WHATCHATHINKIN’

WHATCHATHINKIN’

Shira Kamil

What’s in youR closet?

It happens to all of us. You are looking for that one particular pair of gloves/helmet/riding suit/boots/ear plugs/you name it-can’t find it and it results in the complete cleaning of your closet/tankbag/luggage/storage boxes/wherever it is that you might keep this stuff. Do you actually end up finding what you were originally looking for or, like any dog that barks ‘SQUIRREL!’, do you reminisce over the pieces that you have found and what great times and trips you took with them.

We had folks over one night, and we were kicking some tires and telling tall tales. Brian was recounting the time I ‘took a spill’ in the mountains of Romania when I commented that I didn’t think I hit my head. His eyes got wide, he shook his head and disappeared for a couple of minutes. When he came back, he was holding the face shield from the helmet I was wearing when I did my tumble. Well, looky there, that was one scratched up piece of plastic. Why was it still hanging around? For an occasion just like this.

We recently had the floors sanded in our home and, in order to get to the gear closet, the doors had to come off and everything had to come out. What a perfect time to cull those pieces that hang there ‘just because.’ Somehow, the bag that went to Good Will was not as full as I had hoped, but I surely had a good time trying on the jackets and pants to see that they still fit and ‘how in the world would I get rid of this…’ was muttered a bit.

At the same time, we realized that there was much dust and cat toys collecting where the boots reside. Brian came up with a brilliant solution and put in some skinny shelved running up the end of the closet, just deep enough to hold those boots. Not only can Spenser T. Cat now find his favorite mouse toy when it slides into the closet, I did get rid of a few pair of boots that had suffered some damage at one time or another or had just become non-waterproof over their life span.

In a similar situation, when we totally got rid of some closet doors and turned the room into Brian’s Music Den, we had to figure out what to do with all the riding gear that was in that space. ‘So, when are you going to wear your old leather jacket that might be just a tad snug or your full-leathers that might require a bit of grease to get on?’ ‘Shira’, I say to myself, ‘the days of a size 8 are long behind you and that leather jacket marked ‘Large’ is a total mislabeling.’ Between the two of us, most of the gear was relocated to the garage, where a nice clothing rack now holds most of the stuff that will never be worn again, but just can be discarded.

Many years ago, Jessica Prokup, a prominent woman in the motorcycle industry for quite some time, opened a gear exchange/consignment shop in Long Beach, California. I was thrilled for, even though it cost a bit in shipping, I knew that the clothing I had either grown tired of or outgrew would go to a rider who would find it useful and wear it until its demise. Continued on Page 7