AshandAsphalt

06/01/2026

Blade and Bow
Stitzel-Weller opened on Derby Day 1935 in Louisville, Kentucky. Pappy Van Winkle built it. They made wheated bourbon for decades. The stills went quiet in 1992.
What remained were the rickhouses — the original barrel warehouses, still standing — and whatever was still aging inside them.
Blade and Bow is what lives there now.
The name comes from the two parts of a skeleton key. A tribute to the five keys that once hung on the front door — one for each step of making bourbon: grains, yeast, fermentation, distillation, aging. Five locks. The door doesn’t open unless all of them turn.
A neighbor handed me a glass at a party. No preamble. No history lesson. Just the glass.
Fresh fruit first. Then dried apricot, roasted grain. And then the back note — oak and winter spice. The finish stayed. Long after the glass was empty I was still thinking about it.
What I was tasting was the solera method. Older Stitzel-Weller distillate mingled with younger bourbons so the oldest liquid is always present. It runs underneath everything in the glass. Thirty-plus years of patience that doesn’t announce itself but doesn’t leave either.
That’s what I was tasting without knowing it.
Some bourbon is about the liquid. Some is about the place that made it. Blade and Bow earns both — because the place never stopped being part of the liquid.
—

05/29/2026

Nobody tells you the truth about riding with a passenger. They cover the gear, the communication, some logistical items, riding techniques. What they leave out is everything that actually happens.

Truth No. 1 — your passenger’s bladder has no respect for the route. You planned the fuel stops. Mapped the miles. Somewhere between the last town and the next one — the one with nothing — three words arrive through the intercom or tap on the shoulder... I need to stop. Not a request. A declaration. Pull over. Say nothing. This is the life you chose.

Truth No. 2 — the intercom was a mistake. A beautiful, irreversible mistake. Before it, rides were quiet. After it, you know exactly what your passenger thinks about the truck in the left lane, the cloud that might be rain, and the song they can’t quite remember all the words to. They are not doing this to you. They are doing this WITH you. There is a difference. You will learn it the hard way.

Truth No. 3 — they will tell you how to ride your own motorcycle. No endorsement. No miles. No skin in the game beyond the seat they’re sitting on. The commentary arrives anyway. Are you sure about that speed? Was that corner supposed to feel like that? You cannot respond with logic. The physics are on your side. The relationship is not. What you say is: You’re right. I’ll watch that. This is the one that ends things if you get it wrong. You were warned.

Truth No. 4 — weather is a personal threat. You’ve ridden in rain, wind, and things that you would just as soon forget. Your passenger has not. A cloud on the horizon is not a cloud. It is a conversation. What you say is: Let me check the radar. Then you check the radar. Then you keep riding. Everybody wins.

Truth No. 5 — things will leave the bike. A glove. Sunglasses. A hat they were told not to bring. Something from a pocket that was definitely zipped. You won’t see it happen. You’ll only hear about it after. I think I lost my— It’s gone. Build it into the trip cost the way you build in fuel. It is a toll, not an accident.
Nobody warns you about any of this. You learn it the way you learn everything on two wheels.
The hard way. On the road. With someone holding on behind you.
Tag the person you’d never put on the back of your bike. Or the one you would.

05/28/2026

05/22/2026

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A story shaped by heritage, hard work and the American dream.This 20-minute documentary tells the story behind the first 100% all-American cigar, highlightin...

05/22/2026

The Macallan 18
The number on the bottle means something specific.

Not what most people think it means. The age statement is a guarantee — every drop in that bottle has spent at least that many years in an oak cask. Not an average. A legal floor. There could be whisky in there considerably older — 25, 30 years — but nothing younger than what the label says.
When you hold a Macallan 18 you’re holding eighteen years of patience. Minimum.

The 12 is a good whisky. Honest, well-made, does exactly what it says it will do. It doesn’t ask anything of you. It is what it is whether you agree or not. There’s a place for that — most evenings, most pours, most moments that are good without being too particular.

The 18 is different in kind. Not degree.
The sherry oak does something to eighteen years that it can’t do to twelve. The dried fruit deepens. The spice settles into something warmer and less insistent. The finish extends in the way a good conversation extends when no one needs it to end. Rich. Unhurried. The
kind of whisky that doesn’t announce itself. It builds. I reach for the 18 when the moment earns it.
The most recent time — I’d just been told my newest granddaughter would carry my first name.
The 12 would have been wrong for that moment. Not because it’s lesser whisky. Because the moment required something that had been patient for a long time before arriving in
your hand That’s the honest answer to whether the Macallan 18 is worth three times the price of the 12.
It depends entirely on who you are and what you’re holding it for.

The 18 waits.

What are you saving the good bottle for?

— The Macallan

05/19/2026

Ol’ Time Ci**rs
Some shops are optimized. Curated selection. Tasteful signage. A guy behind the counter who knows the right words.
Nothing wrong with that.
Ol’ Time Ci**rs started in 1988 in a small gift shop inside Church Street Station in Downtown Orlando. The walk-in humidor measured four feet by four feet. The cigar selection was minimal. Most of the sales weren’t even ci**rs.
Then a sales rep walked in one day and asked if they wanted to carry Arturo Fuente.
That was their first direct cigar account. Cigar Aficionado came shortly after. The boom arrived. Thirty-seven years of paying attention to what lands in someone’s hand produced two standalone locations — Casselberry and Clermont — a walk-in humidor with hundreds of brands, and the kind of regulars who’ve been coming since before the internet had opinions about ci**rs.
I walked in for the first time in 2015. Didn’t know any of that history yet.
The man behind the counter asked what I’d been smoking. I told him. He walked me into the humidor and we talked our way through it — the options, the mood, the occasion — and landed on a Fuente 858. Natural wrapper. Medium-full.
The cigar that started everything for that shop. The first account. The rep who walked in off the street in 1988 and changed the direction of a small gift shop in a downtown entertainment complex.
He didn’t tell me any of that. He just knew the cigar.
That’s experience knowledge. Not certification knowledge. Not the kind that comes from reviews or ratings. The kind that comes from thirty-seven years of paying attention to what lands in someone’s hand and watching what happens next.
Some shops sell you a cigar. This one helps you find one.
The humidor isn’t staged. It’s stocked. There’s a difference — and you feel it the moment you walk in. The regulars feel it too. They know where the good stuff is before you ask.
Two locations. Casselberry and Clermont. 1988. That’s not a detail — that’s a credential.
If you haven’t been — go.
Tell them what you’ve been smoking.
Then stop talking.
— **rs

05/19/2026

Six categories. One honest opinion. Someone’s going to be offended. Probably correctly.

Tag the rider in your group who needs to read the ADV slide!

05/18/2026

Old Forester named one of their best expressions after 1920.
The year Prohibition started.
When the federal government decided the bourbon industry was done, Old Forester was one of a handful of distilleries granted a permit to keep making it — for medicinal purposes. They kept the stills running while most of the industry went dark. Not defiance. Patience. And a doctor’s prescription.

The 1920 is bottled at 115 proof. The finish is long. Not aggressive. Long like a road you didn’t expect to still be on.
I had my first Old Forester at a family reunion. Barely eighteen. My uncle handed it to me — the one everyone admired, the one with fast cars and plenty of stories....the kind of man whose opinion you wanted to hear. He didn’t make a ceremony of it. Just poured it and handed it over. That was the whole lesson.
Some things are worth knowing about. Here.
I’ve thought about that moment every once and awhile as I’ve opened a bottle. The 1920 tastes like people who knew they were right and waited.

—

05/15/2026

Why I ride alone…..Whatever bike I'm riding, whether it's the Indian or Guzzi, its still the same....

05/15/2026

Why I Ride Alone

People ask why I ride alone. The answer is too honest or simple for some.

It’s not that I don’t like people.

I like people fine.

But there is a specific kind of thinking that only happens when there is nobody to say it to.

When there is no one waiting on you to finish. No obligation to be interesting or useful or considerate of someone else’s comfort level.

Just you and the machine and the road and whatever’s been sitting at the back of your head for six weeks.

When I ride with a group, I’m aware of the group. The pace. Who’s in my mirror. Whether we’re stopping soon. Whether everyone’s keeping up. That’s not thinking. That’s managing.

When I ride alone, things surface.

Not organized things. Not conclusions. Just the loose stuff that never gets the attention in regular life because regular life never shuts up long enough to let it talk.

Around hour two, the internal noise starts to go quiet. Not silent — just quieter. Like adjusting the volume on the stereo.

By hour four I’m somewhere on a two-lane that doesn’t ask anything of me. The Goose is warm and settled into her note. The hands do what the hands do. The body leans. The road comes and goes. And then something arrives. Usually something I didn’t know I’d been waiting on. I can’t manufacture it. I can’t schedule it. I can’t make it happen in a meeting or on a walk or in a conversation, no matter how good the conversation is.

It only comes when there’s nothing left to perform.

That’s why I ride alone.

Because the road knows how to be quiet in a way that nothing else does.

And I need that. Regularly.

More than I usually admit.

The Mounts May Change.