Last weekend Adam and I drove down to Kingston to pickup my motorcycle, which spent a year and a half hibernating in Nana’s workshop. The folks at MotoSport Plus in Kingston did a great job of preparing it for slumber, and then did a great job of brining it back to life this spring. But as much as I trust them, I am much happier to have the bike in my own possession.
In the middle of March we had a couple of months were the weather was ridiculously awesome. I didn’t have my bike at this time but it made me excited to pick it up. But by the time I did pick it up the weather had changed–normalized–and my riding has been limited for this very reason. I did go out for a little ride today in +3 temperature weather and have a couple of things that make this a little better.
First and foremost, I picked up a balaclava from MEC: the CTR Mistral Multi-Tasker Pro. I wear this under my full-face helmet (a Scorpion EXO-700). This helps a lot. Of course, it’s useless if you don’t have a nice warm sweater under a jacket that is done up all the way.
With this my upper body is warm with one exception: my hands. It can get very cold. I went looking for some gloves that might be okay in the cold and ended up with a pair of Alpinestar SR-2 Drystar gloves. They’re a definite improvement over any other pair of gloves I had before. For my other gloves I have been wearing a pair of those stretchy black gloves underneath as a liner, but with these gloves I can get by without them. I can still feel some chill on the hands but it’s bearable (at least, for the short distances I’ve travelled). I should be able to layer these gloves with the little black gloves for added warmth.
Tonight I did a ride wearing these two pieces with the sun down and the temperature sitting at 0. They performed better than any other gloves I had paired with the black gloves. With my upper body taken care of it was my legs that were cold. Also, a motorcycle seat can get pretty cold very quickly at night.
Get yourself a pair of stretchy fleece long johns. They warm your legs up a trick, fit comfortably under a pair of jeans, and you can wear them inside a warm building without overheating.
You know what I realized? I still have leather chaps. They’ll cut the wind plenty good.
I was going to ask about the chaps.
Chaps cut the wind real good. Also, asphalt.