From maineam2 at gmail.com Wed Dec 30 09:33:17 2020 From: maineam2 at gmail.com (Nik Rende) Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2020 09:33:17 -0500 Subject: My January Airhead article. In-Reply-To: <6e917919-4115-7af2-eeac-7cd71f0df77a@gmail.com> References: <6e917919-4115-7af2-eeac-7cd71f0df77a@gmail.com> Message-ID: Good morning all! I hope this holiday season found you opportunities for celebration and? "normal".? I for one am looking forward to 2020 being over and done with.? I've decided to look forward to 2021 and make some plans to do something! There are a couple of things in the works, well, one one in the works and one on the books.? The one on the books is the BMWRSM Down East Rally at Hermit Island.? We're scheduling it a week earlier in May than normal (the 14-16 vs 21-23) as the latter date conflicts with the BMW RA Rally in NC.? The date has already been cleared with the campground folks so I've decided to look forward to it. The second event that is in the works is an open house of sorts at Barringting Motor Works in Barrington NH.? The Region 4 airmarshals have started meeting virtually once a month to gab about and coordinate ideas for things to do.? I reached out to Ande at Barrington and he is completely on board.? We're thinking late spring or early summer. It won't really be a tech day, more of a ride-in and meet up.? We even talked about a food truck or something.? Stay tuned. Lastly, if you got your January Airmail, you saw the article I submitted.? I sent it to B. Jan after the November meeting of the RSM and he wrote back that he'd been thinking of the exact same concept for an article himself. Apparently he decided, either for brevity or fit or simply editorial license, to rework what I wrote and I think he cut up a bit too much.? I'm not upset, he's the editor, it's his job.? But if you're interested in what my original thoughts were, the are below. Happy New Year all! Nik Maine A/M Jan - Had this go through my head last Saturday morning while riding to our club breakfast. As we were getting ready to leave, my wife asked (told) me "If you and I are connected, I can't connect to Wendy."? I replied with "Fine, I'll leave mine off so you and Wendy can yak."? We were preparing for a ride to our November club meeting, taking advantage of some unseasonably warm temps on a weekend to get in one last ride.? Our riding friend Wendy's bikes were already put up for the winter and her partner was hunting so she asked if we had something she could use.? I managed to get the K75, the 1100RS and the Vstrom out and ready to go.? We all have some model of Sena and Wendy and Kathy like to chit chat while they ride.? The two of them rode together last year from Maine to Lebanon TN for the MOA rally and I'm surprised the batteries are still good! So I was left alone with my Sena switched off.? That was OK tho as I don't typically listen to music much when I ride and the sound quality of the SMH-5 is horrid, especially with ear plugs and wind noise.? We're going to upgrade, probably with the next set of new helmets in a year or so.? Being able to communicate with my wife or son while we're on a ride is important to me as is my elderly parents' ability to get in touch with me whenever necessary.? Anyway, it was a lovely ride, I could catch the girls' headlights in my rear view every once in a while but for the most part I was in my own little world. The sun was still low as its rise was only half an hour old by the time we got on the road.? We were slabbing it to meet some club friends for breakfast before the meeting, held outside in a parking lot near the breakfast place that had been our meeting home for a slew of years.? The air was warm, cold, warm, repeat.? I wasn't over dressed or under dressed,? just comfortable and the hand warmers on the 1100 were taking the edge off. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt that feeling of self awareness while riding.? The feeling like you're in every single moment, every molecule of air whipping by, every grain of asphalt under the tire, every spark of the plug ? I guess it's called "being present" by the millennial generation.? There was nothing else going on in my world at that singular moment except what I was engaged in, the engine noise, the heat from the grips, the cool air on my knees.? There were no distractions, no worries about work or family.? For a brief time, it was just a series of moments engaging me and then releasing me.? I started to think about how I was feeling when I caught sight of the girls in my rear view again.? I could almost hear them gabbing on about something, who knows what.? It makes me happy that they have each other as riding buddies.? But the distractions of conversation or music overtake those moments, relegating them to "other" status.? That got me to thinking about the generations who have been brought up with no concept of their own moments and their place in them;? they're missing out on being present in their own moments because they are so involved in someone else's. Social media has boiled down attention spans to literally seconds or the time it takes to read 144 characters.? My family isn't immune, I have a 21 year old.? I've seen it.? I used to say to him "It's amazing how what's on that little screen is ALWAYS more interesting than what is going on around you right now."? I sat in the drive through lane at Dunkin Donuts last week and watched in my mirror as the driver of the car behind me, the minute she pulled up and stopped, was on her phone.? She would glance up, edge forward and then phone.? I could see her thumb flicking pages by as she looked for something worthy of more than a millisecond of her time. It saddens me that we have several generations for whom just being in whatever moment is engaging them isn't good enough anymore, they absolutely HAVE to be in someone else's. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: RSM Nov 2020.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 361330 bytes Desc: not available URL: