Passes & Canyons Blog

At least the top of Monarch Pass, in the middle of the day, was warmer than Red Mountain Pass in the early morning.

I was discussing gloves last week and made the point at one spot that with my heated gloves I need never ride with freezing hands again–as long as I actually have the gloves with me. Which is a pretty significant if. You can have the best riding gear in the world but if you don’t wear it or take it with you it’s of absolutely no good.

I had a perfect example of that on the Colorado Cruise when we needed to leave Ouray early to get over Red Mountain Pass before it was closed for construction work. I had not anticipated riding is really cold weather so of course my heated gloves were sitting–uselessly–at home.

We went up over the pass and down to Silverton, where we stopped for gas and for breakfast. My hands were so cold it took several minutes warming them up before I could undo the latches on my tank bag so I could get to the gas cap, and then it took more warming before I could manipulate the key in the gas cap to open the tank.

Was I so fully loaded on this trip that it would have been an issue sticking the gloves in a bag somewhere? Oh heck no. I was on the V-Strom and besides the tank bag and top bag it has two huge Givi sidebags that are so big that even when I go on longer trips I never fill them more than half full. No, it was just stupidity.

This is a recurring theme with me. On this same trip I wore one of my mesh jackets because, you know, it was still summer, right? Mesh is for summer and leather is for winter. It was still summer. OK, but even mesh jackets have liners you can put in or take out. And it’s not like they take up a lot of space.

So I wore the mesh. Did I take the liner? No. Did I seriously regret this as we repeatedly went over passes where the temperatures were really low? You bet. Did I feel really stupid? You bet. At least in this case I finally figured out on the last day that I should just put on my rain jacket and that would provide the wind-blocking function the liner otherwise would have.

Of course I can’t count the number of times I have gone out on just day rides and figured, oh, it’s plenty warm, I don’t need to take a sweatshirt or my electric vest. And then found it much too cool for comfort but there I was out there and there was my warm clothing sitting at home. Just put the darn thing in the side bag. If you don’t need to pull it out there’s no harm done. It’s not like it weighs 50 pounds and you’re carrying it on your back as you walk across the desert.

It does work the other way. Just the other day I was out riding and out of an overabundance of caution I bundled up. And I roasted! But you know what? I stopped and took over the unneeded layers. How hard is that?

The bottom line is, I have a lot of really good gear. I’m prepared for pretty much anything. Nevertheless, I continue to find myself in situations where what I really need is sitting at home. Some people are hopeless and sometimes I have to think I’m one of them.

Biker Quote for Today

I would love to buy a Harley Davidson motorcycle… But I can’t afford all the shirts.

This new Hawk helmet with the front flipped up. And hey, it has built-in Bluetooth communication.

Seems like every day is Christmas lately, and I have a lot of near gear to try out. In addition to the new heated gloves I’ve been writing about, I also just received a new helmet. The full name of this helmet is Hawk H-6607 Glossy Black Dual-Visor Modular Motorcycle Helmet with Bluetooth. OK, that’s a mouthful. Let’s break it down.

First off, it’s a modular, flip-up type of helmet. I’ve never used one of those before so that’s something to get familiar with. It’s also dual-visor, which is to say that it has a separate flip-down sun visor to use during the daylight and to flip up at night. And third, it has built-in bluetooth. I like that idea.

So I rode to work on Wednesday and had another chance to try out this new stuff. Wednesday was a beautiful, warm day to ride so once again it wasn’t much of a test of the heated gloves but it was an incremental advancement. This time I set both gloves to 75 percent power and that was probably more than I needed. Then on my way home the right glove, which I had been running at higher power the previous times I had worn them, ran out of juice. And as I pulled into the driveway the left glove was flashing to indicate it was about to go kaput, too. So I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that when Gerbing says 2 hours on full power that truly does mean you’re not going to get more than 2 hours.

For the helmet it was my second test run. On Sunday I had gone out with it and had been surprised how noisy it was. One person I spoke with said that modulars are always noisier than regular helmets so I guess I need to factor that in. Plus, when I wore earplugs it was no problem at all. Beyond that, it is comfortable and doesn’t seem to take the breaking in that other helmets I’ve had have required.

The tinted visor needs some tweaking. It doesn’t want to stay up. When it insisted on falling down on Sunday afternoon that was no problem, but coming home Wednesday evening after dark I didn’t want that happening. Fortunately, it seemed that because I left the visor open a bit because it was so warm, that stopped it from falling except just once. I may just stick a little piece of tape on there or something, just to add a wee bit more friction.

I like that this helmet has a little chin shield that closes up the forward bottom portion of the helmet, blocking drafts. That will be nice in very cold weather.

I haven’t had a chance yet to try out the Bluetooth communicator. Maybe we can get out this weekend with Judy using our other Bluetooth communicator and see how that goes. And my experience up to now is that these communicators do work fine even if you have earplugs in. In the meantime, not to have to hassle with keeping the speaker/mic in place should be wonderful. I think built-in communicators is likely to become just standard equipment in a lot of helmets from now on. It makes so much sense.

So I’ve got a lot more testing to do on both these items, but there’s no hurry. In the meantime, a couple other packages arrived in the last couple days as well, so I may be giving my impression of some motocross gear–provided I have a decent chance to try it out. Which may not happen soon. It is December, you know. We’ll see.

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New questionnaire added in women motorcyclist research project

Biker Quote for Today

It’s better to ride a boring bike than push an interesting one.

My new Gerbing Core S-2B heated gloves.

It’s a done deal, and an early Christmas. I’ve got a pair of Gerbing Core S-2B battery powered heated gloves.

I checked around town at all the shops that carry Gerbing gear and only one, Performance Cycle, on south Broadway just north of Evans, carries the battery powered gloves. As it was, they only had size Small and XXL in stock, but this weekend, the weekend of Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, they were on sale for only $170. That’s a bargain.

So we went over to the shop on Saturday because I wanted to see them for real and try them on. I figured I needed a Medium but if I bought them I would pay the sale price and then just wait for them to come in.

Turns out Small seems to be the size I needed. Judy whipped out her credit card and wished me a merry Christmas a month early.

At home, I immediately plugged in the batteries to charge and then last night we went for a walk to give them their first test. One thing I noticed immediately, as I had suspected might be the case, was that the battery in the gauntlet sits right on top of my wristwatch. For comfort I figure I’ll need to take the watch off when I wear the gloves. No big deal.

The controls work very easily. You plug the batteries in and insert them into the pouches on the gloves. Through a mesh window you can see the setting, so you push the Power button and then keep pressing it until it gets to the heat level you desire. What Gerbing says is that at 100 percent power the batteries should last you 2 hours. At 75 percent you should get 3 hours, at 50 percent 5 hours, and at 25 percent 10 hours.

I figure in the winter I’m not likely to be riding longer than 5 hours so 50 percent should do me well. On our walk they were set at 25 percent and though it was pretty cold, my hands stayed warm. Nice.

So we’ll see. Of course I want to take a ride and give them a real test as soon as possible, but Sunday was a warm day, in the 60s, so that didn’t seem like a good test. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of cold weather soon enough. Of course I’ll report the results here. Stay tuned.

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Biker Quote for Today

I say, there’s no such thing as a bad day’s riding. — metaljockey