Product Review: Geza Gear Elite-Plus Half-Cover

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Thomas W. Day

Pre-Geza Gear, the bicycles, the WR250X, the trailer, and everything attached was covered in slush and ice after 350 miles of miserable west Texas weather.

Not much went well for the first couple of months on our 2013-2014 attempt to play snowbirds. A day before we left home, my custom-fitted Harbor Freight trailer took a hit when a friend decided to stand on the hitch to counterbalance loading the bike and bent the frame so badly I almost decided to leave the bike at home. The VW-based RV turned out to be allergic to rain, ice, and snow. Our planned route was sacrificed to accommodate the perfect storm of failing vehicle, unseasonably cold and wet weather in practically every direction, and even our bicycles turned out to be more of a hassle than assets.

The only thing that worked as expected was my beautiful and beloved Yamaha WR250X. After 350 miles of slogging through a sudden ice storm between central Texas and Carlsbad, New Mexico, I expected to have done permanent damage to that sorely abused machine. After I slid it off of the trailer and cleaned it up, the best sound I could have imagined was when the little bike fired up instantly in 30F weather and got me into Carlsbad for much needed groceries and supplies. I immediately went on-line to find a cover that would protect my blue beauty from any more vicious weather. I found Geza Gear (www.gezagear.com) and that company's assortment of stretchy covers that are guaranteed to survive practically anything from 12 to 72 months, depending on the model.

All loaded up and ready to go exploring; sleet, snow, or rain be damned.

On the advice of Geza Gear's customer service, I went for the fairly expensive Pro-Elite version of the cover, along with the stuff sack and mirror covers for about $270 shipped. The cover arrived just in time to go through the last round of ice and wind before we left Albuquerque. Since then, the bike has been protected by that cover for 3,800 miles of, mostly, bright sun and heavy winds traveling around New Mexico and back home through Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Iowa. We did hit a little blast of rain in Missouri, but it didn't test the cover much.

The Pro Elite's #9238 material is a wonder. You can cut slits in the stuff for tie-down straps to pass through without worrying about those incursions turning into never-ending tears. The stuff is tough as leather and flexible as Spandex. Not once in all of those miles the cover even appear to make the slightest effort to blow off; and we took some buffeting from near-tornado winds in Texas and a Dust Bowl-quality storm in Roswell, New Mexico.

All of their materials are designed to "materials can take the punishing effects and monumental stresses of applied wind-forces from 55mph to over 100mph while being towed on your motorcycle on an open trailer cross-country, without shredding or buffetting." The custom designed materials are not off-the-shelf stuff you can find from any other manufacturer that I know of. With names like Elonitec, Elonitec/Antron, Duracor, Iridiex, #9238, #12373, LX88, and Iridiex/Kevlar/GoreTex, I'm not sure where you'd start to look, if you wanted to imitate Geza Gear's product line.

The rear view window look at the cover on the road at 65mph. Barely a flicker from the material and all of the important bits are protected.

There isn't much that I can add to the company's claim that their covers are "cut and sewn is determined from YOUR EXACT bike year, make and model." The Yamaha WR250X isn't exactly a common animal and it's a long ways from the kind of motorcycle on which Geza Gear's products are probably found, but they assembled a cover that was an exact fit for my motorcycle, including some cute rearview mirror covers and cutouts for the mirrors and a lift for my bike's short windshield. You can see from the included pictures how precisely the cover fits my bike and how little motion there is in transit. For someone who is going to be travelling for a while, I have found nothing comparable.

There are a lot of decisions I made that winter that I would avoid on a second pass, buying my Geeza Gear cover is not one of them. I expect to get years of service out of this terrific protection.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Aerostich Triple Digit Rain Covers

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

Aerostich Triple Digit Insulated Glove Covers $57.00 (Aerostich photo)
If you pick your motorcycle gear by trying it on and looking in the mirror, you will probably pass on the Triple Digit Rain Covers. They look stupid. This product will turn your elegant, well trimmed five digit manipulators into three-fingered cartoon-character paws. This is a product that appeals only to those self-assured, style-ignorant types. Freaks who ride year-around, don't like being defeated by the weather, and don't care what they look like in the process.


Triple Digit Rain Covers saving me from the cold. $47.00 (T Day photo)

My only true complaint about this product is that I found it too late to save a good bit of my 2007 trip to Alaska. So, I need to go back and do some of that ride again. I was set from head to toe and chest to wrist for the trip, but my hand protection plan was a disaster. I carried  two sets of "waterproof gloves" to the frozen north; a set of insulated First Gear motorcycle gloves and a pair of REI Goretex-lined skiing gloves. Both of these products failed to keep my hands dry and on several freezing days, my whole body comfort was destroyed because I could not keep my hands warm. It may be that 90% of your body heat is dedicated to keeping your brain and heart warm, but my experience demonstrated that the body doesn't want to let the hands go without a fight. The result of that fight is whole body discomfort.


Triple Digit Rain Covers protecting the back of my hand. (T Day photo)

Late in 2007, a friend and I were exploring the North Shore and stopped in Duluth for his first visit to the RiderWearhouse. I had been looking for a solution to my frozen hand problems and when I tried on the Triple Digit Rain Covers I found it. We both bought a pair and they have been a solution for a variety of cold and wet hand problems. The covers provide flawless rain protection, terrific wind and cold insulation, and the three finger design is absolutely functional, although a little comical. On my 2008 Nova Scotia trip, I was rained on for a dozen days and my hands were well protected. 2,,500 miles of North Dakota's 2009 spring rain and my hands stayed as dry as the rest of my 'stich-covered body. When the weather turned cold last fall, I didn't have to put away my summer gloves until after Thanksgiving. The covers pack small, too, so you can easily carry them in a jacket pocket for wet weather emergencies.

The Triple Digits are laminated ripstop nylon and the design includes an elastic drawcord and a hook and loop wrist cinch to keep the covers in place over your regular riding gloves. You'd think nylon would provide a slippery-when-wet grip on the bars, but the grip is fine. For my troll wrists, the cinch strap is too short to stay in place when I try to sneak my hands into the covers. Aerostich sent me a strip of the hook & loop material to extend the strap. If your hands don't look like hairy hams, you probably won't have this problem. The left thumb has a squeegee for cleaning your visor and you'll want to remember that when you wipe your nose. They come in dark blue and florescent orange and both have a Scotchlite reflective stripe to attract attention in traffic. They're available in M-XL sizes. Aerostich also makes an insulated version of the Glove Covers that adds even more protection from the cold, wet world we live in.

POSTSCRIPT: So, I’ve had my Triple Digits for seven years and they are still exactly as useful as they were in 2008. They extend (downwardly) the temperatures I can comfortably ride and even add a little to my visibility. I wouldn’t go any serious distance without these gloves in my tankbag.

Crazy Weather

A friend of mine wrote, "We're going to be the last generation to enjoy global warming." And enjoying it we are. It's the 2nd week in March and Minnesota is setting all kinds of weather records. Yesterday we were 40F above the average March temperatures. In fact 5 all time high temperature records were set in the past week. I've ridden to work lots of March days, but I can't remember ever doing that without any thermal gear at all. I'm dressing like it's June.

We're probably going to pay for this in July and August and we're really going to pay for it as the oceans rise and currents adapt to increasing levels of fresh water, but right now I'm loving global warming in Minnesota.

Minnesota, Still Not the Place to Buy a Bike

Way back in 2005, I was hunting for a dual purpose commuter bike and I wrote about the weird Minnesota used bike seller's market. I'm not really in the hunt this winter, but I'm interested in a couple of possible upgrades to my garage candy. So, I've been watching Craig's List and that got me into a couple of email conversations with sellers. While the country is mired in what is likely to be called the New Great Depression, motorcycle prices are just as idiotic as always in Minnesota. As I write this it is 3 degrees outside and we're not likely to see anything dramatically warmer for at least a month. Why anyone would buy a motorcycle in Minnesota in February is a mystery that leads the investigator into the realm of insanity and irrational behavior.

The longest conversation I had with a seller this winter was with a guy who was selling a Suzuki 2006 DRZ400SM. The bike was a ways from my ideal, so I was mostly curious as to why he thought he could get $5000 for a used motorcycle that sells for $6300 list and is usually discounted another $500-1000 because dealers can't move them fast enough at list price. His explanation was that he was "underwater on the bike" and couldn't sell it for less without having to come up with cash to pay off the loan. He was also desperate for cash, since he was buying a home. Obviously, his banker didn't learn anything from the last year of sub-prime mortgage lending fiasco.

Like all certifiable Minnesota motorcyclists, this guy was convinced that he would get his price and that I was trying to cheat him by quoting the Kelly Blue Book price or any other reference. He was particularly incensed by my suggestion that his Two Brothers pipe, the carb kit, and the resultant "tuning" he'd done had devalued the bike below the Blue Book price. As if paying lots of money for wreaking the performance and multiplying the irritation factor of the bike makes it less valuable? What kind of crazy person would even suggest such a thing?

Me.

After 14 years in the frozen north, there are two things I firmly believe Minnesotans are incapable of accomplishing: any aspect of competent highway design and all areas of motorcycle tuning. I would pay extra for a used motorcycle that has had every adjustment factory sealed so there is evidence that not a single screw has been turned, a jet replaced, or a needle moved by a resident of this state. Every motorcycle I have purchased in Minnesota (and a couple of other places near here) that has been "tuned" by a past owner has required hours of repair to get the bike back to something resembling the original factory-issued performance. Bike after bike has been hacked, piped, and mangled until the poor things can barely get out of their own way. Which is what led the previous owners to give up and sell their precious motorcycles for the outrageous pittance that I'm willing to spend.

As to the pricing issue, I regularly remind myself of what motorcycles are actually worth by referring to Craig's List in Denver, San Diego, and Los Angeles; places where people actually ride motorcycles regularly and year-around. That used and abused 2006 DRZ400 would be priced from $1600 to $3400 in Denver, no more than $3000 in San Diego (with useful add-ons instead of noisy ones), and rarely more than $2500 in LA/Orange County. There are lots of bikes to choose from, too. The price will go up a little in Denver during the summer, but prices are year-around-constant in southern California. Even crazier, once you get to California or Colorado, you can find better deals than those on Craig's List or the city newspapers.

You could argue that driving from Minnesota to any of those places and riding back would wipe out any savings you might get. True. That doesn't explain the completely unrealistic Minnesota and Midwest prices, but that is true. On the other hand, since you're buying the bike to take a trip why not take a trip, buy a bike, and take another trip back home on the bike? I've done that, twice, in the last 10 years and both trips and bikes were well worth the train ride to the bike. I like train trips almost as much as motorcycle trips, so it has been a double-win. I have some friends in southern California I haven't seen for a couple of decades, maybe I need to plan a spring trip to the coast to buy a bike?

As usual, "just looking" is turning into something more focused. I don't need a new motorcycle. I don't even really want one. Ok, that's a lie but not much of one. If I could get the damn Sherpa to quit dribbling oil I'd be happy with it as my commuter bike. I am happy with the V-Strom and don't expect to replace it for years to come. I think looking at idiot Minnesota used bike prices challenges me to get a better deal, just to show that I can.

Economically, none of this (including my end of the deal) makes any sense. A smart guy would, at least, sell the bike for a Minnesota price and show some kind of profit. I still don't have the Minnesota hoarding gene. When I'm ready to sell, I look at the Blue Book trade-in price and advertise my bikes in that territory. I deal, too. Make me an offer anywhere near my asking price and I want the damn thing out of the garage to make room for whatever new thing I'm occupied with at the moment. That goes for everything I own, not just motorcycles. For 40 years, my idea of living right was to be able to pack everything I own into a VW bug. My motto was "when in doubt, throw it out." I'm old, settled, and married so that's been modified a bunch over the years, but it's still an ideal. If I don't "get my price," I'm as likely to give it away as I am to find a place to store stuff until I can sell it. I take "use it or lose it" seriously.

I guess that explains why I will never be a real Minnesotan.

Frustratin' Weather

The weekend was semi-warm, after a weird snow on Saturday morning. I got out on the 250 Saturday afternoon and put in a few early morning dirt biking hours on Sunday. Just enough riding, in fact, to remind myself of why I hate my car.

Boredom, that's why. In another life, I was a field service tech for industrial equipment. I drove 100,000 miles a year, ever year for 7 years. Those miles all came first in a Chevy 3 /4 ton pickup followed by an F200 Ford Econoline. The Chevy got about 4mpg, but it would clip along Texas highways at 100mph without complaint. The Econoline up'ed the mileage to 15mpg, but topped out at about 95 screaming its pitiful 240 cubic inch in-line 6 an unsafe distance past redline (if it would have had a tach installed). By the time I quit that occupation, I was unable to stay awake in a cage after 50 miles of any kind of driving. I resorted to sticking my head out the driver's side window on -20F mornings and dumping cold water on my head while I drove to stay awake. Nothing worked, but I managed to live through the job long enough to find another line of work. The residue of that career has been an extreme dislike of being trapped in a car and an inability to find anything worthwhile about four-wheel transportation, outside of weather protection and an ability to haul crap.

For 10 years in California, we owned a variety of cages and I rarely knew if they worked or needed repairs. My bikes (petalled and powered) got me everywhere and I even did grocery shopping on two wheels. Colorado wasn't much different, but I needed slightly better rain gear for the winter months. Minnesota is kicking my ass.

If this damn winter doesn't end soon, I'm going to do something desperate; like move south or west or to another country.

Counting on Spring

Yesterday was above freezing for a couple of hours. I went outside, for a few moments, without sealing myself up like a walking refigerator and tossed frisbies at my dog for an hour before driving the cage to work. I think we've had three days that warm since sometime in December. The good news is that I've finished my attic studio remodel, cleaned up most of my basement shop, tweaked my video gear for next summer's projects, and we'll probably have the bathroom remodeled before spring. The bad news is that my garage shop is a disaster zone from dashing to the Shopsmith, carving out whatever woodwork I'm in the garage to do, and dashing back without cleaning up the mess because I'm more concerned with frostbite than order. It will be June before I get all the crap tossed out and all the tools restored to their proper places. Unless I decide to re-side the house, then the shop will be a disaster until next summer.

I tried to start the dirt bike, to take a winter lap around our snow covered frozen lake, but the Sherpa wouldn't fire. It burped, but it wouldn't go. The V-Strom fired up, but I'm not man enough to ride that monster on ice.


The first hint of possible spring came today, though. I bought some motorcycle gear; a new Aerostich heated vest. I've been thinking about a heated vest since I frosted my butt in the Yukon two years ago. In a couple of days, I'll have one. I may hook it up to my cage to cut down on heater fan noise on my drive to work until I can use it on the bike. I am, officially, tired of being cold.


Aerostich has been mailing me taunting sale ads for heated vests since I decided I wanted one. Until now, the discounted vests were gone before I managed to log on to their website. Yesterday, I beat the rush. I'll admit to being cheap. I'll even admit to being irrationally cheap. I have an aversion to paying list price for anything. Honestly, I'm really fond of buying used for a fraction of list price. I'd buy used food if I could digest it. Disgusting, right?


This time of year, it's hard to remember what it is I like about Minnesota. It's dark, cold, dangerously slick, and uninspiring. I get up in the dark and go home in the dark. I'm cold inside and outside, especially outside. Yeah, the cold keeps the riff raff away, but I may be riff raff. I can't remember the last time I was actually warm, outside of when I'm in the shower. If my shower time keeps extending, by May I'll have gills.


I had a dream, a couple of days ago, about being on my dirt bike in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota. I was stopped in an abandoned town that was overgrown with weeds and the buildings were slowly going back to nature. Other than the wind, it was dead quiet. The town's roads were all but returned to the earth, with huge cracks in the remaining bits of asphalt sprouting grass and dandelions and thistles. The main street brick road was heaving and cracked. Power lines were drooping across the roofs of houses and some of the poles were on the ground and others were heading that way. The town was completely abandoned, all of the residents were dead or gone.


I think my bike was either out of gas or busted. I wasn't worried or upset. I was warm. The sun was shining, it was a beautiful June day. I had my gear off of the bike and was setting up a campsite. I had food, water, and I was warm. In fact, I was sweating a bit. Ok, I was stranded an unknown number of miles from help, but I was freakin' warm. It felt so good to be warm that being stranded didn't seem like much of an inconvenience.

I may wear my new heated vest around the house until June.

Winter Blues

The V-Strom is put away for a while. The little Kawasaki is still in front of the garage, waiting for a 30 degree day when it will start and I feel brave enough to start it. I've brought some projects into the house to work on for the winter, the Kawasaki may follow.

Every year, when I put away the bikes it feels more like the last time. Due to an excessive number of household projects I feel a lot older this season than in the past. Of course, I am 60 and that IS a lot older than I was a while back.

The magazine and contributors put the Cheap Bike Challenge to print and that period of my life is behind me. I may tell more of that story here, but my editor wants me to wait until the reaction to the article lets him know if readers want to hear more about it. The MMM winter issue is always a bigger deal than the rest of the year, since it is the last of the paper until March.

I get way ahead of the magazine with my column, so I have a lot of ideas sitting unread at the end of each year. This year, because of this blog, I have an outlet for those unaccepted rants. Beware!

Eight Days and Resting

I found a great campsite last night, got a solid night’s sleep, and was indecisive about my next move. I need to get to the resort, dump gear, get to the airport, pick up Robbye at 8:30PM, get back (85 miles) to the hotel. I also want to see some of Nova Scotia while I wait. I headed west toward the ferry (Yarmouth) to see what that ride might be like when I get ready to leave Nova Scotia and to check out the coast. I gave up at Liverpool.

Liverpool is some kind of demonstration of terrible city management. The town is cute and ought to be a tourist mecca, except that the city mismanagement was viciously greedy. There are parking meters all over downtown ($1 an hour) and the place was dead empty. At least a half-dozen stores are having “going bust sales” and I didn’t feel motivated to leave my bike long enough to see if they were selling anything I’d want. I need a tourist

Had breakfast, decided to head north to the Kejimkujik National Park. I made it to the park, but didn’t have time to do much. I probably should have just gone to the resort and slept so I’d be alert for the ride to the airport. As it was, It was a blast to get to the resort, unpack, and turn around for the ride back to Halifax Airport.

People commute this far every day, but I don’t know why. I’d be miserable if I had to retrace my steps this far more than once or twice a year. I can’t imagine living anywhere so perfect that I’d drive 100 or more miles a day to live there. The trip back to Halifax was pretty boring. It would be less so on the third time around.

I got to town early and it was raining. I knew Robbye would bring inappropriate gear, other than the rain pants I packed for her, so I looked for a shopping center where I could buy disposable rain gear. I wrestled with the Halifax freeway system, which was designed by Minnesota DPS rejects or someone equally unsuited for urban planning. Exits are few and poorly identified and even more poorly located. Signs are usually placed right on the exit and are labeled to be as close to perfectly useless as possible. I found a hell-hole of a shopping mall that looked like a carbon copy of the dumbest plan ever concocted by the Mission-Veijo Company. It was so new that no part of it was on my 2007 Garmin maps. However, about half of the stores were already going out of business. A mostly customer-absent Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, and Best Buy were surrounded by other name brand clothing stores that have failed to find customers all over the USA. I hoped to find a sporting goods store that stocked Nikwax products, but no such luck. The entire mall was designed for clothes horses. A whole, larger, section of the mall was uncompleted and, if the current renters are examples, there won’t be much point in finishing the exercise in fiscal irresponsibility.

Halifax had been cursed with the Eagles in an outdoor concert during the week. Some enterprising person read the weather report and bought out all the disposable rain gear from every store in the mall. They probably made a fortune. I, however, struck out.

It stopped raining when I gave up on finding gear for Robbye. I decided to go to the airport and wait for the plane, maybe get some sleep on a bench. When I arrived, I noticed that the 20:30 flight from Toronto had “arrived.” Nuts, Nova Scotia is yet another time zone. I was late instead of early.

