I’ve started taking some photographs while motorcycling. I bought a used Canon PowerShot SD700IS from eBay for about $100 and already had an SD card lying around. I take most of my shots while moving, using my left hand to operate all the controls of the camera.

I keep the camera in my left front pocket. When I wore my Rev’It Cayenne Pro this was no big deal: the jacket’s large, top-load pockets made it easy to get the camera out and put it back again. However, I now wear the Rev’It Turbine since the weather is warmer. As I mentioned in my review, the Turbine has traditional side-mounted vertical pockets that are hard to get into and out of with a full sized gauntlet glove. This makes grabbing the camera even more awkward, since my hand is now closed around something and less likely to escape the pocket without difficulty.

Worried about dropping my camera on the road, I stopped taking as many pictures as I wanted. I read that a few riders secured their cameras to their bikes via a retractable lanyard. Think of a heavy duty janitor keychain that zips a big ring of keys back to a belt. Gear Keeper makes a whole swath of retractable lanyards, and the RT20012 seemed to be highly regarded on ADVrider.com

I put in an order for one via a vendor on Amazon, and it arrived a few days later.
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It makes me happy to commute to work on a motorcycle instead of driving my car. Well, let’s say it makes me happier. However, when you spend five to six hours a week navigating highway traffic, sometimes the last thing you want to do is hop back on a bike during the weekend.

It is with great joy that my twin friends Tomax and Xamot talked me into riding with them yesterday. I had an absolute blast, and may have converted another sportbike rider into a mid-distance-in-foul-weather riding, touring gear wearing, hardcase luggage bearing four-season motorcyclist.
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It has been raining since last Friday (technically wintery mix then), but yesterday I rode into work anyway. Light rain, no problem. It didn’t rain a SINGLE DROP from 9AM until about 3PM, and then it started to rain more and more.

By 5PM it was steady; by the time I was on the highway it was a downpour :)

I really enjoy riding in the rain, but it adds a few layers of complexity to an already sketchy commute. I have to allow for extra space between cars, worry about putting my feet down on painted surfaces, etc. I also have to worry (particularly on the way into work) about water getting through my gear. I kept a status check looping through my brain: car in front of you, car behind you, car to the right, gauntlets are covering sleeves, visor clear enough to see, neckline still dry, car in front of you, car behind you, car to the right ….

It becomes meditative. I think that motorcycle riding puts me in a trance anyway, which is probably why I think so clearly while riding, and why I am happy when I get to work. Riding in the rain also plays on that traditional motorcycle spirit of being independent. I didn’t see another single bike out yesterday. I really enjoy riding in the rain, as long as I am prepared and am traveling a short distance.

My gear did very well: my Rev’It Cayenne Pro jacket was fantastic, and the Motoport mesh kevlar pants were watertight, too. I wore my Teknic Speedstar gloves, although I probably shouldn’t have; they are great gloves and I don’t want to shorten their lifespan by wearing them in the rain too often. I have some Aerostich waterproof glove covers, but that will have to wait for another entry. My Sidi OnRoad boots kept my feets dry.

The Gmax helmet is still very comfortable, but it doesn’t vent for shit. All of those vents on the top didn’t keep my face shield from fogging up. I had to decide between a partially fogged visor or getting blasted in the face from wind and rain. I split the difference on the highway, and ran with the visor three clicks open once I got back to the surface streets.

It’s supposed to be less rainy today, so I will be riding again. Hopefully this time without the free bike wash. ;)

The first half of my ride home from Georgia was great. I was moving along at a good clip, and the sun was bright and shining.

That is, until I got to Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Fayetteville seems to be the tipping point for bad motorcycle weather. On my trip down, my route south of Fayetteville was completely covered by rain. I guess the northern part of my return trip got jealous and wanted to get in on the “fun.”

It rained non-stop, and hard, all the way home. It wasn’t as bad as my trip down, but it was a soaking rain. Paranoid (and hopefully wiser) from my gear problems on the way down, I adjusted my waterproofing strategy slightly.
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As mentioned earlier, I spent four days on a motorcycle trip to see two of my friends outside of Savannah, Georgia. It’s almost five hundred highway miles, which winds up being between eight to nine hours depending on traffic, weather conditions, and the bike I’m on. My best time was on my first trip on my FZ6 because I had great weather and a very comfortable saddle.

This time I took Raider, my BMW R1150R. In theory, it should have been the best of both of my trips: the comfort of my old K1200LTE touring bike, and the mobility of Cylon. Thanks to the weather and an extremely hard seat, it was really the worst of both worlds.

But I still had a kick ass time. ;)
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The first half of my trip down to Georgia was fantastic. It was cool enough that I wasn’t hot in my Rev’It Cayenne Pro jacket, but not so cold my hands were freezing. It was overcast enough that I didn’t have to squint behind my Native sunglasses, but not so overcast that I had to worry about rain.

That is, until I got to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Then the sky opened up. It didn’t stop until I reached Savannah, some 280 miles later.

What followed was a near total failure of every piece of waterproof motorcycling gear that I owned. Am I being too harsh?
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Almost four months ago, I was killing time in a coffee shop in California. I was visiting family and had a PT Cruiser rental car instead of my motorcycles, and I was missing my two-wheeled friends badly. I made up for it by reading motorcycle gear reviews, and found read Web Bike World’s review of the Rev’It Cayenne Pro textile jacket and pants. I wanted it.

At the same time, my friend Fish Sprout was researching Motoport’s kevlar textile gear, mostly because her friend owned a set. The Cayenne Pro, despite ingenious venting options, was still a three-season jacket. Motoport owners reported wearing the jacket in temperatures from the 30s to 120s. The lure of a strong, four-season textile suit that wouldn’t melt to your skin like most mesh led me to order jacket and pants from Motoport in late June.

It was a huge mistake. For a product promising a “custom” fit, my Motoport jacket was put together for someone who weighed an extra twenty or thirty pounds. I sent it back twice for alterations, and am still in the process of getting my money back.

Cold temperatures were fast approaching, and I hadn’t solved the problem of a weather-resilient jacket that would hold up well in a crash. My Tourmaster Transition 2 jacket fit well and had nice features, but claims of the jacket disintegrating in crashes as slow as 25MPH made me nervous.

I bit the bullet, and bought the jacket from Beach Moto, run by a member of the ADVrider.com community. Dennis, the owner, was everything Motoport wasn’t, and should have been — responsive, personable, professional, and efficient. Did I mention that dealing with Beach Moto was easy and didn’t make me feel like an idiot? Motoport, take notice.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. On to the jacket.
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Edit: I bought the jacket! Please read my review here.

As I have mentioned several times before on Gibberish, motorcycle gear is a compromise between comfort and safety. In general, leather offers the most abrasion resistance compared to textile fabrics (Kevlar, Cordura, etc), which in turn is better than denim or cotton. The problem is that leather is often the least comfortable in the cold or in the rain. Leather gear is also the least “usable” from a day to day perspective. If you compare a typical leather street jacket to a textile “touring” jacket, the touring jacket has tons of pockets and nifty accessories. One of the things I like the most about my Tourmaster Transition 2 jacket is the tiny key pocket. It is a lot easier to grab my keys from there instead of fumbling about in a giant storage pouch.
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