough so the chances of bad guys stealing it are minimal. That’s about it. Your bike just needs to be ‘there’ (wherever you parked it) when you get back to it after being away for a period of time. Indoors, outdoors, covered, uncovered, locked or unlocked, it doesn’t matter. It just needs to be there waiting for you when you need it to be there. For many years my friend Mark L left an old and quite beat-up Honda XL parked unlocked in a small motorcycle parking area by an LA commuter train platform. It was weathered and far from pristine but ran and rode fine. He lived in distant Oceanside and commuted to LA on that train several days a week. For whatever reason, nobody ever tampered with or stole the bike so it was always ready when he needed it. As his train would near the LA station, he’d unroll his Roadcrafter, suit up, walk to the bike, fire it up and ride about a dozen miles across LA to his workplace, which came with a nice secure parking area for motorcycles. He did this for years and this was one of his moto-life’s greatest cheat codes. (Just behind his marrying a terrific woman.)
• Being able to fix and maintain your bike yourself, or (alternatively) knowing a good place and/or skilled person you can hire to do this for you, is a great cheat code. It isn’t easy to learn how to change and balance a motorcycle tire yourself, but if you do learn how and have the needed tools and a good place to do this job, this is a heckofa great cheat code. Same if you find the right person or place to hire to take care of this aspect of riding.
• Gear-wise, the big cheat codes are having a selection of protective comfortable all-weather gear that fits and actually works well for you in all weathers. This can be harder than you might think, and require a larger investment than you’d like, but once everything has been more-or-less assembled, you have a real cheat code.  Especially if it is arranged for fast and easy access.
• Fuel injection, GPS navigation, anti-lock brakes and anti-skid systems, and other digital technological enhancements all are cheat codes for motorcycling, but, and this is a BIG but, for everything they give they take something else away. For example, many of today’s big road bikes come with digital cruise control systems which are great for lowering wrist fatigue and helpful if you ride long days and high mileages on trips, but they also are electro-mechanically complex. This is not a big consideration because they are so reliable. But in contrast I spent all my prime riding years figuring out how to accomplish this via various micro-adjustable friction devices added to the twistgrip. All very simple, light weight, and reliable, but not turn-key. You needed to figure them out when you installed them. We still carry several types because I still prefer them functionally because unlike digital systems you still must adjust the throttle position yourself, upward and downward as needed, and I like the mental and physical engagement of needing to do this manually.
  
• All good nav-systems are cheat codes, and in a slightly different way so are good printed maps.  So is having a way to write something on your tank bag’s map window as you ride. Noting a license number or non-GPS turn-by-turn directions. I use a grease pencil like this like this. These are all cheat codes. Carrying a selection of useful tools is the same. A tube patch or tubeless tire plug kit is absolutely a cheat code when you find yourself in possession of a motorcycle with a flat tire. Same for a tire pump or canister of compressed CO2 or air.
  

Part of being a motorcyclist is finding, developing and being able to use an array of cheat codes which allow you to ride more often. They seldom come easily. You find them and figure them out as you play the game, and the more you play, the more you know where they are and how to use them.

What are some of your moto cheat codes?

- Mr. Subjective, Dec 2024

PS – When it comes to our overall individual mobility there are lots of other technologies which offer their own kinds of useful cheat codes. Examples range from protective footwear to supersonic aircraft, but when it comes to most people’s day-to-day transportation, the main examples involve bicycles, scooters, motorcycles and automobiles. Cheat codes are about saving time and helping us enjoy healthier, happier, longer or easier lives. Of those four vehicle types, the two in the middle best combine the benefit of time-saving speed with a type of physical experience which inherently improves our neural and our emotional health. Some of those benefits are scientifically and empirically measurable, too.

PPS - Beyond all that are two further plusses falling outside in-motion riding experience. Choosing riding sometimes forces us to slow down and spend the extra time needed to figure out solutions to the logistical problems using any bike presents. Simply figuring out what to wear, when and how to wear it, and how to carry whatever we may need to carry. For example, almost every week I ride to a grocery store to refill my pantry using either a small-ish backpack or larger messenger bag. Inside the top pocket of the backpack or messenger bag is one of our very compact Lightweight Portable Bags for overflow loads. At the store I’ll either push a small cart or carry a store-provided basket, and after paying, I’ll have between $65 and $125 worth of food to carry. The heavier items (Cheese, milk, produce, fruit, canned soup, etc) always go directly into the backpack or messenger bag and the overflow items, if any, are carried in the LP Bag. Those are lighter things (bread, cookies, dry foods, deli, etc) which were set aside as I loaded the backpack or messenger bag. When riding home that LP bag almost always hangs freely from my left wrist just in front of my knee. Sometimes, while I’m sorting and packing groceries, one or two other shoppers will be checked out while I’m carefully sorting and loading my purchases. For me the hardest skill of getting groceries by motorcycle is simply not being embarrassed by the necessarily slower packing process. But my logistical choice to carry groceries home on two wheels was more than a casual preference, and more than idle rationalizing, because I feel better after getting groceries home this way. I value my own limited time like anyone might, measuring the speed and efficiency of whatever I’m doing, and some activities are more important than others. But every chance I get to carve out a little time to slow down and solve the many small physical and logistical problems necessary to ride more is always time well spent. The other notable plus (plus number two) is how perfectly motorcycles and scooters split the difference between walking or riding a bicycle, and driving a car or truck, when ranked by motorcycling’s comparative per-mile environmental ‘footprint’. Today’s handy auto-optimized infrastructure clearly already exists, and most of the time how we choose to use it is entirely up to us.