Bells and Whistles

It was a pleasant summer afternoon and I’d ridden the Baby Shadow into town to do a little rat killin’. Before heading back to the big Bluff I stopped at my favorite (non-corporate) coffee shop, settled the scoot under a tree and parked my ass on the patio to enjoy the fresh coffee and do a little people watching and light lusting.

While seated there, I noticed a fellow ride by on a beautiful Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Even from many yards away I caught a whiff of that ‘new rider smell’. After parking his bike, he walked over to the, otherwise empty, patio and asked if I’d mind sharing my table for a few minutes. He was a clean-cut guy who looked to be on the fair side of 30, probably Navy. I told him to make hisself to home and, and believe it or not, we got to talking motorcycles.

The fellow allowed as how he was fairly new to motorcycling but was all hot, wet and quivering to ride some roads and see the country from behind bars. He spoke of a desire to tour the Texas Hill Country and to visit Big Bend National Park. He asked if I knew anything about a road a friend mentioned called the Dragon’s Tail and I told him of the roads my Missus and I had ridden and what we’d seen.

I told him to strike while the iron is hot. It’s coincidental that I use that expression since he told me that he couldn’t see getting his missus to “ride in this heat”.
My first impulse was to tell him he was married to the wrong woman, to trade her in. If I had known him for twenty years rather than twenty minutes I might have risked making the comment but, instead, told him that cooler weather was just around the corner.

Out-of-towners sometimes remark on the scarcity of motorcycles where I live, an area where a bike can be ridden nearly every single day. I can only chalk it up to pussification. A person can get up in the a.m. go to work, have lunch and return home without ever having been out of an air conditioned environment for more than a minute. If they were to get out on a motorcycle any time except February they’d risk the possibility of perspiration.

Well it’s hardly surprising that some inventive type has answered the need. Along with clip-to-the-windshield swamp misters and camel hump water-filled backpacks, add: motorcycle air conditioning by EntroSys(LINK)

I’ve got this picture in my mind of a fellow on a bike with a 30” windscreen, stereo, airbag jacket, motorcycle air conditioning unit and a sticker on his helmet that reads, “Cars suck!”