There is no good excuse for not posting sooner,

But here goes my best shot……………..

If I can be honest with you (as opposed to all my other posts), things have been really busy since getting the new bike and getting it all set up for travelling. In the spirit of the note delivered many more times than my mother ever realized she had written,

“Dear Ms. Jones, please excuse my son Paul for not doing his homework or going to school yesterday, he had a wicked bad cold”;

here are my excuses why I haven’t posted:

• April 1st the MS5000 started and we had 45 riders sending me copies of gas receipts I needed to record. Also on April 1st, the stickers I had ordered for the riders were finally received and to my horror, and despite “STICK” actually being part of the word “sticker”, the ones delivered did not stick to much of anything. I was pissed! I expressed my disappointment with the printer, but ended up mailing out the non-sticking stickers with an apology, and staples, and tape, and in a few cases some rivets. The printer said he would make it right.

• April 8th the printer apologized profusely and explained he was having them made into magnets. after a deep breath, I explained most motorcycles are made of plastic panels, and then I hung up.

• April 12th I had an appointment at Twisted Throttle in Exeter, RI to start getting the accessories mounted to my completely stock bike. I was going to meet them about 5:00pm and Kevin and Adam would work after hours with me to install the luggage racks, luggage and other goodies.  It was 140 mile ride from NH, without traffic, so I planned to leave by 2:00pm. At noon we had a snow, sleet and slush storm that caused dozens of accidents across the state.  I waited an hour before carefully shoveling a path to the street, where the ice and slush had reasonably started to melt away. I was not going to miss this appointment.

Despite the snow, hail, and slushy highway, I was able to make my way south.  As soon as I hit the Massachusetts state line, it was mostly just sleet and rain. I managed to tweet out that I was running a little late, but I was not cancelling. We worked on the bike into the night, so I didn’t have time to write a new post.

• April 13th Twisted Throttle celebrated the Service Center’s Grand Opening and we were able to show off my new bike,  but I was way to tired to write a new post.

• April 14th I volunteered at the Manchester MS walk by riding around the route, assisting walkers and radioing for help when needed. As a storm rolled in and the weather took a toll for the worst, lost of walkers were looking for a ride back. I enjoyed helping out, and I was completely exhausted by Sunday night, definitely didn’t have the energy to write a new post.

•  The Spring Iron Butt Magazine arrived with my story in it.

• April 20th I found a brand new Valentine One radar for sale on Craigslist and after texting the seller, was told I could get it even cheaper if I were able to purchase it that evening. I did check the serial number with the manufacturer, and it was not reported  stolen. I rode the 100 miles to pick it up and as I left the vacant parking lot, I wondered what illegal substance I just paid for. I was up all night reading the owners manual.

• April 22nd was the deadline for the June ABILITY column, the one called “What the Farkle”, so I had to work on that after work instead of a new post.

• April 27th I volunteered for the Nutmeg 400 in Connecticut, scoring the riders as they finished. I rode over 400 miles myself, and made it home before midnight, but too tired to write.

• April 28th I spent the day at the National MS Society’s Spring Education Day, listening to speakers and passing out my brochures. Standing on my feet all day surely made me exhausted, too tired to write.

This picture has nothing to do with the story, but I wanted to put it somewhere………

• May 2nd I headed down to Twisted Throttle for part two of the accessory installation, and I spent the entire day with Jim the shop foreman as we installed the crashbars, driving lights and tons of other stuff. We wired all my electronics into an auxillary fuse panel. I now had heated grips, a thermostat controlled outlet for my heated jacket and gloves, two GPS’s, a SPOT tracker, V1 remotely mounted, LED dual power driving lights, and a wired tankbag to recharge or power my cameras and phone. We spent 8 hours working and only stopped for lunch. At 6:00 pm, I headed south, riding till midnight.

•  May 3rd I made it to DC to meet up with John Sims who was anxious to show me his patent-pending invention, a cooling and heating system for motorcyclists. I was able to test ride the system on his bike, and as promised, the system was able to drop my body temperature and then raise it in just a few minutes. Awesome! We discussed the timeframe for allowing me to actually mount a system on my bike and really put it to the test.

• I stayed in DC until May 6th for a training. 12 hour days were fun, but tiring and left no time to write a new post.

• May 7th  was a milestone for me, I was finally able to drop the daily needle habit, and began taking the brand new oral MS therapy drug called TECFIDERA. Oral means I get to stick it in my mouth. I did not experience any side effects other than a small amount of nausea the first week. I don’t miss the needles.

• May 18th I rode with my Doctor and my brother to the open house event at Twisted Throttle where I was pressured into entering the slow race and pitted against the editor of ADV Moto magazine. At least I did not drop my bike like some others did….

No, those are not pictures of me, that is the crazy BMW  stunt guy Teach McNeil. My bike was on display, now sporting the custom fuel cell designed by Ernie Azevedo of EAZCycle.

• May 20th The MS 5000 ended. We had raised $23000 and 45 riders rode over 200,000 miles for MS. I had to finish all the paperwork and get the t shirts and plaques ordered. I printed all the finisher’s certificates as well, and promised to make the results public during the Mason Dixon 20-20 rally over Memorial Day Weekend. On top of a regular ten hour work day, I was putting in about another 5 or so during the week working on my Tour details and the MS5000. Definitely no extra time for writing a post.

• May 24th- 26th I volunteered at the 36 hour Mason Dixon 20-20 Rally in west Virginia, where I was actually a bonus in a cemetery signing mugs carried by the riders. The bonus said have your mug signed. Some riders assumed someone else was going to be at the cemetery, so as they arrived they asked me if the other person was there, then left!
• As all the beer was stored in my rooms refrigerator, I did not have time to write a new post.

I awarded the certificates, shirts and plaques to all the riders at the MD 20-20 that also rode the MS5000.

Anthony Mills, second place trophy!

John Cooper wins the MS5000 by raising $3000 and riding 5000 miles for MS!

• The week of May 31th my wife was away, and she put me in charge. I had to walk the dog and keep him alive for 7 days. It was not easy. The AC broke in the house and despite the $1000 spent to get it running, we still do not know where it is leaking. Ughh….

• I finally had to serve myself breakfast, and to my horror, the cereal I had been eating for sometime, was for girls. I cannot believe I had been fooled for so long. I am investigating any long term damage or hair growth in unusual places.

Free Frick’n nail polish?

Where’s the equality?
Where’s the free 1/2″ drive socket set?

• We had 5 cords of wood dropped on the front lawn and it wasn’t going to stack itself, but I spent many hours each  night working on my PowerPoint presentation for Americade, no time for a new post. I planned to be in bed by 9:00 pm on Thursday, and catch up on the sleep before my trip.

• Thursday June 6th I was notified a package was being overnighted to me, the first motorcycle HVAC prototype system from the inventor I met in DC.  I wanted to have it installed before heading to Americade. There was no sign of a package on my doorstep when I arrived home. I was a bit worried.  I had insisted no signature would be needed. I received a call about 5:15, John apologized and said FEDEX had made a blunder and the package never made the plane. “I’ll be there in a few hours”, He said. He drove the prototype the entire 500 miles to my house and we finished hooking it up about 2:00 am.  I left for Americade about three hours later in the dreary pouring rain. I definitely did not have time to write a new post, but at least I was well rested for my 10:00 am presentation!

• June 7th I did two presentations of my “Having MS is like Riding a Russian Ural in the Iron Butt Rally” at the Fort Henry Conference Center in Lake George, NY and spent the rest of the day at the Americade vendors with Twisted Throttle showing off all the goodies on my bike. I had an enjoyable dinner and was invited to crash with the Twisted crew.

• I spent Saturday June 8th at the vendor booth and  about 4:00 pm I headed out to volunteer at the  Minuteman 1000 rally in Northampton MA. Enjoyed a great steak dinner, and chatted with old friends into the night.

• Sunday June 8th, we all awoke to a fire alarm at 4:00 am, and then spent about 6 hours scoring riders as they returned from 24 hours of bonus hunting. A glitch in the scoring system left us scoring by paper, and it took quite a bit of extra time to do so. Very patient riders and staff! I had had less than 4 hours sleep every night for over a week, and certainly had no time for writing a post! I was finally able to wear the cooling system on the ride home form the Minuteman 1000, and I can report I was at a comfortable 70 degrees the entire ride home.

•  The 2013 Ride NH motorcycle guide was published and although my ass did not make the cover, my story did!

• June 9th  I had an industrial accident at work with a bedside commode, and I became Harry Potty Head.  Due to filing all the accident forms, I did not have time for a new post.

• June 15th spent the entire day stacking the 5 cords of wood.  The price of wood has gone up considerably, but even though firewood doesn’t grow on trees, it is still a lot less expensive than heating with oil. I did not let the kids know the wood was all stacked, so Father’s Day was extremely quiet around the house.

I have also managed to put about 9,000 miles on the bike and it is just about broken in.

As you can see, I have had no time for writing a new blog post.

This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Any day you can ride is a good day,

Longhaulpaul

Ben Franklin will always be my favorite president.

April Fool

The jokes are not as funny as they used to be. Or maybe the definition of funny has changed. Or maybe I was so addicted to funny when I was younger,  I’m on the wagon.

The Fool this April has become myself. I had posted everywhere about my attempt to break another world record by riding 50,000 miles in 50 days starting April 1st, 2013. Well, ha, ha,  that isn’t going to happen. I may be stupid, but I am no idiot. In order for an attempt of this magnitude I needed a few things in place. I needed a bike sponsor and two bikes, I needed a Pharmaceutical sponsor, gas sponsor, and I needed to have enough time off from my current job. Despite the hundreds of hours spent pleading, I was unsuccessful in getting enough support to pull it off.

It also didn’t help to be plagued by two health issues over the last four months.

It’s All In My Head

Yes, most of my problems are in my head. That’s where my brain is being attacked by my own immune system and my grey matter is shrinking. You know when you get a headache and it lasts all day? Well this story is nothing like that. This fall, I suffered a bad headache. It lasted every single day for 100 straight days. Every day I was in brain pain by early morning and it lasted until I either left work early or took enough Ibuprofen to tint my fingers red like I eaten a pound of dyed pistachios. A look at my MRI showed a narrowing in my cervical vertebrae, but we all questioned if it could cause the headaches.

A Christmas epidural of steroids to the area helped some arm issues, but as suspected did not relieve the headaches. Could it be MS? MS has been known to cause headaches, but we were unable to see any defined activity in the MRI.  We decided to err on the side of caution and I was prescribed Acthar Gel, an alternative to steroid treatment.   A few weeks later, I started to see improvement, and on the one hundred and first day, I realized the headaches had finally subsided.

A Sidekick

Just days after my head was released from the vice and sledgehammer, I found myself doubled over; unfortunately not in laughter.

Sometimes life presents you with a brick wall but  you miraculously get through it.   We amazingly push through pain and suffering and learn to live again.  Yet there are times a tiny pebble can bring you to your knees and you completely surrender. I attempted to cash in my living will a few weeks ago but apparently didn’t have enough equity. I was in labor for four long days. Morphine, Vicodin, Percocet and something I got off Craigslist barely dulled the razored edge of agony.

A procedure that was scheduled involving one large crazy straw, two VHS camcorders and a plane landing laser beam was  averted only by luck and followed by the sheer joy only a mother can express;  giving birth to my first kidney stone I have since named “The Kneeler.”

I was quit embarrassed to turn in such a little stone to the Urologist for analysis. Judging by the severity of the pain, I had already arranged to borrow my neighbors truck and had also picked out a beautiful gold setting for it on Jared’s website.

Sometimes it really is the little things in life that need to be noticed, respected and then brutally pulverized!

(Does that make me a bad mother?)

Snowbird

I rode down to Jacksonville, Florida to attend the yearly gathering of hard-core long distance riders at the Iron Butt Association Pizza Party. I left Thursday Morning and was back home by very early Sunday Morning. 2500 miles in less than three days. And there was no pizza, but a scrumptious spread and a few hundred respected riders from all over the country.

It was on the ride to Jacksonville I finally conceded I was not going to make the April 1st start date  for my world record attempt. I was holding out for any sign of hope, but I realized as I rode  that I was clearly lacking a few of the major necessities to ride 50,000 miles in 50 days.

1) I couldn’t get a bike sponsor. I need two bikes set up with custom accessories in order to attempt the ride. Dozens of letters went out, most companies either thought the idea was too dangerous, would put too many miles on one of their bikes, or just didn’t respond at all.

2) I didn’t have a pharmaceutical company that wanted me as an advocate speaker. Everyone thought what I was attempting to accomplish was great, but I struck out with becoming an ambassador.

3) I had planned on using my two years worth of saved vacation time saved plus a couple of weeks of “unpaid leave” to set the record. Unfortunately, I was informed in late March that company policy forbids any unpaid leave, no exceptions, and I would not have a job after breaking the world record. So not only could I not afford the cost of footing the bill for the attempt without a sponsor, I would lose my job and who knows what else if I succeeded.

4) I didn’t even have one bike I felt secure with attempting to do such an attempt on. Sure the Moto Guzzi was running ok, but it was not the bike I needed do serious mile munching on. I needed a bike that would have dealer service and parts available in all parts of the country. I needed a bulletproof bike, and I had pleaded with just about every manufacturer to help me out.

5) I found two chocolate eggs in my sneakers, after I had worked out at the gym, sweeeeet!

25,000 miles since starting this journey and it occurred to me I had hit my first roadblock. My breaking a world record starting April 1st was not going to happen. I will still attempt it, and maybe the attempt will be later this year, but it just isn’t possible without more support.

Privateer

Arriving home from Florida, I decided I could not wait for a motorcycle manufacturer to sponsor the Endless Road Tour any longer and traded in my Guzzi for a more suitable motorcycle. If I was not going to get factory support, I would just buy a bike on my own that wouldn’t need factory support. I was torn between two models of Yamaha, the FJR and the new Super Tenere. Two quite different bikes, but both have been proven to withstand extreme riding. Both have broken world records and both were known as bulletproof. I have been thinking about the Super Tenere since riding it this summer in Pennsylvania.

This baby may be worn out before I even pay it off!

I chose the Super Tenere because of the Swiss Army Knife-like abilities of the 1200 twin, the upright seating position and the commanding view of the road form its 33″ seat. I do like to dabble in off road riding and this bike’s style is called “adventure touring.” If the Endless Road Tour was not an “adventure”, I have no clue what is!

I bought the bike at Motorcycles of Manchester and was given a pretty good deal.

I picked up the bike and noticed it had exactly Zero miles on the odometer.

“Zero Miles?”

“Yes the roads are too bad to take bikes for test rides after we set them up.”

“Cool, Thanks, Is this the start button? See you later!”

Of the 36 bikes I have had in the past twenty years, 1994 was the last time I actually bought a brand new one. It had also been more than ten years since riding a Japanese bike. I have been riding European bikes, BMW’s, Ducati’s, Aprilia’s, Moto Guzzi’s, and I love the character and uniqueness of them, but for this adventure, I needed a bike that would take everything I am going to throw at it and still love me in the morning.

I realized I had made the right decision before I even made it back to my house. The Yamaha Super Tenere is the perfect bike for me and my million mile mission.

I rode just 200 miles before removing the seat and mailing it out to my buddy Rocky at Bill Mayer Saddles, where he will use my pictures and anatomical measurements to build me a custom saddle.  I cobbled together a temporary plywood and foam replacement and tied it to the frame with an old sock. I put another 600 miles on the bike this week. I’m sure anxious to get my new seat!

 If You Buy It They Will Come…

Just days after getting the new bike, I was receiving great news across all fronts on what seems like an hour by hour basis! Talk about the eleventh hour!

This news is so new, I am unable to reveal all the details in this post but the past week went something like this;

1) A motorcycle dealership offered to help with supplying a second bike and all the service when I attempt the world record. AWESOME!!!!!

2) A Pharmaceutical company has asked me to be an ambassador and share my story and my journey by speaking to patients across the country. YES!!!!!

3) A major motorcycle accessory company has offered to sponsor my journey and provide me with just about everything  I may need for the new bike. UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

4) A much anticipated oral drug (BG-12) was approved by the FDA as a first line treatment for MS this past Thursday, and I will be one of the first patients switching over from the daily injection therapy I have been taking now for 8 years. No more daily needles for me! Much easier to travel without temperature sensitive and scary hypodermic needles!  AWESOME!!!!!

5) I found two chocolate eggs in my gym shoes this morning, after working out.  PRICELESS!

Although disappointed I will not be getting on my bike tomorrow morning and riding 50,000 miles in a row, I feel like I have just set a world record. With support falling in line, there is no doubt my Endless Road Tour will be in full swing in a few months, I will be riding, writing and reaching out to others as a career, and now the record attempt looks possible for this fall.

The Inaugural MS5000

In the meantime, the MS5000 motorcycle challenge is in full swing,  30 riders have signed up so far to ride 5000 miles over the next 50 days and have been busy raising  money for the National MS Society.

We are at 25% of our goal as I write this post, and I am asking all of my readers who are not registered to ride, do not ride, or cannot ride, to donate a few dollars towards the event or one of the participants.  Riders start their mileage clock tomorrow and we still have a few riders struggling to get support, please let them know you appreciate their efforts to rid the world of Multiple Sclerosis.

The fundraising page is here.

Thank you for your continued support!

Any day you can ride is a good day!

Longhaulpaul

If you are going to Lake George for the Americade Rally in June, I will be doing two  presentations.

I’ve been told to go to Hell so many times,

you’d think I’d own a time-share there.

Like most people diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I fear going to Hell mainly because I can’t tolerate the heat here on Earth.

Temperature effect on patients with Multiple Sclerosis is called Uhthoff’s phenomenon, first described in 1890, by Dr. Wilhelm Uhthoff.  An elevated core body temperature, even as slight as one-quarter to one-half of a degree can further impair the ability of  already compromised nerves to conduct electrical impulses, resulting in temporary worsening of MS symptoms. Core temperature can rise with hot weather, exercise or activity (vacuuming, ironing, grocery shopping, doing the dishes, folding laundry or watching Grey’s Anatomy are big triggers for me), sunbathing, hot baths, emotions, stress, fever or illness, catching on fire, or anything associated with raising the core body temperature.

The heat  stops the nerve fibers from working properly, especially if the nerve or myelin insulation has been damaged.  The nerves are supposed to allow the brain to send messages to other parts of the body.  Remember, in Multiple Sclerosis, the insulation or myelin sheath and the nerve it protects have been chewed away leaving scar tissue. At normal body temperature, a message barely gets through the damage pathway, and when heated up, the message will almost certainly fail to make it through. Therefore, symptoms usually get worse. If my head had fuses or circuit breakers, when I overheat, they would trip or blow. Cooling down resets my circuit breaker. This is usually not a sign of new damaged areas, and is just a temporary problem. By cooling down the core temperature, this temporary worsening of symptoms goes away.  These temporary attacks by heat as well as similar ones brought on by fatigue are called pseudo-exacerbations.

By now you can see why staying cool for me and others with MS is extremely important. My issues are mostly cognitive, and a hot headed biker who doesn’t know his own name, or has trouble remembering if he should put his feet down at a red-light or not, might be a quite dangerous.

Staying cool, and controlling my core temperature while riding means staying alive.

The word cool has been used to describe many different things over the past few decades.

70’s

In the seventies, you were cool if you said, “Dig it”, wore earth or platform shoes, bell-bottoms or anything tie-dye.  You were cool if you had a muscle car with an eight track player and CB radio. Cool was Smokey and the Bandit, The Fonz, Rocky Horror, Atari, pet rocks, lava lamps, Walkman radios and streaking.

You were cool if you listened to Aerosmith,  Alice Cooper, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, or The Who.

80’s

In the eighties, cool was chewing globs of Hubba Bubba bubble gum with a Mohawk, Rubik’s cubes, big hair, leg warmers, sweat bands, parachute pants, NIKE’s,  black Reeboks, or tucking your 501 Levis into the tops of your unlaced Timberland Boots. You were cool if you had a camcorder, played video games (Nintendo, Pac Man, Game Boy), or used the phrases, “Where’s the beef”, “PSYCHE”, “NOT” or sang the Funky Called Madina.  Cool were the California Raisins, skate boarding, baby on board signs and pretending to, “Just say no”.

Arsenio Hall, David Hasselhoff, Erik Estrada, Gary Coleman, Heather Locklear, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Eddie Murphy and Sam Kenison were cool. Cable was in full swing, MTV was a mega hit. Slam dancing, lambada, vogueing and break dancing were cool. Records were shattered by the sales of CD’s. The bigger the ghetto box, the better.  “Is that a car phone antenna?” COOL! 

 90’s

In the Nineties, cool was Tae-bo, in-line skates,  tattoos and body piercings, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, rat tails  and AOL chatrooms. The cool actors were Michael Douglas, Joe Pesci, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Sigourney Weaver, Meg Ryan, and Michelle Pfeiffer. You were cool if you could dance the Macarena without spilling your beer. Grunge was cool and Gangsta too.

The cool music artists were Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men,  Selena, Hootie & the Blowfish, Alanis Morisette, Janet Jackson, Garth Brooks, Celine Dion, Madonna and the Spice Girls.

00’s

What is cool is forever changing and  staying on top of what is in and what is out, what is hot and what is not, becomes less important to most of us the older we get.  I have no idea what was cool in the 2K’s, I guess being cool doesn’t really matter to me anymore, except when I’m riding.

I Really Want to be a Cool Biker

Bikers may be considered cool, but a running motorcycle is very HOT.  How hot? Open the hood of your running car in the summer and sit on the engine. I don’t care how fast your spouse drives around, your ass and thighs are going to burn.  Even riders without MS need to stay hydrated and cool. Here is a great read from the IRONBUTT magazine  regarding riding in hot weather.

As someone who rides with full gear (see my last post here), riding suit, boots, gloves, full face helmet, anytime the weather gets above 75 degrees, I have to be careful. If I get stuck in traffic at any temperature above 40 degrees, it could begin to effect my symptoms. For quite a while I have been using a little trick  when the temperature creeps up and my memory starts to go to mush.  When I am not looking, I switch the ambient temperature reading on my dashboard to Celsius. Instant cooling! It seems to work for a while, but lately I’ve been catching myself doing it.  Another trick I learned years ago was to toss my helmet in the ICE cooler outside gas or convenience stores when I stop for a break. Ten minutes on ice really can help out for a while, but not sure what my sweat dripping, bug splattered brain bucket does to the ice in the cooler.

Riding a million miles, I really needed to find a better system.

There are many commercial options for staying cool. I have tried many different types of passive or phase-change cooling garments like ties and vests, the type you soak in cold water, or that use frozen cold packs, but as I tend to ride many hours at a time, They just didn’t work. I need a product that would last for many hours on end, without a lot of fuss or maintenance.

I think if BMW twins can finally be allowed to get a liquid cooling system, by Jack, I should be able to get one too.  COOLSHIRT is the world leader in personal cooling, offering systems tailored for emergency personnel, industrial applications, athletes, race car drivers, pilots, motorcyclists and surgeons.  Their therapeutic division Miller Therapeutic Cooling Products, was one of my very first sponsors and will indeed help me reach my million miles for MS. I received a COOLSHIRT  personal cooling system recently and as it is winter, have had  a little difficulty giving it a real test.  The idea is a fairly common one, cold liquid circulating around a hot surface, removing the heat from the surface and flowing back to the cooling source.  All of our cars use a radiator, and the COOLSHIRT system functions very similar. The system contained a 24 qt cooler with a circulating pump, insulated hoses with automatic shut off, and quick release connectors to an anti-microbial moisture wicking compression shirt. The shirt has 50 feet of medical grade tubing sewn right into it.  Here is a video  from Modern Marvels on the History Channel. For motorcyclists, they have fanny pack systems, backpack systems, smaller thermos systems, as well as a 12 or 24 qt system like mine. I picked the bigger cooler because I will have plenty of room for it on my touring bikes, and when filled with block ice, it should give me 6+ hours of relief. Until they have an affordable bike system that  that doesn’t require ice, this is my best option. I’m sure I will add to this after the summer season, but I just had to test it out!

