Surfing a Tide of Weirdness

“The big tension is between convenience and individuality, and we are giving up so much of our individuality and our privacy for convenience. That’s something that we have to opt into. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with having a bit of both, but I do think that perhaps if you’re extreme one way or the other, you’re really missing out on a great deal.” – Debbie Milman, host of the podcast ‘Design Matters, on the ‘Ezra Klien Show’ podcast, October 2026 Most of us could make the same observations about the various motorcycle sub-cultures surrounding us. How the various ADV bikes and riders all look about the same, how the touring bikes and riders look the same, how all the Harley bikes and riders look about the same, etc. This link The age of average — Alex Murrell takes you to a short and very interesting essay which extends this idea -- the utility-value of ‘sameness’ -- into every area of technology all over the world surrounding us. The concluding paragraph is the weakest part of the essay, but based on its overall content, and my own general life experience, an important takeaway missing is simply this: there are only two causal factors behind ’The Age of Average’: 1.) As the essay’s author notes, we humans are lots more alike than different, and this is also true for all the other individual living species. Beneath infinite micro-variations and micro-variables is, at an emotional and psychological level, how every human wants to experience ‘belonging’ and this is a super-powerful pull toward uniformity. We seek to be different in nuance, while remaining strongly bonded to being like everyone else. We need constant affirmation of this to be secure in our individualized lifestyle choices. My favorite quote about all this came from a successful but not super well-known actor who said: “To discover what normal means, you have to surf a tide of weirdness.” – Charlotte Rampling, in an interview in The New Yorker magazine, 16 May 2021. Being a little ‘weird’ as a transportation motorcycle rider, and as maker of unusual, armored textile ‘coveralls’, has most likely been partly a result of childhood emotional and developmental experiences which combined with what these days has become known as mild autism. Being this way has been a life-long constant which only recently became more obvious when I started riding for daily transportation during the winter months here in Minnesota. Riding itself ostracizes one. Riding wearing an Aerostich one-piece suit takes this weirdness one level higher because it isn’t normal motorcycle gear (as are a riding jacket and jeans). Riding on snowy and icy streets on a cold day blows the weirdness level over the top. Occasionally someone in traffic will take a smartphone photo of me doing this and will later post it on social media. Seriously. For a bunch of good, logical reasons I’ve always hoped the satisfying weirdness of riding for daily utility transportation would somehow catch on and become more normal in American culture, but it probably won’t. At least not anytime soon. Lots of reasons. Thus, I ride-forth happily, a certifiable weirdo, surrounded by endless numbers of people, including some very hard-core committed motorcycle riders, all happily and uniformly enclosed within their comfortable, safe, well-sealed cars and trucks. 2.) The engineering and financial ‘logic’ of uniformity and belonging. Such considerations apply a tremendous pressure in the development of most serially-produced human-made artifacts and organized systems to be both average and uniform. Technology advances accretionarily (a made-up word meaning ‘by accretion’). Airplanes and autos both continue improving: A) functionally, B) economically and C) aerodynamically, incrementally converging on optimal solutions based on the sum of knowledge accumulated through research and prior experiences. And except for the aerodynamic element, so does everything else we build, from rider suits to office buildings and houses. Lately I’ve been thinking about the impact of A.I. on this phenomenon. It has a kind of aggregated logic and knowledge beyond human capability in most (all?) areas and seems to be taking all of us toward an even more uniform ‘Age of Average’ in the future. The only thing about A.I. becoming more obvious is how the money going into its development is looking more like an investment bubble. Here’s a short Facebook ‘reel’ which is quite persuasive. I think I should go for a ride today and surf my own little ‘tide of weirdness’ for a while, and not worry about stuff like that -- at least for a little while. Riding motorcycles is wonderful. And very good for us. Weirdness can be both vexing and wonderful, if you are open to it. -- Mr. Subjective, Nov 2026

