By T.J. Verbrugge

A realistic estimate is that it has more than 150,000 miles on it. It’s not either of my current motorcycles. Certainly not any rear tire. Nope, it’s my motorcycle jacket.

I bought it shortly before an epic adventure to Alaska. My jacket at that time had worked for me well enough. But as a bargain basement item from an extreme discount retailer, it was ill-fitting and well past serviceable.

My local dealer didn’t have the right size gray Tourmaster Transition in stock, so they had one drop-shipped to my house for me. Since that day, that jacket has almost become part of me. After all those miles, when I walked up to the closet and reach for a helmet, this jacket somehow leapt off the hanger and conformed to my shoulders.

I haven’t always treated it well. It has been responsible for the heartless murder of 68,743 bugs. Really. I counted.

I’ve sat on it while repairing a punctured tire in the middle of Illinois. It’s had grease, tar, rocks, tire pieces and carrion kicked up onto it from seemingly every type of road and vehicle. The jacket has marks and stains that all the detergent in the world isn’t be able to remove. Sometimes plans go awry, and it spent the night in a few regrettable hotels.

A fellow motorcyclist I work with stopped by my desk a while ago. He lifted a grubby, worn sleeve from my jacket on the coat rack and remarked, “I think by now you can afford a better coat than this.”

I snapped back, “Do you know where that has been? It has more miles on it than all your bikes combined.” Matt is a bit of a fair-weather rider, but he understood.

I’ve questioned my sanity while wearing this jacket through the Nevada heat. I’ve cursed it through Florida humidity so oppressive I wasn’t sure where the air stopped and Everglades water began. I’ve struggled to peel it off after a poorly chosen detour-avoidance route took me too many miles over loose gravel.

I have, thankfully, never had the opportunity to test its abrasion resistance.

In return, this jacket has cocooned me through countless cool mountain passes. It has protected me from hail the size of marbles on a skinny New Mexico mountain road. It helped make riding through snow near Fairbanks, Alaska, seem easy—compared to the roads under construction.

The jacket has allowed the mental stress of bad days at work flow out of my helmet and onto the road behind me. It has witnessed the most amazing scenery and interesting people in North America.

If my wife, Melissa, is my best friend on the road, the Tourmaster may have become the second best.

And it has protected me from a phenomenal amount of rain over the years—at least a billion gallons by my estimate, probably more. It has kept me dry during frog-strangling, gully-washers and all-day cold rains that would otherwise be miserable.

So, it was with extreme anguish that I came home from work after a torrential downpour earlier this year and had to admit that the jacket was no longer waterproof.

I’m not a terribly emotional guy, but I could be accused of being overly introspective. Even though I may not be old, I’m not young anymore. I couldn’t help but see my jacket as a metaphor for myself. There are at least a few people out there who don’t think I’m waterproof anymore, either.

Part of me wanted to keep the coat. Tuck it into the back of the closet like a well-worn memory. But I’ve lived long enough to know that more stuff tends to clutter life, not improve it. After all the miles, it would seem almost cruel to leave it just sitting there, reaching for Valhalla.

While cleaning out the pockets, I found a decade-old receipt from an Econolodge in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, and a slightly more recent one from Lizzie Borden’s house in Fall River, Mass. My warm weather gloves in the inside pocket had left an imprint like a fossil in a riverbed. I had to pause before I removed my 50-States pin. Could I wear the jacket for one more trip?

In a few short weeks, Melissa and I will be heading out on yet another two-wheeled adventure. I’ll be wearing a new, younger sibling of my old Tourmaster.

While I don’t want to anthropomorphize a piece of apparel too much, it has no idea what it has coming.

Theo Verbrugge is an AMA member from Oxford, Ohio.