My Pace, My Path, My Objectives

For more than 60 years, the ONLY time I have been in total control of what I’m doing, how fast I’m doing it, and why I’m doing it have been on a motorcycle. I came from a fairly large (5 brats and two semi-adult parents) family and I was the oldest and designated babysitter, cook and bottle-washer, and the official family black sheep. When I abandoned my father’s nuthouse the summer I turned 16, I went from that over-complicated situation to even crazier 1960’s rock-and-roll bands, marriage at 19, and the next 40 years of occupational and parental over-stimulus non-stop; unless I was on a motorcycle.

Other that a few trips with close friends and one decidedly wrong start to the trip of a lifetime with someone Ms. Day had picked to babysit me and one anniversary trip with Ms. Day and a small portion of my 2008 Nova Scotia Canadian tour, I have always traveled alone by motorcycle. Even when I have been on a ride with a friend, my preferred plan is to designate a general time and specific place to meet at the end of the day and for each of us to find our own way to that location at our own pace.

For almost all of my 76 years I have been the poster boy for failing at “to thine own self be true” because I had no idea who I was. In the early 80s, in a “Career Planning” class at OCC, I took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. Say what you will about how obsolete that test is, but when I received my dot-matrix printout of my personality results (INTP) it was all I could do to keep from crying during the class. It was the first time in my 35-years that I felt anyone actually “knew” me and that “someone” was an 8-bit, IBM mini-computer.

I am not just “a little” INTP, either. Those measurement bars were pinned to the far end of each characteristic. The intended outcome of that test was for us to plow through a 4” thick book of occupations and find jobs that were suitable for our personality types. INTPs are fairly rare (not in a good way) and, at that time, that giant book of occupations recommended only four occupations. Not helpful, especially for me since “engineer” was not one of the four and I had been making a living as an electronic engineer for a dozen years by 1984.

Worse, everything about being a 1950s kid ruled against the “I” characteristic in my personality type. When I grew up, in the age of How to Win Friends and Influence People, “introversion” is old psych-jargon for homosexual or worse. Giving in to my natural inclinations was the fast route to unemployment and social stigma. So, for the next 40 years I ignored the “I” and concentrated on making the best of “NTP” (my Intuitive, Thinking, and Prospecting traits). And that, occupationally, worked for me right up to when I retired, mostly. It kept me employed, anyway.

For my family and friends, however, ignoring my introversion meant that i spent a lot of my “off-camera” time suffering from an “introvert hangover”: “a metaphorical state of emotional and mental exhaustion. It occurs when an introvert has spent an extended period interacting socially, leaving them drained and depleted.” “Drained and depleted” enough that I would rather risk being bitten by a rattlesnake backpacking alone in the Texas desert or left injured and stranded anywhere from Baja, Mexico to Alaska to the empty backroads of Newfoundland and New Brunswick to Montana or Wyoming’s empty, abandoned wastelands than talk to one more person, no matter how much I loved them. And that is where motorcycles came into my life in a dominant way from around 1969 until a few years ago.

I had been backpacking the wilderness of every place I’d lived, from Kansas when I was a kid to California when my daughters were teenagers, but backpacking usually required a lot of prep time and energy and, often, I didn’t have those resources in any quantity. At the most hectic period of my life, when we lived in California and our daughters were teenagers, I would often have to escape for a weekend or a day or two more and my trip “planning” involved stuffing camping gear into saddlebags along with a couple changes of clothing and flipping a quarter while I sat on my motorcycle to decide if I was traveling north or south out of Huntington Beach: often as far as well into Baja, Mexico or right up to the Canadian border on PCH. Sometimes, I’d make the same trip (with the same planning) in my ‘73 Toyota Hilux with a kayak tied to the rack and a bed full of scuba gear. (“Fuck a lot of ‘dive buddy’ crap, I need to go where nobody else ever goes.”)

If you peruse this blog, you’ll see “reports” of my solo travels that cross about 50 years of my life. I have never had a job that didn’t generate substantial “introvert hangovers” and busting out of my life alone and mostly directionless has been the cure until I retired in 2013. When I retired, two friends gave me copies (one paperback and one eBook) of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, And I thought, “Why the fuck do you guys think I need a book about introverts?” Seriously. After being trapped in a screwed-up VW camper for several months in a New Mexico campground waiting for parts, information, or shop time I started to read the book. By the time I had that crap VW Eurovan back in running condition and we’d relaxed into our original driving and camping

In 2018, myasthenia gravis put an end to that hangover cure, but being retired also diminished the requirement. It got a lot worse before it started to get better and, assuming it wouldn’t get enough better to matter, I sold my beloved 2004 Suzuki V-Strom and my even more precious Yamaha WR250X. Thinking that the worst was past, I gambled on a Suzuki TU250X in late 2019, but it didn’t get better as the eyesight problems were soon replaced with hands that refuse to function usefully or reliably and riding skills that had deteriorated to the point of no return.

Bicycling, my primary transportation for as many Minnesota months as I can stand it, is not the same.

Fear Itself

I'm not a pet guy. My wife collects animals. I tolerate them. Sometimes, I enjoy them, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have a pet. Even a fish, except for catfish because I love catfish and black beans. So, we have a dog, a cat, and six or seven birds. It's a busy household.

Our cat, Spike, is a brave soul. He's mostly an inside cat, but he gets out in the yard to climb trees, catch and kill mice and voles, and pester the neighbor's cat. Spike is particularly unusual in that he likes to be wet. You can pet him when your hands are wet and he appreciates the attention. He likes to explore the bathtub after I take a shower. Sometimes he sticks his head into the curtains while I'm taking a shower. Since he was a kitten, he has jumped into the tub right after anyone has used it and he often rolls around getting himself wet. He knows how the shower works. He knows someone could turn it back on and he'd get soaked. He's pretty sure that won't happen. Spike is totally unafraid of things he believes are unlikely to happen. I like that quality, a lot.

Not that many people are capable of that. In fact, people are afraid of the damnedest things. When the Twin Towers were bombed, my neighbor's wife freaked out. She'd never traveled anywhere, never even went into downtown St. Paul, but she became convinced the world had changed and she was at risk. Since 2001, she rarely leaves her house for anything. An engineer friend is terrified of flying. Always has been. He's been traveling by commercial airline for almost 35 years, hundreds of trips without an incident. Every time he gets in a plane, it's white knuckle time. His paranoia would be more understandable if he wasn't a roller coaster fanatic. He's traveled all over the country to ride every whacked-out roller coaster he can find. He's especially fond of the wooden versions of the damn things. Once, when we were 35,000 feet over the Great Plains, I suggested that if the plane did go down it would be the coolest roller coaster ride he ever took. He almost squeezed the arm rests off of his seat and didn't let go until we were parked. Another friend is convinced that I ride my 250, instead of my 650 road bike, because I believe it's safer. He can't imagine that it is quicker or more fun. He is a motorcycle owner who puts about 250 miles/year on his bike and believes the "freeway is a deathtrap" for motorcycle commuters.

Neither of these people are anywhere near as likely to be harmed by terrorists or falling airplanes or cell phone-crazed commuters as my wife's cat is of getting soaked in the shower; especially if my grandson has anything to say about it. Those humans are freaked out and terrified while the cat is happy with his odds. One person's fear is incapacitating. The other has a significant portion of his life wreaked. The last owns a piece of garage candy he's afraid to play with. Fear  keeps us from enjoying our lives, from doing what we want to do, from living where we want to live, from being who we are. Roosevelt said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

True, but somehow not all that helpful. At least in my case, I need something a little more specific to work on, in regards to controlling fear. In every corner, there is at least one spot where rider control is on the edge. Even on a simple, in-town, residential-street turn there are opportunities for loss of control: sand or gravel at the worst possible place, crumbling asphalt that choses the moment you arrive to collapse, traffic, unpredictable pedestrians, falling space rubble, and other motorcyclists picking the wrong moment to demonstrate their "skills." Those butt-clenching moments are what keep you alert, or convince you that motorcycling is unnecessarily dangerous. What you do with fear determines who you are, who you can be, what you can do, and how long you are going to live.