PART 1: Urban-ality, Suburban-ality And, as Usual, Motos Suburban infrastructure development sped up during the late 1940’s as many more people began to own automobiles. Back then most post-WW2 returning soldiers and young-adults-in-general wanted a peaceful life with the promise of a safe, calm, quiet home and at least a small a back yard for the kids to play in, hopefully also with a patio having enough space for a grill, a table and a couple of chaise loungers under a sun umbrella. A suburban Shangri-la. Twenty years later many of the children who’d been raised in these bucolically boring places found them (and their similarly boring ‘greatest generation’ parents) a bit too dull and predictable. They wanted something different for themselves as they began moving into adulthood. Along their way through adolescence one of the things some boomer-teens found and liked was motorcycles, many of which were affordable and (cough…cough…) newly reliable. Riding a motorcycle for sport, fun, and for going off to explore America became a thing. For thirty years from the 1970s through the 2000s millions of riders were exploring backroads on bikes loaded up with camping equipment, while others were club road racing sportbikes or stripped-down dirtbikes. It was a true golden age for recreational and sport motorcycling in America. Millions more also just rode around locally, simply because it felt good and looked cool. Bikes figured prominently in mainstream culture and were often used as aspirational props in advertising, in many movies, and on television. Enter Aerostich. Specifically, we pioneered new kinds of rider’s gear to help make using motorcycles a little more comfortable and safer, especially in crummy weather. To help make riding a little better and easier. During this same time dozens of other moto-centric small businesses provided everything else needed to make bikes better looking, better handling, more capable, and (of course) a little faster. Some of them, like us, are still around today. Motorcycles have long been a slightly impractical way for some riding-inclined folks to reconcile their personal mobility requirements with the boring banality of much of today’s built-out postwar infrastructure: Sprawled out acres of strip malls and shopping centers, and of endless suburbs with sharply edged lawns fronting curving side streets, etc. It’s all very comfortable, safe and convenient, but also oh so very boring. I’ve come to believe a challenging, textured life is better for a person in multiple holistically prescriptive, prophylactic ways. So instead of driving a car nearly everywhere I choose to motorcycle or bicycle every chance I get. For me it’s simply more enjoyable to get from A to B riding a bicycle or motorcycle. And this is so regardless of weather. Riding simply helps me feel better, and having decent gear makes doing this a lot easier. There is not much else to write about this. It’s perfectly fine with me if other riders work to curate for themselves only the most optimal riding experiences. Good for them, and I mean it. But even riding through moderately bad weather makes sense to me. Yes, it can be less comfortable and is sometimes a bit riskier, and riding in adverse conditions is always ostracizing, and I never specifically seek it out, yet I still do it. I know this makes me weird. Lastly, if you are experiencing emotional or psychological problems, and you happen to have a reasonable working motorcycle, and you are physically able to ride, you might want to go riding for a while. - Mr. Subjective, May 2026 PS – Even on those perfect summer days a boring back yard with a patio and a grill, or even a small deck off an apartment, is wonderful to be able to come home to. Especially after riding a few miles to get there. --------- PART 2: They Didn’t See You Wanna cut your riding crash-injury risk in half? About 50% of all two-vehicle accidents involving a motorcycle are due to a car or truck driver pulling out of a side road or driveway, or turning left from the opposite lane, directly into the path of an oncoming rider at exactly the wrong time. 100% of them will later say “I didn’t see you.” They did not, and if you require a deeper dive there have been decades of careful academic research on this which you can find with little difficulty. Separately, the largest cause of single vehicle crash injuries involving motorcycle riders is simply riding off the road in a curve and then hitting something solid which does not move. The solution? Learn how to ride a little better. There are many ways to accomplish that, from experimenting carefully in a parking lot to learn your and your bike’s limits, to taking MSF and similar skill-building classes, to spending a day at an elite track school. What can you do about the “…didn’t see you” car-motorcycle crashes? The easiest and least complicated way is to dress so you are easier to see. Wear white, yellow, blaze orange, and hi-viz helmets and gear. These all make a well documented statistically measurable difference. And after such gear has a few thousand miles of wear and little patina, you won’t look overly goofy, either. If you enjoy your riding enough to do it frequently, the bright gear fashion sacrifice is well worth it. Obvious side note: If your bike is unfaired and ‘naked’, bright gear will be more easily noticed by oncoming and side road traffic than it would otherwise be if you ride behind a large windshield or fairing. You can also do something to improve your forward-projecting lighting to help make your bike much more noticeable to drivers just ahead. Start with a brighter headlight, but don’t go overboard or you’ll just irritate more than a few of them. Also, kits which make your headlight flash like it’s some kind of emergency-responder vehicle are available, but they’ll be even more irritating, so don’t be tempted. Adding a small running light seems a good option. I like to install a single smallish driving light in an asymmetric position near the bike’s main headlight. This means the 10, 2 or 4 (analog clock) locations, not the more symmetrical positions at 12, 3 or 6. A cattywampus arrangement looks a little strange, but when it comes to conspicuity this is a good thing. It’s always