#Gear

It’s been a while since we’ve put (proverbial) pen to paper. But luckily, not for anything as glum as what kept us at bay the last time. While Ana is indeed still hard at work in Colorado fulfilling a few personal goals as an ADV tour guide, I’ve been traveling – a lot – for work, hustling and riding and touring the Italian countryside then off to the Pacific Northwest to begin (officially) training for Red Bull Romaniacs. But before we dive into that grand adventure, our visit to Italy was quite fortuitous, and it subsequently inspired today’s post. This particular exploit led us to the headquarters of our Seat Time gear brand of choice: Alpinestars.

Aside from a few fleeting social media posts, this will serve as the first announcement that myself and Motorcycle.com were invited by BMW Motorrad North America to serve as the “embedded journalist” to ride alongside and report on the 2024 GS Trophy and Team USA’s progress as they navigate the challenges that BMW Motorrad and Namibia will have on offer. To say that I’m excited and humbled to receive the invite would be putting it lightly. Not only do I see it as an honor to receive the personal invite, but it carries more weight knowing that this is the first time Motorcycle.com as a publication has been invited.

May is Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, which makes it as good a time as any for all of us to take stock of our own riding habits, both good and bad.

Most motorcyclists are familiar with the acronym “ATGATT”, but for those who aren’t, it stands for “All The Gear, All The Time”. That means wearing the right safety equipment every time you ride, whether you’re commuting to work, or hopping over to the corner store for a carton of milk.

For motorcyclists, helmets can range in importance from their most essential piece of riding kit to a mere afterthought. The drivers for this may be complex, but our guess is that the more serious you are about riding, the more serious you are about helmets. And conversely, if you treat riding lightly (perhaps as only a secondary activity), a helmet may register as no more important than a backpack, sunglasses, or shoes.

Hey! Interested in opening a big can of worms? Just ask a group of riders what kind of gear they wear, and then for good measure, what kind of gear they would or should wear if they were going to “do it right.” It’s likely that the responses will have some commonalities – and some differences too. We’re here to say that this is normal because riders are individuals; they evaluate comfort and risk uniquely, and they all draw from their own unique experiences in making their judgments.

When is a pair of street motorcycle gloves worth $240? When you know they’re going to last a good long time, that’s when. If these new 4 Stroke 2’s are going to hold up as well as the 4 Stroke Evo originals I’ve been wearing for about the last decade, then 240 bucks is probably a bargain. I’ve got more than a few pairs of cheaper gloves that grew holes or fell apart over that ten-year interim – including some lesser Daineses – but then I’ve also got some cheaper ones that have held up really well.

In motorcycles, we frequently see tremendous loyalty in consumables like brake pads and tires. Because of their long life cycle, riding gear isn’t usually thought of as a consumable (except, perhaps, from crash damage), but if you use something long enough, it will eventually wear out. Boots and gloves suffer the stresses of everyday use more than other riding gear and, consequently, fall into this category. 

Reax is a relatively new name in motorcycle apparel, but most riders are probably familiar with the company behind it: retailer RevZilla and its parent company, COMOTO. Reax was only founded in 2018, but it’s been able to establish itself relatively quickly, thanks to RevZilla’s large online presence, along with its sister brands, J&P Cycles, and Cycle Gear.

We’re big fans of motorcycle airbag technology here at MO, especially our own Troy Siahaan who learned first hand how effectively an airbag can protect a rider in a crash.

Finding a balance of protection, ventilation, and versatility can be difficult when looking at summer jackets; however, the Super Speed textile jacket from Dainese does a pretty good job at the balancing act. While it is not new in Dainese’s line-up, it is year-after-year a bestseller that will keep you calm, cool, and collected on your summer rides.

Updated January, 2021

Boots are a highly specific genre of motorcycle riding gear. Depending on the style of riding you do, or the technical features you need, different boots serve entirely different purposes. As a well-established gear brand, Dainese offers a comprehensive range of motorcycle boots and shoes with a focus on sport and touring style riding.

You may remember a time when helmets were…helmets. Full-face, modular, three-quarter…they did the job but were kind of bland, monochromatic and didn’t have a lot of features we take for granted today. Features like dropdown inner sun visors, carbon-fiber shells or modular lids designed to be worn as either a full- or open-face. And then came Shark.

Guess what month it is at MO? It’s geeaar month, sergeant. The kind of motorcycle gear you wear, that is, that makes life on your bike much more pleasant no matter the climatic conditions. No doubt there will be amazing breakthroughs in the future of which our feeble 21st-century minds can’t even conceive: I’m picturing a shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled drone that deploys in 0.001-second to lift you above and away from an imminent left-turning Buick hovercraft. For now, we celebrate the 10 best pieces of gear the human race has come up with so far. Some you wear, some carries the gear you might want to wear later, some just makes the ride way more enjoyable.

About the time you’re sophisticated enough as a rider to bungee on a milk crate and hit the road for a day or three, it’s time to start thinking about what to bring along – that fine line between overpacking and wishing you’d brought your dang ____________. Here’s a quick list of the things we hate to be stuck without when the fickle finger of fate pokes us in the eyeball.