Moto Broad

Holy cow, how did I live without this thing?

The Gerbing jacket liner ($199.95) utilizes Gerbing’s patented Microwire technology to smoothly distribute warmth throughout the liner, with no hot spots, and no bulky electronic components. It feels like a cushy windbreaker — nowhere near as bulky as my Olympia jacket’s winter liner.

Gerbing 12V jacket liner

I’d looked at the TourMaster Synergy liner ($199.99) and the First Gear liner ($199.95), but both are slightly, well, lumpier than the Gerbing. All three brands would be satisfactory, I think, but when I tried on the Gerbing, it was love at first zip. (I couldn’t find Gerbing equipment at local shops; I purchased from Shango Rider’s booth at a motorcycle show. Dan Allen is the owner; he’s very knowledgeable and gave great service.)

Gerbing offers very flexible sizing options: for example, you can order a small jacket with long sleeves, a large jacket with regular-length sleeves. etc. (Because Shango Rider didn’t have the “perfect fit” in stock, Dan arranged free shipping from the factory to me. How cool is that? And the liner is indeed a perfect fit; Dan’s suggested size/sleeve combination was spot-on.)

On my SV650, the battery harness was easy to install: there are just four bolts to remove the seat for access to the battery. I removed the bolts connecting the battery cables and existing battery tender wires, added the contacts for the Gerbing harness, threaded the wires so the battery tender and Gerbing connector were accessible from the outside, and reinstalled the battery bolts, seat, and small side panels. The hardest part was threading the cable ties through the frame to anchor the Gerbing connector — I spent some time blindly stabbing behind the frame spar until I finally found a way through. There’s a lot of stuff crammed in there, and it’s hard to find your way when you can’t see.

When I finished, the install was neat, and the Gerbing connector was easy to reach for plugging/unplugging. There’s even a little attached cap to protect the connector when it’s not in use.

Cable positions

It does take a little extra preparation to ride —What do I plug first? Oops, I can’t zip that just yet! — but it’s more than worth it. Without the bulkiness of the original padded liner and a sweatshirt, I can actually bend my elbows and turn my head easily (you just need a light shirt; I wear a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt under the liner).

With your core warmed, it seems that your body is more willing to send blood out to the extremities; I found that my hands didn’t get cold as soon on a ride, and they were never as cold as they had been on previous rides without the warm liner. If I can find some hand guards to block the wind, I think I could get by without buying Gerbing’s electric gloves. Only my thighs were icy; now I can see the appeal of chaps.

That’s what makes motorcycling (or any hobby) expensive — the accessories! But I have to say that the heated jacket liner is a wonderful investment in comfort and riding enjoyment. I’d describe it as an essential piece, not a luxury.

Now if Gerbing just made an air-conditioned jacket liner for summer in the South…

Sometimes a balaclava is just too much. Besides, it’s a bit claustrophic (now, baklava, that’s a different story). I was looking for a neck warmer that wouldn’t require encasing my entire head for warmth, and I think I’ve found it.

The Schampa Zip D’Zip (hey, I didn’t name it) is a soft fleece neck warmer with a front zipper. Easy on and off, and truly cuddly. It’s high enough and thick enough that it acts as a soft gasket to keep wind from whistling through my helmet, so I think it may replace the bank-robber balaclava I used last winter.

Funny how my helmet doesn’t feel all that well-ventilated in summer…

Surprise — it didn’t rain! The day was perfect; it was cool and dry, and the course was not mud, after all. Some women were taking the class because, like me, they ride on the street and wanted to get a taste of riding on dirt. One mother brought her teenaged daughter. Several women were trying it out because their husbands rode dirtbikes. And there was one charming 12-year-old with a blond pigtail flapping out the back of her helmet who had no trouble at all ripping through the course; her dad has built a motocross track in their back yard! I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more about little Madison in the near future.