good to do something a little different whenever one is trying to attract someone’s attention. We all tend to notice the unusual. Everything anomalous stands out better. Drivers notice sidecars much better than motorcycles for that reason. Since a picture is worth 1,000 words, here are photos of four bikes I’ve done this to. The oldest one is a 35-watt halogen on the BMW airhead. It came from a neighborhood auto parts store. The three newer ones are generic LED driving lights which also came from some local store. All were low enough draw to be simply wired through switches rated to handle the electrical load without a relay. So simple even a dummy like me could figure out the wiring how-to. 2006 Suzuki DRZ 400E – In addition to improving conspicuity, this little LED driving light supplements an aftermarket LED headlight. It is wired though a circuit which allows me to use it after the bike has been keyed off, which is handy for setting up a campsite after dark. Relative to the main headlight it is positioned at about 1:30PM. During daylight hours I must remember to turn it off after arriving somewhere, but it’s surprising how long it can be left on without running the battery down too much. 1994 Honda XR650L - The low beam of the aftermarket main headlight is two small LED lights (emitters?) beside the central LED high beam. I’ve used a clear silicone adhesive to add an orange acrylic rectangle directly in front of one of the low beam LEDs. From left to right oncoming drivers see the four-LED driving light (directly below the right turn signal), the orange low-beam LED and the white low-beam LED. All three lights combine to look weirdly unusual and hopefully make this bike more noticeable to oncoming traffic. There’s no switch on the added driving light. It is wired to come on and go off with the headlight. 1981 BMW R80GS – This 35-watt halogen light was added long before LED lights were available. It came from an auto parts store and attaches to a clamp-on aluminum bracket added to the left fork tube. On top of its ball shape is a simple on/off toggle switch from a hardware store. 2007 BMW R1200R – This small 3-LED driving light is mounted to the plastic headlight support at about the 1:30 PM position relative to the headlight. It is powered from wires connected to the back side of this bike’s built-in accessory outlet, then run through a hardware store on/off toggle switch located next to the left handgrip. Whenever the bike is running the accessory outlet is powered. After the bike is keyed off, it remains powered for about fifteen minutes then automatically shuts down. This allows the driving light to be useful for setting up a campsite after dark. - Mr. Subjective, Dec 2020 --------- PART 3: Motor Skills The Life-Long Satisfactions of Acquiring Better Ownership of Your Environment “Each September at the Montessori school I run, the preschoolers engage in an elaborate after-lunch cleanup routine. They bustle through the room with sweepers and tiny dustpans, spreading crumbs all over the floor and making a bigger mess than they started with. If any scraps do make it into their dustpans, most of them spill out as the children exuberantly walk to the trash bin. "It would be faster and neater to simply let the teachers do all the tidying up. But our goal is more than achieving a spotless classroom; it’s also helping children develop motor skills, responsibility, confidence, and the ability to clean effectively on their own. Sure enough, by December, the children’s sweeping efforts become more refined. By springtime, if not earlier, they start to pick up other messes throughout the day without a teacher’s prompting. They haven’t just learned to mop and scrub; they’ve taken ownership over their environment.” - By Christine Carrig in The Atlantic, July 21, 2025, The Mistake Parents Make With Chores. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The satisfaction of developing and sharpening motor skills is an important part of the inherent appeal of learning how to ride a motorcycle. Learning how to accomplish new things can be difficult, but after a new skill is mastered, it becomes satisfying and happiness-generating. The same is so for learning new thinking and analyzing skills. Riding a motorcycle gives us both gifts. Physically, handling the machine through an endless variety of situations (traffic, infrastructure, terrain, and weather) is one part. Usefully ‘reading’ and analyzing developing traffic and other environmental situations skillfully and accurately is the other. Using these linked areas of real-time riding skill well is a life-long happiness-generator. Because technology helps us accomplish things and accomplishing things makes us happy, technology-in-general is highly ‘marketable’. We work hard to create, possess and utilize technology. Including motorcycles. Learning provides the same accomplishing-happiness result as a physical accomplishment does. Loving and being loved are important additional kinds of emotional accomplishments. Until generative A.I. arrived, technological enhancements in our ability to accomplish things involved simple amplifications of our mental, emotional and physical abilities. From the first stone axe and wooden spear to the latest recursive-learning A.I., all new technology is societally disruptive. The more useful, important, popular and pervasive the technology, the more disruptive it is. For every benefit a new technology provides there are always attached penalties, unintended