Posted on March 6, 2010.
A bike ride without Leathers Have you ever wished that you had a good set of motorcycle leathers? I will never forget the winter of 1987. My wife and I lived on the north side of Chicago. She worked as a teacher in a primary school and I was finishing graduate school. Money was tight, so a second car was out of question. The desire to share a vehicle has always been stronger than me to bear, so I started looking for another form of cheap transport. In those days I did not even own a bike, but I always wanted one. While driving through the local mall near our neighborhood, I noticed a motorcycle sitting beside the road with a sign hanging from the sale of the front fork. It looked pretty small, but as the chrome sparkled in the sun I found myself strangely drawn to pull over and check it out.
The bike was a 1972 Honda CB350, and be 16 years old at the time he was in very good condition. It seemed he had barely rose, and then hidden in a garage somewhere. It was about 23 years ago now, so I honestly do not remember what color it was originally. I painted metallic blue flakes in the first year to own it. For me, this bike is priceless, but I only paid $ 300 for later this afternoon.
Now that my transportation problem was solved, I began to regularly commute 20 miles to school. Which, if you've been in traffic in Chicago, you understand that a journey of this distance can take an hour or more. He must have bought the bike in the summer because I remember how I loved tooling around it for months. But as the temperature began to drop and the snow began to fly. I quickly learned that there is a reason Chicago is known as the wind city. Driving a motorcycle on Lake Michigan in winter is like running naked through a meeting with factory packing 100 high-speed fans blowing on you. I mean he was cutting the bone freezing!
Although I had a helmet, I never seemed to have clothes that could prevent the cold wind from penetrating to the soul. I remember forgetting my gloves, a night and having to put my socks on my hands just to survive the race home. My ankles still hurt when I think about it. Even though we now live in the states of Southeast U.S., and you can ride almost all year, just think of those motorcycle rides frigid mid-West can send a shiver to my spine unpleasant.
Since then I have clocked many miles on everything from Hondas to Harleys, and the one thing I learned is there is no substitute for a set High quality motorcycle leathers. Whether you ride a crotch rocket or a big old pig, nothing beats a leather jacket lined and broken into two guys on a long journey cold. When God made cows, he really knew how to isolate them from the cold. If you are currently on the market for some new leathers, take a minute and see the link below.