Research into the human fear response has provided a little insight into how our over-sized, underused brains work. Many people with a low capacity for actual danger are horror movie fans, where you get "the gratification of real fear without any of the danger." People watch serial killer movies, listen to Glenn Beck, and ride roller coasters to get the psychological kick from artificially induced fear without any personal risk (except on the carnival roller coasters, which are installed and maintained by drugged-out grade-school dropouts). The spillover between the areas of your brain that interprets pleasure and fear is often significant. On the other hand, an under-developed or segmented amygdala or  nucleus accumbens could make you completely fearless even in situations where you are at extreme risk.

I suppose there is a reasonable balance between fear and fearlessness. At this point in my life, I could do with a little more immunity to fear. There are places I'd like to go that pose more risk than I'm comfortable taking. People go to those places, people live in those places, so my fear is not reasonably founded. I'm not afraid of dying, but I am damn nervous about getting hurt. If I could, I would have a good bit of that part of my brain trimmed away so I could get on with an adventure or two.

Another Year, A Couple More Bikes

The 2010 Cycle World International Motorcycle Show has come and gone. Every year it feels like I spend less time circling the show looking for something new to care about. This year it's safe to say I'm not the only one. Wolfe and I planned a late day at the show to catch more than just the bikes. In the past, I have hit the show early on Saturday or as early as possible on Friday to avoid the crowds. That way I can get shots of the bikes without having to wrestle my way around bodies on the bikes. With a press pass I can slip in before the doors open on Saturday and have the run of the show with a camera or video. Last year was my last year for that approach.

Since 1998, I'd been doing the CWIMS as a segment of my cable access television show, Motorcycling Minnesota. But interest has been flagging in that segment. Not view interest, my interest. Lugging around a 25 pound video camera to get shots of the same bikes I shot last year in this year's colors just doesn't seem worth the effort. An advantage of being underpaid or unpaid is that I don't have to shill for anyone. I don't even have to do the show if I get bored with it. Last year, Wolfe and I did the early-Saturday bit and we ended up done in about 15 minutes. We went out for breakfast, came back, watched the bike watchers and talked to friends for a couple of hours and gave it up for a day back home building stuff out of his Electronic Projects for Evil Geniuses books.

This year, I knew there wouldn't be much new to look at so we timed our trip to hit the maximum crowd. As we arrived at the auditorium, I knew this year would be different. There were no crowds in the skywalk. Outside of the auditorium, no smokers in motorcycle jackets or patch-decorated jean vests. Unlike every other year, we instantly found parking on the streets for cheap. In the auditorium, there were no lines for tickets. No motorcycle accessory vendors outside of the hall. No free motorcycle magazines by the entryway. The upside was that I didn't have to stand in line for my press pass and there was no confusion about getting the pass.

Inside the show was more space than I've ever seen in that room. There was no waiting to sit on any bike you chose. I went out of my way to get shots of bikes that included people in the background, foreground, and on the bikes. I worried that those hyper motorcycle salespeople would be traumatized by loneliness. These are, indeed, hard times. Recreational items, like garage candy and overpriced toys get hit hard when people are just trying to hang on to their homes and jobs.

A couple of parts and accessory distributor reps were pretty depressed about the depression. One sales guy said he was taking on a line of non-motorcycle related clothing in hopes of finding enough income to keep his doors open. A couple of reps really wanted to drop samples on me for review and were disappointed when I didn't want to haul their stuff around the show, but opted to contact them later this month. The Zook guy remembered me from my review of his goo from a couple of years back. That didn't go down well. The state's MMSC booth folks looked lonely and bored. No Aerostich. Buell is dead. Observed trials is a thing of history. Still, I saw a few things that were cool. Outside of Jed Duncan's Rider Academy, there didn't seem to be much action around the small booths. Since Rider Academy is also doing the Total Control Advanced Rider Clinics, the downturn/depression hasn't affected his business as much as it has Harley's marketing/sales-based Rider's Edge program or the MSF's entry-level BRC course. This is one instance where targeting the high end of motorcycling (high end skills) may be a niche with a little staying power.

In the OEM booths, Kawasaki has the KLX250SF 250 Supermoto, which they had in the catalog last year, but didn't show at the Minnesota CWIMS and didn't seem to exist as far as local dealers were concerned. It's not light (302 pounds dry) and (ouch!) it's not fuel injected and it's not cheap ($5300). Ducati's Hypermotard is, still cool if overpriced, but who would put a Ducati on the dirt? Honda's NT700V is new, only to the US, but it's cool and I could see owning one if I could make a little room in the garage for it. $11,000 for a 650 is a bit stiff, though. The Honda supermoto, the CRF230M, was also new last year but didn't put in much of a presence on dealer floors. At $5400, with a carb, and no great weight advantage (280 pounds), the Honda seems like the Kawasaki; too little and too late compared to Yamaha's much hipper WR250X. The Kymco Quannon 150 is interesting, although $3000 for a Chinese-made 150 with limited dealer support seems steep even by today's over-inflated prices. Suzuki's RMX 450 Z is an amazing DP bike, but two things -- the $8400 price tag and the 955mm (37.6") seat height -- put it out of my sights. I desperately wanted to swing a leg over that bike, but I had visions of lying under it and listening to my grandson laugh. So, I passed on the experience. If Yamaha brought anything new, I missed it. Several of the brands that might have had something new to show didn't show at all. BMW, for example, had a lot less of a display going, for a company that is bragging that the economy isn't hitting them as hard as the rest of the industry, than I've ever seen from them. In fact, I'm pretty sure the factory wasn't there at all, although I did see at least one farkled-out BMW at one farkle shop.

After a couple of hours, we'd exhausted our interest in laughing at cruisers, checking out the vintage bike displays, and looking at bikes we don't fit on but love. Wolfe still has hope. He's 14 and growing. It's only going to get worse for me.

My Personal Economic Crash

For the last year, I've been unable to avoid hearing about the economic crisis in this country. Every aspect of the media is harping about "crash this" and "crash that" and has been almost since Bush and his crowd took over Washington. Personally, it's been a hard eight years, too. I went into this century thinking I was set for life, if I managed to hang on to a moderate income and didn't buy too many toys. A year later, I was looking to crank up my hobby home businesses into income producers. Still, the impact of living in a failing economy (again) didn't hit me until this week.

One of the "features" of being old is having that "here we go again" feeling. In the 70s, the Midwest was hammered by the first "new economy" of my life. Jobs were lost, industries failed, rural economies collapsed, and towns became populated by ghosts. I was living there, I remember it well.

As a motorcyclist, there was a depression aspect to life, also. For the first time in my life, I had to worry about someone stealing my motorcycle while I was at work, if the bike wasn't garaged at night, or almost any other time. One of the guys I raced against lived in Omaha. His garage was broken open and his bikes, tools, and other personal belongings were stolen. Not long afterwards, something tried to break into my shop, the "Dirt Shop," and the next morning I discovered that a window had been broken before the thief learned that an 18" bike wheel dangling from above the window made an effective set of window bars. He, apparently, also found it impossible to reach my tools with a stick from the broken window. I found the stick lying on the floor and a bunch of tools had been dislodged from their wall hangars. For several years, the dirt bikers I knew all had stories of theft, loss, and anger.

The 80s weren't much better. In California, the Reagan years mil-industrial welfare made life fairly good for engineers and bankers, but everyone else had it tough. The California helmet law provided incentive for the unemployed and unemployable to snag any helmet (secured or unsecured) from any unwatched bike. I lost a couple of helmets to theft and a couple more to my absentmindedness. Carrying a helmet to class, into restaurants, and everywhere else I went always resulted in my forgetting either the helmet or my gloves or, once, my backpack and . . . somebody snatched it before I could get back to recover it. My fault, I know. Sometimes being a motorcyclist is about as convenient as living out of a grocery cart. Carrying everything but the seat every time you step away from the bike gets to be a pain.

