Unfan Shadow

I love your magazine and have been reading it for years. I don’t understand “One for the Road.” Is that written to give customers an idea how to relate to problems that may arise on the road and the breakdowns are not real? If she breaks down as often as she does in every month’s article, she needs a new bike or a new job. If she continues to break down every article change the name to DOOM and GLOOM. The rest of your articles and columns are awesome and very informative and pleasant reading. Thank you for your time to listen to my comments. I will always read your magazine but bypass “One for the Road.”

—Charles Marrone via e-mail

Charles: While you’re reading “doom and gloom” into my columns, I’m laughing my butt off as I’m writing them. Sometimes I just crack me up. Seriously, though, if you’ve been reading “One for the Road” for a while, you’d see that I cover a wide range of topics, with some only peripherally related to motorcycles. But to answer your question directly, these breakdowns really do happen, and they happen to all three of my bikes at various times. Just like anyone who spends a lot of time on the road, and anyone who installs numerous aftermarket parts, components wear out, incompatibilities occur and all sorts of other things happen. Any motorcyclist I know that puts down many thousands of miles every year, especially those that live on the road, deal with all this and more. In fact, a good part of their existence is spent troubleshooting, searching for parts, and fixing the broken components in the least expensive and most expeditious way possible. And there’s plenty of jerry-rigging of parts that goes on as well. I consider situations such as these a huge part of the richness of the moto-lifestyle, and it’s times of adversity that tell you who you are, and just as importantly, who your friends are.
—M.K.