Here is my system.

And on the bike, the testing really wasn’t fair, I did stay very cool though, I didn’t even have to turn it on.

I felt as though ice runneth through my veins,  even though I never put ice in the cooler. This winter is really getting long. I believe Winter is just a season created entirely by big box stores to sell more ice melt and shovels. I thanked the officer for the escort home, and promised to check the weather forcast next time.

I thought long and hard how I could simulate riding in hot weather, and holy blazing saddles, I had a a great idea. In order to really test the system, I needed to get HOT.

My first brilliant idea was to sit and type this post in front of our home’s heat source, a Jotul wood stove. The stove temperature reached 500 degrees, and I sat for half an hour in front of it before noticing my boot sole melting. I used a 12 volt power source to run the cooler, and had a bag of ice and water in it. Fully suited up, I never overheated or felt my symptoms were getting worse. It kept my core cool, and the ice was not even melted during the short test.

Brilliant idea #2 for simulating getting over heated involved waiting until the lifeguard was no longer on duty, and possibly a couple of Sam Adams. At 103 degrees, a hot tub clearly would simulate a hot motorcycle ride, wouldn’t it?

I also had to wait until my neighbor went to work, as explaining why I was in their hot tub at all, would have been hard enough.

Despite this brilliantly JENIUS idea of how to test the cooling system, the hot tub test was a semi epic fail, due to not remembering to hook-up the cooling system prior to the conclusion of the test  as well as destroying my notepad with all my observations which was in my hip pocket. I spent over an hour just covering up the melted snow prints that suspiciously led back to my house.

Brilliant idea #3 would involve not only a heat test but also a stress test with full cardiac work-up. I did wait until the Aerostich suit was dry, but the boots were still a bit squishy. This was fool proof and possible fully legal. The system was running with ice cubes and water, I suited up and hit the treadmill. In normal exercise attire, I usually can jog a mile or two before really getting overheated.  In full heavy riding gear, I should have lasted about one minute before summoning the EMT’s. I strapped my emergency contact information onto my dog, and went at it.

I was able to jog as much as I do in shorts and sneakers before taking a break, and that was quite amazing! If you have never seen a Pug applause with joy you have not witnessed a happy dog. The COOLSHIRT system will be a great addition to my summer riding and as long as I get ice before I have reached the point I need to cool down, I should be ok. Knowing the ice will last for many hours in the large cooler lets me plan ahead.

I decided to continue, to see how far I could push myself. (This is sign #1 my cognition was getting affected by my exercising, I lose the ability to make sound  decisions)  I blame the dog for not stopping me sooner. I eventually get fatigued and my body temperature did slightly increase and I began to lose my balance.  The rest is pretty easy to guess!

In conclusion, when getting hot or overheated would normally prevent you or I from taking part in something we enjoy, there is an assistive technology solution. An active cooling system.  Check it out. The COOLSHIRT  system I have chosen from Miller Therapeutic Cooling Products, will work for many different applications and I look forward to giving it a hot and heavy work out this summer. Staying cool while riding means being safe and staying alive.

However, now that I am COOL once again, the rules have changed so……..

Give me a damn hand-basket,

I now have no fear of going to Hell!

A great T-shirt from the Aerostich Catalog!

Ride safe, and keep cool!

Longhaulpaul

Riding for MS is COOL, look for the inagural MS5000  announcement soon!