She was there, pissed, worried, and angry as hell at the airport and Air Canada folks in Toronto. Apparently, the airline worked hard to lose her box of riding gear. Just in time, she rescued it from the Toronto “lost and found,” although it was labeled and any semi-competent system would know it needed to follow the owner’s flight. Flying is harder, these days, than walking. You have to seriously want to go somewhere to put up with the stupid systems these stupid people have put in place to make life entertaining for terrorists. I don’t want to go anywhere that badly. I’d rather ride cross country than fly. If there is a reason for me to get there fast, I’ll just pass on the opportunity.

Once out of the airport building, we got her stuff together, loaded it and her on the bike, and headed for the resort. It started raining almost immediately. Of course, it was pitch black with total cloud cover and rain. It rained soft and hard all the way, all 92 miles, to the resort. The road was dark, every town was shut down for the night, and there was no rescue between Halifax and our destination. I probably averaged 10kph below the speed limit for most of the trip. Visibility was no better than 100 meters in most places and for a long stretch of highway the road was newly paved and unmarked. It was like riding on a narrow black void. Often coming into a town, the bike hydroplaned across sections of pooled water adding a new level of insecurity to the ride. My knees and back were aching from tension and I suspected that Robbye’s already damaged knees providing worse pain. Several times on the way, she whacked me out of fear and frustration, but she didn’t want to stop and change her gear. “Keep going,” she’d shout. As we past Sheet Harbor, about 5 miles from our resort, she really whacked me and I understood her frustration.

We were both soaked when we arrived. My Aerostitch gear had kept me dry through 20+ days of Alaska and western Canada rain, but it didn’t hold up to a Nova Scotia soaking. Robbye wasn’t that much wetter than me, having used me for a rain shield. It was a long, miserable night drive, but the animals were absent from the roads. They were probably too smart to be caught out on that kind of evil night. If a deer had run on to the road, we’d have probably hit it and killed us all. At some point, that thought might have provided more relief than terror. To start off her weekend in Nova Scotia, we had a real motorcycle adventure.

#16: They Are Not Men, They Are Bikers

Maybe this is an old age thing. Maybe I have always been a wimp. Whatever my situation, I'm not ashamed to admit that the Vikings I see on the road this time of the year are the kind of guys who have always intimidated and amazed me. If you're one of those guys who thinks Minnesota fall riding gear is a leather vest, a sleeveless flannel shirt, jeans, boots, and a protective skull-and-cross-bones bandana, you are who I'm talking about.

Last fall, I made a 40 degree late-September evening run from the Cities to Rochester, to hang with an old friend who was visiting from the left coast. On the way, I passed four bikes. Two of the bikers were "normals," wearing full-face helmets and cold weather riding gear. The third guy was a Winger, who probably had his heater going full blast, along with the grip warmers and the electric vest, while the heat generated by the Wing's helmet sound system toasted his ears. Finally, the last guy was a real Minnesota Viking on some kind of low-slung, ape-hung cruiser (sorry, I can't tell one from another). He was keeping up with traffic, which was doing about 75mph, and didn't appear to be any more uncomfortable than the guy on the Wing. Accounting for the wind chill and humidity, 75mph and 40 degrees Fahrenheit equals a wind chill of about 11oF.

How do they do that? I want to know. Seriously. This is the kind of weather that has always separated me from real bikers. When the temperature falls below 50, I wear a full-face Shoei (all vents closed), an old but very wind and water-tight Aerostitch suit, boots with heavy wool socks, winter gloves, and more clothing inside the Aerostitch than the Viking bikers probably own. Last September, by the time I got to Rochester I was close to chilled enough to serve with cheese and crackers. If I did a dozen miles in forty degree weather, without my helmet, I'd be nursing a head cold till next spring. If I went helmet-less and jacket-less for the same distance, I'd fall over like the guy on the "Laugh In" tricycle when I stopped. I'd bust like an empty beer bottle when I hit the pavement.

Riding in the cold has always been something that makes me nervous. It's a well known fact that you have to stay loose to ride smoothly. I don't know how you stay loose when you're frozen stiff. Those Viking guys don't even look uncomfortable, though.

Almost thirty years ago, I got talked into doing a 24-hour off-road race. The race was in south western South Dakota. The race was in January. The race was a two-man team deal and my teammate was a buddy who happened to own a small Suzuki dealership. We tricked out a 185cc dual-purpose Suzuki, including adding a half-dozen lights to the bike, and brought along his camper to serve as a deluxe pit.

The trick-est thing about riding this bike in that race was that, if someone tried to hang with me, I could switch off the lights and, for a few seconds, it was like the sun instantly eclipsed. Pause a few seconds, listening for the sound of crunching metal, fire up the lights and I'm back on my own.

We were clinging to first place, about 18 hours into the race, when we ran out of hot chocolate and coffee and had to switch to beer. Beer, in case you've not heard this, does not provide any useful energy. Beer will not help you stay warm. In fact, I would go so far as to say that drinking beer is a stupid thing to do during a race, regardless of temperature, but really stupid when the riding surface is covered with snow and ice.

I went down three times on my first beer-lap. Until we had made that tactical error, we had ridden about 400 flawless, fall-less, miles. My buddy not only crashed several times, on his turn, but he took out half of our lights when he went down. The last three hours of the race were miserable and we got our butts handed to us by a couple of sober guys on a Penton 175 ISDT; and whoever got second, third, fourth, and fifth place. The lesson I took away from that experience is "beer good, cold bad."

A decade later, I took a job in California. Since I figured my Omaha-rusted cars wouldn't pass any sort of physical inspection, I decided to sell my four-wheeled crap and move to the Sunshine State by motorcycle. On my very first street bike (a Honda CX500) and my first serious touring experience, I headed south toward Texas on a sunny, warm and windy April day. A day later, I was in southwest Kansas and it was snowing and 25 degrees. On the assumption that it might get worse before it got better (which it did), I decided to keep going south.

Late that evening, I rolled into Hereford, Texas; frozen, wet, and miserable. My bike was loaded with saddlebags, a large backpacking bag tied to the luggage rack, and camping gear was strapped to the passenger seat. I pulled into a 7-11 and stepped off the bike to get coffee, a phone book and a motel phone number, and whatever heat I could absorb in the store. With my right leg suspended in the air, I realized that I had forgotten to put the kickstand down. Me, the bike, and a good 150 lbs. of personal belongings landed in a heap in the parking lot.

Lying on the frozen ground, hoping someone in the store would see my predicament, I realized that the 7-11 had an "closed" sign pasted to the window. I couldn't budge the bike. I couldn't get my leg out from under it. Three hundred and fifty miles of freezing rain had sapped my strength and body heat. I lay there thinking how stupid my obituary was going to read, "Idiot freezes to death in abandoned store parking lot."

After only a few minutes that seemed like weeks, a light swung across the store front and stopped on me. A seven foot tall (I'm probably exaggerating) cowboy (they have real cowboys in Hereford, TX) stepped out of a big wheel pickup, pulled the bike up and dropped the kick stand. With the same hand, he drug me to my feet and said, "Those things get heavy sometimes, don't they? There's a motel down the road a piece," he pointed out the piece's general direction. "I think you might want to see if they got a room."

There was, I did, they did, and I spent all of the motel's hot water in a two hour shower that probably brought my body temperature up to about 80 degrees. A huge steak with trimmings and double desert got me back near 98.6F. The next day was sunny, still cold, and I held to the Texas two-lane speed limit (anything under 100mph) till I passed Lubbock, where the sun actually succeeded in warming the earth; a little. I stayed close to the Mexico border all the way to California. Again, I learned that motorcycles, cold, and me don't mix.

Now that I'm a geezer, I like being cold even less. All the places where my bones have had to reattach themselves do unfunny things when I'm cold. The joints that I abused so carelessly when I was a kid seize up and make snap, crackle, and popping noises. If it gets cold enough, I forget to breathe. I'm not a Viking. Never was. Never will be. But I envy the hell out of those guys and if I could pry my cold, cramping hands loose from the bars, I'd wave at them when we meet on the road.

Winter 2001