Here’s the problem. You stay pretty motionless while riding a motorcycle. This makes it hard for the body to generate heat to keep warm. This is a major problem while riding at high speeds in cold temperatures. I got frostbite my first year of riding on my toes because I wasn’t adequately protected from the elements.

It’s been a major struggle of mine to keep my hands warm in anything below 40°F at highway speeds. Heated grips and handguards help, but you really need special purpose gloves to keep your hands warm. The problem with buying winter gloves is that they tend to be very bulky. The insulation material makes the gloves look more like a ski mitt than a motorcycle glove, and the fine manipulation required to work the throttle can become lost. I own a pair of Tour Master winter gloves, and it feels like I am not touching the controls at all.

Rev’It makes several winter gloves. Thanks to Dennis over at Beach Moto, I selected the Fahrenheit H2O waterproof winter motorcycle glove. He helped me with the sizing, suggesting an XL that fit perfectly.

Would Rev’It’s high technology help me overcome my cold hand blues?
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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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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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I was supposed to go visit my family up in Syracuse, NY this weekend. I was going to ride Raider up there and then putter around with my stepfather. I quickly encountered two monkey wrenches.

1) The bike my dad owned does not have a state inspection. Neither does Raider, but he won’t ride without a 100% legal bike. So a paired ride is out of the picture.

2) It is supposed to rain the entire time I am there. The thing about Syracuse is that the temperature could drop at any time. I’d go from rain to snow in a hurry. Who wants to be caught in that?

So, tell me what you’d choose:
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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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I bought my first pair of Held Ninja gloves a little over three years ago. They had a manufacturing flaw where the stitching around the fingers began to give way. I returned them to the Held distributor, who sent me a new pair that was sewn together by Igor. Less than a year later, the right glove began to deteriorate near the wrist. A small hole developed, which eventually grew into a larger hole. If the gloves fell apart under normal wear and tear, what would happen in a crash? I started looking for another glove.

I researched a few other full gauntlet gloves with the help of Web Bike World, ADVrider.com, and the FZ6 forum over on sportbikes.net. I was chugging the Motoport Kool-Aid and bought a pair of the kevlar motorcycle gloves. I tried two pair but the fit was off (omen), and I returned them.

I purchased a pair of Teknic Speedstar full gauntlet leather gloves from NewEnough and have worn them for about 1500 miles. Priced at $99 on closeout, the Speedstars won out against the Alpinestar SP-1, Cortech Adrenaline, and Shift Carbine gloves. I considered some of the Rev’It gloves, but the lack of full wrist protection steered me away.
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With the American economy in a supposed state of free-fall, I’m trying to limit myself to one stupid purchase per pay period. Yeah, I know, challenge, but let’s assume I stay strong and abide by it.

This pay period’s contenders:

Tour Master Synergy heated jacket
About $200
I ride just about year ’round, and I may be going up to New York state later this month. It’s already in the 30 - 50 degree range up there, and my mother said they’ve had their first “big” frost this year. That means it’s already colder than most days here in Virginia.

The Synergy jacket (with adapter, about $12) will plug right into the auxiliary outlet on my BMW R1150R. I won’t have to do any wiring, and the jacket gets great reviews on sites like Web Bike World (see their review of the Synergy heated vest).

Cardo Scala Q2 Multiset Bluetooth motorcycle headset
About $300
Most times I ride alone, but some times I ride 2UP (with passenger), or with a buddy, like Donut. For times when I am riding with others, it would be nice to be able to communicate with them aside from frantically pinwheeling my arms at 80MPH. I could listen to music, get directions from a GPS, or make a mobile phone call without removing my helmet when riding solo.

The Cardo Scala Q2 Multiset has a pair of these guys in it, and features incremental improvements over the Q2 headset available singly. The Multiset version has a direct jack for an audio device and a longer microphone boom. The former allows for easier connectivity, the latter allows for better mic positioning.

So, what would you buy if you were in my shoes? Staying warm, or staying connected? Keep in mind I have a very capable winter riding jacket (Rev’It Cayenne Pro), the heated jacket would be used for extended rides in lower temperatures.

My friend Ghost Rider passed away on July 4th, 2007. The following fall his mother and family put together a benefit ride to Yorktown, Virginia. We did it again this year, this time heading up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The weather called for rain for most of the day. I was not deterred for a moment — I’ve ridden in the rain plenty of times and have specialized gear that goes on top of my protective clothing — but I was afraid the event would be postponed until the next day. I already had plans for Sunday, and didn’t want to miss out. I put on wicking bottoms and top, my Motoport mesh kevlar pants and my Teknic perforated leather jacket. I stuffed my waterproof gear in the side case and motored off to the rallying point: the Starbucks where Ghost Rider used to work, and where we met for the first time.
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I promised Wayne at Motoport I would post his email to me in its entirety. I have only removed my first name from his email. I posted this on advrider.com’s equipment forum, but I am unsure if the post will be allowed to stay because I posted on behalf of a merchant. So I’m reposting it here. I will quote Wayne’s comments, and bold my rebuttal.
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I ordered my kevlar gear from Motoport almost three months ago today. I have returned the jacket twice for alterations, and the pants once. The gear has never come back as I wanted it, and at this point the jacket fits worse than my $150 Tourmaster Transition II jacket. Here’s the story how wanting to resolve a problem with a small-time vendor wound up costing me a little over $650 on a jacket that doesn’t fit right.
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