I got a new helmet the other day.  Back in the beginning, forty-five or so years back, I promised my Grammaw I would always wear one.  I didn't really need a new helmet, but the old one was getting pretty beat up from being dropped and worn.  If you live and ride in Florida, you can sweat a helmet a size or two bigger in about a year.  And if you are as clumsy as I am, they get chipped and scarred up from being dropped a lot. 

Mostly I got a good price on this new one.  But the virgin, snug fit, especially around the ears, made for a different ride.  I couldn't hear a damn thing.  And it pressed in on the ear pieces of my glasses a little harder than the old one and put the lenses in a slightly different place.  The strap is a little thinner than the one on the old helmet, and that is going to take some more getting used to.  

Sort of the same thing happened last year when I got my seat recovered.  I've been on that old Mayer All Day saddle for nearly twenty years and some over three hundred thousand miles.  When they rebuilt it, it came back different.  It was a little taller and a little harder and enough different to affect the way I set the bike, maybe the way I ride it, too.  I took it back, and they were able to modify it enough to make me comfortable and happy. 

My other bike has a Corbin King-Queen seat.  I like it just fine, but Juanita The Tall Girl hates it.  She claims she can't get
settled into her straddle with it.  She refers to it as The Ejection Seat.  But then, she also refers to my head as her Blind
Spot. 

That reminded me of another recent problem.  For the first couple years she rode with me, 'Nita took a lot of pictures with those throw-away fun cameras, some of them real fine photographs.  Then everyone with an opinion convinced her that she needed a highly-technical modern electrified digitalized computerized expensive camera. 

As the Resident Luddite Curmudgeon where I work, I oppose technology generally.  I prefer a pencil to a ballpoint pen; fewer moving parts.  That camera makes my point and provides a fine example, specifically.  She got that high end, high-tech camera, and damned if she don't set the bike different than she used to with those throw-away cameras when she takes pictures with the new one.

I'm all for change, if it results in progress.  But change for the sake of fashion or fad or trend or merely different just seems
foolish and expensive.  A couple years ago I got to looking around for a new cycle.  My old one, a 1984 BMW R80RT, had about 400,000 miles on it, and people were suggesting I was going to have trouble finding parts.  So I looked at some new machines.  And the damn things cost more than my first house.  And I got better financing on that house.

The high©tech gadgetry was at fault.  Seat warmers, handlegrip warmers, electronically adjustable windscreens abounded.  Some of them had gauges telling you what gear you were in and when to get gas next and maybe the altitude and wind speed.  Damn things had a bar-b-que pit in one saddlebag and a swimming pool in the other.  Many had better sound systems than I have in my house.  Some incorporated palm pilots, cellular telephones, laptops, and gps machines into the cycles.  Most of them seemed to be trying to overcome the being outdoors aspect of riding a motorcycle.

I know I'm old-fashioned and resistant to change, but it seems like to me that you ought to be able to kickstart your machine and read a roadmap and check your own air and oil and figure out what gear you're in without a digital read-out.  Otherwise you ought to get a seat on the airplane.

Some of the newer used cycles I looked at were near as bad as the brand new ones.  I wound up with a 1983 BMW R8ORT, just like the one I been on for years, with about forty thousand miles on it. Now I got parts forever.  And I didn't have to be retrained to ride a computer.  When people ask me why I got another old bike, I just smile and say "carburetors."  Trouble with the new bike is that it's red.  And I hate change.  Just isn't much point to most of it.

Dr. Mark Tiger Edmonds is a professor at St. Leo's University and has logged more than a million miles on his motorcycle journeys.  He is the author of the Ghosts of Scootertrash Past and Longrider, a eclectic collection of stories about his experiences and encounters on the road.  You can hear Tiger on Cycle Rider Radio Sunday mornings. His books and poetry cds can be purchased in the CurvesAhead.Net online store.