Pat Hahn is convinced I’m a total fool because I lost so many helmets in 10 years of California life. He’s probably right. I also lived on my bikes for those years, petal powered and 4-stroked. For ten years, I averaged close to 25,000 miles a year on my motorcycles and 2,500 a year on my bicycle. I almost forgot how to drive a cage, I was in one so rarely. Unless I was hauling family, a kayak, and/or diving gear, I was on two wheels. I had a busy life back then. I managed the manufacturing side of a mid-sized company, was the sole support for a family of 4, finished my college degree at night, and had a bit of a life on the side. I might have been the model of a southern California multi-tasker.

Professional bike thieves made life miserable and scary for California motorcycle adventurers. A group of friends took a trip into the Desert in the late 80s and awoke to find their bikes had been stolen right out of their campsite. I don't know if I've ever slept that soundly, but I wonder what would have happened if they had woke up to try to stop the thieves? Anyone well equipped enough to be able to snag three large motorcycles from a campsite might we well armed. I got into the habit of using a bike cover, a pair of U-bolt wheel locks (front and back brake disks), and carrying a foghorn can into my tent when I camped. Worst case, the cops would be able to look for a deafened murderer with a bike he had to drag into the pawn shop.

Then, the 90s and prosperity changed everything. All of a sudden, people had jobs and damn few of them felt the need to steal everything that wasn't tied down. It's amazing how many things analysts can find to justify reduced crime and violence when, obviously, having a roof over your head and food in your gut does wonders for "national morality."

I got used to not worrying about things being stolen off of my bike. I am stuck with the habit of carrying my riding gear everywhere, but I don't worry about losing saddlebags, mirrors, the bike seat, or the bike when I'm away from it for a few moments. I am capable of adapting bad habits in a moment. After fifteen years of theft-less life, I stopped worrying about the things I left in the parking garage/lot. I should have known that all those news reports of the next recession/depression were a warning that I needed to revert to California paranoia.

Yesterday, I got to work a little late. My class would be waiting at the door when I got there. I had a short day, according to my schedule, and I was a little distracted by the morning's nutty St. Paul detours and dumber-than-usual traffic. I haven't yet found a cover for my 250 Sherpa commuter bike, so my gear is exposed. That's a dumb thing to do, but it hadn't been a problem on the little bike or my 650 for so long I didn't think much about it as I locked the bars and ran for class, taking off my gear as I went.

When I got back to the bike, about 3 hours later than my "schedule" (as usual). My two month old MotoFizz bag was gone. Usually, I yank it and haul it with my riding gear to my office, but today I thought I'd get away without being paranoid. The asshole who stole the bag didn't bother to take the mounting straps, so he'll probably sell the bag for peanuts to someone who can't figure out how to use it. It didn't have much in it: a pair of cheap waterproof pants, a pair of bungie webs, a plastic waterbottle. The bag was expensive, but the contents were more personally valuable than practically significant.

I didn't lose as much money from the theft as I lost psychologically. It’s a reminder that things have changed, again, for the worse. One of the worries in riding a small bike is that the bike, itself, is easily stolen. St. Paul is about as insecure a city as I’ve ever lived near and there really isn’t a safe place to park anywhere near where I work. The garage is unmonitored and the motorcycle parking is not visible to the bored and braindead attendant. The school’s lot is equally invisible to responsible eyes, but we’ve had a recent rash of bicycle thefts right in front of the receptionist’s desk.

At the least, I need to find a bike cover that wraps up the little dirt bike so that the majority of thieves will pass it by for a more sure thing. At the most, I’m considering adapting an old defib unit to deliver a 700 volt “warning” shock to anyone who touches the bike. If you see anyone wandering the streets of St. Paul with a small MotoFizz tailbag. Give me a call and I’ll remove that person from the streets. I figure one good deed deserves another.

• http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-theft/
• http://www.sportrider.com/features/146_9812_motorcycle_theft/index.html
• www.msf-usa.org/downloads/Preventing_motorcycle_theft.pdf
• http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/southcentral/2005/10/17/features/62125.htm
• www.foremost.com/safety/motorcycle-safety/protect-your-motorcycle-against-theft.htm