The instructors, Teresa and Paula, were great. Patient, thorough, and realistic. No excessive praise, good constructive criticism. I was surprised how quickly I overcame my clumsy attempts to stand up on the pegs. Once I fully unfurled and found my balance, it became easy. I even shifted without falling over

The last exercise of the day involved riding up a small hill, turning around a cone, and coming back down the hill. From a distance, it looked painless; the hill seemed tiny. Until we walked up it and looked back down. Suddenly, it seemed steep and slippery. We attacked it from two directions. In the first exercise, we rode up the right side, rounded the cone, and turned left down the hill. Hey, not bad! But I always find turning left easier (I think most folks do). Continue Reading »

This is a permanent condition, apparently.

My excitement about next Sunday’s “Dirt ‘n’ the Skirt” dirtbike school is tempered by the forecast on weather.com: looks like it’s gonna rain for the rest of the century. Explains why that guy up the street is building a boat. And why he asked if I had two cats he could borrow…

Ah, well, it’ll strengthen my character; I’ll just take a change of clothes with me.

My country neighborhood

The air today was flavored with the crispness of freshly-cut grass fields, with a touch of the impending rain. It’s not cold yet, but there are pools of cool air at the bottom of dips in the road. Soon it will be time for the jacket liner and longer socks. Yum.

Test your quick recognition of road signs, and — even better — your quick assessment of traffic situations with these great Motorcycle Safety Foundation online exercises. In the signs test, signs are flashed on screen for less than a second, and you must identify them by picking from a list of possibilities.

In the Collision Traps Test, you’re presented with images of real traffic conditions (merging vehicles, pedestrians sneaking up in your peripheral vision, debris in the road), and you must choose the key issue from a list of options. It’s educational, and I do think it could help refine your responses.

Whee! I just signed up for the “ladies only” dirtbike class to be held in Alpharetta, GA September 27th at the Motorcycle Safety Foundation campus. I have no intention of wearing a skirt, mind you. But I’m really looking forward to spending a day playing in the dirt. I think it will help me work on balance and bike handling.

Jeez! Just nearly got squashed by an idiot tow-truck driver. I’m in the left lane, with my turn signal on. He’s behind me in the same lane. Light turns green. I start to pull away, and HE PULLS OUT TO THE LEFT OF ME, BEATING ME INTO THE TURN. If I hadn’t had a runoff lane, he’d have killed me. I stopped in the runoff lane (while screaming at him through his open passenger window). AND THEN HE STOPS TO THE LEFT OF ME!

Just sits there. Like I’m going to be crazy enough to pull past him?! I’m still screaming. Finally he starts moving again. I wait to make sure he’s actually going, then pull in some distance behind him.

He pulls into a decel lane entering a subdivision and stops. Maybe he wants to apologize, maybe he’s mad, I don’t know. I’m not taking the chance. I slow as I pass him and shout “Watch where you’re going!!”

Perhaps I should have stopped, and given him a lecture, or an opportunity to apologize, but I was so shaken that I just wanted to get home.

Just goes to show you that all the caution and bright yellow safety clothing can’t protect you from a case-hardened moron driving a moving weapon.

Blue-sky day with cottony white clouds, so of course I rode the bike to run my errands. Stopped at Wendy’s to try the new Asian chicken thingies (let me save you a trip. Bleah.) Walking back to the bike, I was nearly knocked over in the parking lot by a woman who was driving, texting, and smoking a cigarette, with two screaming kids in the back seat. I squawked at her, but she was oblivious. After a quick glance, she pulled out into the street, driving up over the curb — ka-LUNK.

People sometimes ask if I’m scared, riding a motorcycle. It’s not the motorcycle that scares me. It’s the idiots behind the wheel.

A friend and I rode our bikes through the oven of Atlanta today (mid–to-high 90s) because, well, we thought that if we moved fast enough we wouldn’t be miserable (we were wrong). As a couple of old farts, we thought it might make us feel young again to go listen to some indie bands (we were wrong about that, too).

We went to funky East Atlanta to participate in the Corndogorama Music Festival. Cute area; despite living in the adjacent Inman Park area for several years in the 70s-80s, I’d never been to East Atlanta. I’d go back just for the Blue Frog Cantina alone.

The theme for this year’s Corndogorama was “Yes, We Corn.” We declined the opportunity to have our photos taken with the official Corndogorama placards, despite strong temptation (below).

(Photos aren’t the greatest, but not bad for a cellphone, eh? Courtesy of my BlackBerry 8330 Curve. Love it.)

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