Paul Clipper has been in the off-road press since the beginning and worked for just about every publication over that time. Now hiding out back East someplace and doing real work, we pegged him for his editing prowess and seasoned advice on things journalism and dirt bikes. Clipper penned a column called Last Over for Dirt Bike Magazine and then in Trail Rider Magazine and we’re working on getting him to bring it back. When asked what he wanted for Christmas he let one slip out, so here it is.– Jimmy Lewis
What do I want for Christmas? Well, Christmas is a time for gadgets, in my opinion. Silly little things you may never buy yourself, but things you can get a lot of use out of either way. Like a GoPro. I know I’m wrong, but I’ve never seen a GoPro as a serious tool—more a recorder of narcissistic tendencies–and certainly not something you’d buy yourself. That puts it in the category of a perfect Christmas gift.
What I want is something they haven’t quite brought to market yet, but I’m hopeful we’ll see it soon. You see, I’ve aged to the point that the only thing that rings my bell is long distance riding on an adventure bike. The last trip I took started when I bought a bike in Olympia, Washington, and I lived in North Carolina at the time. I flew out to Washington state, got on the bike and hit the road. Took a southern tack for a while, then did a loop and a half of Nevada, my favorite state, and then wandered ahead of threatening weather until the rain and a mechanical problem sidelined me in Denver, and I found a place to leave the bike for the winter. It turned out to be a nice, quick 2500 mile ride, and that’s the kind of thing I like to do.
Long distance riding is fulfilling, but long hours in the saddle means a long time disconnected, which can be somewhat boring, occasionally. To combat that, I had a bunch of things built into my tank bag and helmet. One was a Bluetooth communicator that could connect with the phone as well as talk to a passenger wirelessly, if someone else happened to be on the bike. And also happened to be wearing a helmet with the compatible (very expensive) electronics painstakingly installed. Through a six foot stereo cord this system could also pipe music into the helmet.
All of this is very handy. You can be listening to tunes, and then if someone actually bothers to call you can answer by hitting a switch on the side of the helmet and then chat away for a little bit. (Oh, and don’t talk to me about being distracted by the phone while you’re riding. Prove to me you’re not a knucklehead once that two-wheeled engine is running and maybe I’ll listen to you. Probably not.)
The big trouble with this setup is a basic one: wind noise. My hearing has been ruined over the years, by loud machinery, guns, and extremely loud rock concerts at a tender age, and these days it seems wind noise is working to complete the deafness. What’s the obvious remedy? Foam earplugs, and I try to wear them every time I ride. And then, of course, the effectiveness of the expensive speaker system in the helmet is reduced, pretty much to the point of uselessness.
I’ve tried custom-molded earbuds, which make listening to music easier while killing the wind noise, but they don’t connect with the phone system, and also they’re dependent on the ubiquitous fragile six-foot cord that needs to be plugged into something. Always, after three hours in the saddle, you can climb off at the gas station forgetting you’re plugged in, and either break that cord or rip the socket out of the phone or iPod in the tank bag, or yank the buds (very painfully) out of your ears at an odd angle.
No, I’ve been thinking that this hodge-podge I’ve been using (and it’s one of the newest hodge-podges, I swear, and did I mention expensive?) has got to go, but the trouble is, I know they haven’t built what I want yet.
What I want is a self-contained, custom-molded pair of wireless earbud/earplugs that are compatible with the latest Bluetooth standards. It should be simple to do; hopefully they’re just around the corner. But I don’t want to stop there—why not go for every feature possible? Add to them a sudden-noise cutoff, like the ultra-high end ear protectors made for shooting, so I can use them for gunning down clay pigeons at sporting clays or trap (which are both an awful lot of fun, and highly recommended). Add also amplification and hearing-loss tuning, which yeah, would turn them into hearing aids, which I have to admit would help me out a lot in certain situations. Make them completely tunable and adjustable through an Android or iPhone app, and entirely voice-controlled. And finally, keep the cost under $400 a pair.
Some of the high-end hearing aids are getting close, but they haven’t got all the features included yet. Only a few of them are Bluetooth-compatible, and some use the Bluetooth only for remote control. Easy to understand; hearing aids are designed for old people, primarily—the least-connected sect of our society. Why would they want something they could stream music over? Or answer the phone? Or block out wind noise while raging through the first 27 miles of the Coast Highway in California? Or all of the above, at once?
Oh, and did I mention that a Bluetooth compatible hearing aid is going to cost you at least $900 an ear, if you buy them on the black market and avoid the hearing aid doctors? If you go the legitimate route, the right hearing aids might cost you $3000 per ear, and even then they won’t do everything you wish they could do. You can buy a pretty good used bike for six grand….
The day is coming, though. Us connected old rockers are stepping up to the counter and demanding something both helpful and fun. And when they finally get something good out on the market, that’s what I’m going to want for Christmas.
For more Paul Clipper and Last Over check out his books on Amazon by clicking here.
