Outfitting your Scooter with a variety of good Motorcycle Gear will make you look and feel like the King of the Road when you ride!
You're going to want some proper Motorcycle gear if you want to be comfortable when you cruise the mountain byways on your bike.
I'm guessing you already know it, but a Hawaiian shirt, swimming trunks, and thongs on your feet are not going to get it done! They don't constitute motorcycle gear!
A few of the necessary pieces of gear are a bit pricey I suppose, but if you already dropped the price of a new bike, a few hundred more won't really hurt that much will it?
Riders like me don't let winter shut down our riding either. At least not completely! As long as it stays at least near freezing ,and it ain't snowin', I crank up the V Star! I have to admit, I do get to looking a little like an over weight mummy with all the layers of motorcycle winter riding gear I stack on!
I'm the first to say I'd rather be ridin' in the summer, or down south in the winter! But ..... sittin' a bike is so much like sittin' horseback, for me, I'm not willing to go without one or the other for a whole winter! So I add whatever Motorcycle Gear I need to keep on riding.
Did have to give up one bit though. Even though a bike is a lot like a horse in my mind, I discovered you can't use spurs on 'em! Darn things get tangled in the spokes and at 60 mph you make one hell of an odd noise!
For regular warm weather riding I wear a full face helmet, sunglasses if the sun is bright, light weight motorcycle gloves, either a denim or leather motorcycle jacket, chaps and a wild rag tied around my neck if it's a little cool.
While they make motorcycle chaps specifically for ridin' a bike, I, for now, am riding the chaps I wore cowboyin' for 25 years. And yes as a matter of fact, they do still fit! Had 'em made when I was still a young buck and haven't worn 'em out yet!
I also carry light weight rain gear in my bike's saddle bags. Boy oh boy, you haven't seen shinin' times until you've rolled down the road on a Yamaha Cruiser, at 60 mph in a heavy thunderstorm! You want excitement? Wait till it starts to hailin'!
Whoooooeee! It gets western! I'd not scrimp on your helmet. That's a piece of motorcycle gear where you really don't want to cheat on quality. If your brain pan takes a thump you want the best quality you can get between your skull and the asphalt! I'd guess you can get a decent quality motorcycle helmet for $300 give or take. You can pay more and get some better, but what you get for less dinero makes it kind of questionable quality wrapped around your noggin in my book.
Now, of course, if you exercise a good bit of defensive riding and are making the assumption that you are invisible to all the drivers on the road that seem to be auditioning for a demolition derby, the frequency of various parts of you and your bike bouncing around where they shouldn't will be greatly reduced!
When
it gets colder, I have a whole list of cold weather motorcycle riding
gear I add. I start with a balaclava under the helmet, A heavier coat,
longjohns, heavy wool sweater, insulated coveralls, insulated gloves,
insulated vest and maybe a wool shirt! If I'm not concerned with fashion
......? Me? concerned with vanity? Never! I can even swap out my jeans
for heavy, Army surplus, wool britches!
About the only thing left un-multilayered is my feet. Problem there is
my insulated Pacs won't fit the gear shift. About the only thing that
helps there are the stretch type overboots and electric socks!
If
there is some special Motorcycle Gear for cold feet I've managed to walk
right on by that display rack ..... was probably looking at the pretty
girl on a calendar or some such!
Like I said.... I get to lookin' like an over weight mummy! But I'm on
the road when everybody else has their scooter locked up in the garage!
I know a lot of folks think the leather motorcycle gear that "bikers" wear is only some sort of macho display..... and that may be true to some degree. Everybody around here agrees, when they look at a bald headed, stove up, pot bellied, chicken legged, arthritic ol' geezer like me the first thing they think is "There goes one awesome, macho son of a gun!"
The basic truth is that the leather gives us the best protection available, in the event of a fall, and nothing cuts the wind as well ..... or with as much classy machismo! My preferance is for the WWII style "Bomber Jackets". They go from uninsulated through thinsulate insulated to the full sheepskin model they used for winter flying.
Man I look good! .....OK....... Let me have the fantasy OK?
A
piece of Motorcycle gear that is nearly indispensible is a good set of
Motorcycle saddle bags. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a light
load of groceries back to camp without such gear, but I can assure you,
the lady of the camp will not be happy with you when you pull that loaf
of bread out from where you cached it under your jacket.
The best thing, besides the wide variety of bikes out there for every
personality, is the equally great variety of motorcycle gear that you
can set up to customize your ride and yourself.
A properly equipped bike is one of the best additions you can make to your RV Boondocking. If I don't see you out there RV Boondocking maybe we'll meet up cruising the mountains on a fine bike, set up with some really sweet Motorcycle gear!
For more on Touring with Motorcycles check out Motorcycle Touring on Freedom Road
