Somewhere west of Laramie.

So this happened.

Stopped for fuel, I returned to my bike to find a woman of uncertain age (old enough to know better, which bears on this tale) in a summer frock inspecting the Triumph at close quarters.

Me: "Careful. That pipe is hot." On account of the aforementioned frock.

Her, brightly: "Oh, thanks... I guess it would be. So, where are you headed?"

Because a guy on a bike, bug splattered and riding alone must surely be "headed" somewhere. Fleeing the law, perhaps. Or a jealous lover. Or maybe just because of his vagabond soul. Anyway, the point is, this is not the kind of question a strange woman asks someone driving a Yaris.

Me: "I've been where I'm headed, I guess. Going home now."

Her, faintly crestfallen: "Oh... too bad. Well, ride safe."

I realize now I should have made up a more mysterious answer. Because you're never really riding alone, right? It turns out the escape fantasies of countless fellow humans are riding pillion. You can't step out of character for a second.

Every ride a lesson. 

What you pay for.

Pretty much everything they tell you - or warn you - about motorcycling turns out to be true (more on this, and why the safety course is a brilliant investment, in a future post). But some things, you don't find out until you've read between the lines of a hundred magazine articles, or discovered them for yourself. One such topic: helmets.

Most of what you read about helmets focuses obsessively on fit, and on making sure you have the right certification. These things matter, and they mostly determined my first helmet purchase, a Zoan. Not the prettiest lid, but it fit my oddly shaped head more or less (just one little pressure point),  had the all important ECE 22.05 blessing, and was a pretty good deal. It never occurred to me for a second there would be any more to it than that.

A second bike necessitated a second helmet (the bikes, you'll recall, are in separate places), and by pure chance I found myself in the middle of a seasonal clearance sale wherein I scored the helmet above, an Arai Signet Q, for less than half of its stratospheric regular price. It fit like mother's love, as if it had been made for me (Arai's oval headform is kind of a thing among North American riders in the know, this being the market Arai created it for). I figured I'd scored a bit of extra comfort, and the status illusion that I was a guy who spent $700 on a helmet.

Then I rode with it, and here was the revelation: it's quiet. Noise, it turns out, is a big deal in helmet selection. I hadn't realized it, but the racket inside that Zoan was amping my anxiety at speed, which made me more tense and the bike therefore more squirrelly. The Arai allows barely a whisper of wind, even with the vents open. All I can really hear is the drivetrain and exhaust of the machine under me. I have mixed feelings about the Snell certification, but otherwise I can say, hand on heart, that this lid improved my riding.

Who knew.

Do you hear a truck?

It has not been entirely surprising that motorcycling is a regressive behavior, although they don't prepare you for the fact that you will actually feel like a kid when you're riding. More than this, they also don't prepare you for how comprehensive the regression will be. You will sneak looks at your bike as you're walking away from it. You'll find excuses to skulk out to the garage to see if it's really there. You'll read motorcycle magazines with an ardor not seen since you bought Playboy as a teenager (along with a get well card for your 'sick friend'...). And you will order things from the internet and wait breathlessly by the front door for the sound of the UPS truck crunching up the driveway. You will be 16.

I have done this a lot. Kevlar jeans. A brake lock alarm for the Honda. Armor. Boots. But nothing - nothing - comes close to the anticipation I'm feeling for the imminent arrival of my new jacket.

I found it online, at a place called Union Garage, in Brooklyn, NY. It's kind of a spiritual home for the urban hipster retro bike scene, and everything they sell is awesome. Awesome. I visited them this past spring (the store is the size of a walk-in closet), and they were as friendly and knowledgeable and passionate and and cool as you would hope. I like the world better knowing that Union Garage is in it. We will do a lot of business.

But first, this jacket. Check it out, and tell me you wouldn't buy a motorcycle just so you could have one too. Seriously.

Mr. McQueen, your bike is ready.

Much to tell.

First of all, let's deal with the long silence: I've been out riding. I mean, that's pretty much the explanation. It's been busy at work, yes, and I've been trying to avoid screens in my down time, but basically - in my head, at least - I'm riding. Doing it, reading about it, buying stuff for it. Riding. It all started with an ultimatum.

One fine day in May, I decided that the gravel hill that was haunting my nightmares like some white whale wasn't going to change its position on the matter, so I had to, or this experiment was over. And down I went (the hill, I mean, without incident). Things moved pretty quickly after that. I rode every chance I got, flogging the little Suzuki hither, thither and yon, and knocking off every nervous-making road within 50 km one by one. Not elegantly, or quickly, but convincingly enough that it was only a matter of weeks before I knew I was going to outgrow the little thumper sooner than later. Then my 'dude economics' gene kicked in. If I'm going to sell it, better I should do it in the spring than in the fall, I intoned to my long-suffering wife.

The rest is a bit of a blur. Somehow, the week of my birthday, the beast in the picture above landed in my driveway. 500 lbs and 865 cc of Brit-bike hipster cred, not at all the Bonnie I thought I wanted, but infinitely more suited to its bucolic new home. In my defense, it was a great deal, a 2013 demo (the year I would have preferred anyway, because of the chrome wheels), well below list and with an $1100 rumbly exhaust system bolted on to ice the cake. I've put 1000 km on it already. More on that later.

In short order, the S40 found a new home. A nurse at a local hospital, probably about my age, rolled up the driveway in her minivan, took one look, and said, "I think I want this." She was tired of being a passenger in life, she told me, had had about enough of mom duty and of waiting for her husband to make good on his intention to buy a bike so they could get their second puppyhood started. So she was taking matters into her own hands. Cash deal. With the ink barely dry on her M2, she rode the little Zook home on a pretty busy road, grinning like a fool. She was pretty cool.

Now, Scrammy has the barn all to himself. A custom vintage leather seat is on the way, after which I think I'll leave it alone for a while. Mind you, if you've been reading this blog, you already know my promises are about as reliable as a house cat's.