consequences or unanticipated downsides. It seems possible A.I. may become such a broadly useful technology its disruptions and downsides could be wide enough to cause some individuals to leave mainstream society, as Amish/Hutterite/Mennonite/Morman/Jehovah’s Witness faith-based conditionally structured communities have all successfully done to various degrees. Today it’s easy to imagine a future community built around accepting most or all of today’s technological advances, including digital non-A.I. computers, and motorcycles, while rejecting those mental/psychological/neurological/emotional simulacrum technologies like generative A.I. I like riding motorcycles, hand washing dishes, pedaling bicycles, camping out, taking walks and fixing things with hand tools. I also like using a personal computer. When I don’t get a regular dose of these kinds of accomplishment-experiences, I feel a bit lost. Similarly, I’m always happy after successfully learning or discovering a new idea or reasoning out a new solution to something I’d been wondering about. This includes difficult spiritual/emotional/psychological questions. All technologies so far, except generative A.I., feel wonderful to be able to skillfully use, but the earlier manual version of most technologies can also be roughly as satisfying and happiness-generating -- if one has the time and if a situation allows. Henry David Thoreau famously said (and wrote down) the folk wisdom about how "chopping wood warms you twice." It sure does. Choosing to ride a motorcycle, scooter or bicycle, instead of taking a bus or driving a car, works similarly on whatever is inside of us. Is it possible today’s societally higher incidences of psychological, neurological and emotional illnesses, and of certain chronic physical medical conditions, and of the diverse examples of increasing societal unrest in rich and advanced areas, are all at least partly caused by technology doing some things for us we should be doing ourselves? How might one decide what technologies to adopt, and which to take a pass on? Automobile cruise control, self-steering lane assist and smooth super-slab freeways? Absolutely. But whenever possible I’ll still choose a backroad aboard a motorcycle with traditional manual controls. My preference does not make it correct for you, or for anyone else. Generative A.I. is coming toward all of us like a hurricane and is about to better-automate and better-simulate how we feel and think. I don’t see how we can stop it, or even effectively regulate it. I’m not smart enough to know if we even should try. But clearly there is a dark side to this technology, as there has been with all the technologies we’ve ever previously adopted to augment our mental, emotional and physical capabilities. The ancient Greeks had a nice story about Icarius. He wanted to fly to the sun. It ended badly. And maybe there’s more to SF PD detective Harry Calahan’s scripted line: “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” from that old Clint Eastwood movie ‘Dirty Harry’ than audiences realized at the time. Walk, skate, pedal or ride a motorcycle as much as you can, and drive whenever you need or want to. Just please be careful with generative A.I. — should you happen to be directly involved in developing, spreading and supporting it. Have you ever considered motorcycle riding? (We’d be happy to help.) - Mr. Subjective, Sept 2025

Ride More, No Nonsense. Sometimes dedicated long-time recreational and amateur competition motorcyclists decide to change their relationship with riding. They’ll decide to ride even more days than they already do. For reasons they probably don’t fully understand themselves, and may not even be fully aware of, riding mostly on weekends and on wonderful warm summer evenings becomes not enough. Somehow, without quite realizing it, they sort of slip off motorcycling’s deep end. This happened to me, and I still don’t exactly know how or why. Sometimes, young riders begin riding for transportation to their first job, or to high school. Others start such utility transportation riding later in life, sometimes much later. Still others may enjoy riding for a year or two until ‘life’ happens to them (job/wife/kid/money/etc) and this brings a halt to their riding, but years later they take it up again. Still others ride to experience the challenges and fun of amateur club racing and/or other organized riding events: Ironbutt endurance riding programs. Roadracing, enduro, motocross, trials and hare-scramble events. Or BDR (Backcountry Discover Route) rides and events such as formally organized brand-affinity club rallies. There are also social media organized ‘flashmob’ rides and gatherings. And one-of-a-kind events like for example the annual ‘Slimy Crud Run’ in Wisconsin, and ‘Sturgis’. And there’s also those ‘Distinguished Gentlemen’s Rides’ all over the country. There are rides for women, and rides in support of all kinds of worthy charities. The list of organized ways to spend more time enjoying riding amongst groups of like-minded souls is nearly endless. Most of these ways to enjoy riding are at least partly social. Life is meant to be shared. Others figure out more solitary ways to ride more. I’ve known many riders who’ve paired up with a riding buddy or two, or a spouse, parent or child, to simply enjoy more riding experiences unattached to any formal program or organization. Finally, depending on one’s life-situation and circumstances, there are those who mostly ride alone, partly for the benefits of solitude, and partly because they simply like doing it in ways words cannot easily explain. Last and not least, some end up riding for daily utility transportation and commuting, either out of necessity or choice. In many locations and situations, this type of riding is a practical and economical way of putting motorcycling into many more days of one’s life. And in the parts of the world now filled with comfortable, efficient, convenient and safe automobiles, it’s also a way to slip a bit off the deep end. Such riders are peculiar people. Not anti-social. Not with a death-wish. Not even quirky. Just mildly odd. Every time I look in a mirror now, one of those people is staring back at me. All the above-listed types of riding expansions have in common is a requirement for more rider’s gear, and sometimes also, uh…more motorcycles. There’s no getting around it - an expanded quiver of gear (and motorcycles) directly enables one to ride a lot more. I’ve known riders who’ve gone through their riding in stages, starting as a new occasional rider and culminating as a life-long near-daily rider with a huge assortment of gear. Here is a photo of my own quiver-of-riding gear. It’s been the same mix of items for about the past fifteen years, and it all hangs from a two-foot-bar in the corner of the basement of my home, near the door into the garage. Before I lived here it all hung from a water pipe suspended across the ceiling of the garage, but it could just as easily have been inside a hall closet, or anywhere else. These basement and garage locations were just the most convenient locations for all this stuff. Nearby all the hanging gear is a set of small shelves with a couple of helmets (a modular and a jet/open face), half a dozen pairs of gloves, a plastic sandwich bag full of ear plugs, a pair of triple digit glove rain covers and some helmet and face shield cleaning items. Over by the door to the garage (not shown) are two pairs of riding boots: one ankle-high for daily transportation riding and the other calf-high for all-day and multi-day travels. Nearby there’s also a small bin with a few items which sometimes are taken along on day rides and multi day trips. For example, an Aerostich Kanetsu electric bib. ------------------ The ‘complete’ Mr. Subjective Gear Quiver, from left to right: Black R-3 Light Tactical, size 42RNotes: Daily transportation and commuting from April - November Black R-3 Light Tactical, size 44R with optional alterations:  Shorter sleeves and legs, side gussets. Lots of room for mid-layering.Notes: Daily transportation from December thru April Hooded down ‘puffy’Notes:  Trips and daily riding, year-around Non-hooded down ‘puffy’Notes: Worn in combination with hooded ‘puffy’, or alone, year around (packed for trips also) AD-1 Light pantsNotes: All day and multi-day rides, April to October Leather Transit Jacket (hi viz):Notes: All day and multi-day rides, April to October Darien Light Jacket (hi viz):Notes:  All day and multi day rides, April to October Parcel Bag, Cargo Bag:Notes: Occasional Daily transportation cargo use as need The cost of acquiring all this stuff all at once would be huge. It took me maybe thirty years to assemble this quiver, so the investment was both subsidized and incremental. After the bar was filled out, which was about fifteen years ago, it has not changed. Not at all. All this boring old gear still works perfectly, and to my eye it looks ok, too, maybe because it was never fashion-styled. Rather, it was made to be functional equipment. I know this for a fact because over the years, I’ve come to know its designer. What all this means is this: Whenever I want to ride I pretty much always can. Weeks will go by without driving or riding in a car, year-round, and as a result, I’ve become a lousy driver. (Side note: I can still parallel park, though a bit slower and more cautiously now. Also, one key to enjoying trouble-free car ownership is to stay with mechanically and electronically simple cars, then drive them only very occasionally. Once every few weeks to help keep things lubricated, cobwebs from happening, and the battery charged. My car is twenty-plus years old and still works well. Not perfectly, but more than well enough.) Executive summary… Wanna ride more? Here is how: Get a good-enough bike. Not too heavy or slow. Enjoyable and manageable. Make sure it has everything it needs to operate reliably. Basically a good engine (or electric motor), a license plate, an insurance policy, and decent tires. Begin assembling your own gear quiver. Take your time. You don’t need it all at once. Start with a good helmet, boots and a pair of gloves. Add jacket(s), suit(s) and all the rest later. That’s all there is to it. Compared to driving, and in most relative ways, riding is always better for you. It’s also better for the world. For maximum comfort and safety, it takes a quiver. Sorry. - Mr. Subjective, May 2026 PS – The annual world-wide ‘Ride to Work Day’ comes up every year on the second Tuesday in June. Riders world-wide participate. It costs nothing. Ride that day, even if you don’t have a required commute, and if you really want to get fancy, call any local TV or radio station and let them know about it. Or post about it on social media. Makes a great local media story.  More info is here.  Mark your calendar now for next year’s day.

The more things change, the more they remain the same… Today, on bike-urious.com: Vs. back in the day (1988) in Cycle Canada magazine: