Dæmons

Thanks to Biker Betty for letting me in on this one.  I have to say, this is one of the more cute personality tests I've seen.  I'll have to make sure my wife looks it over to make sure this particular Dæmon fits me.

Not much has been going on otherwise.  The weather here has been pretty crappy and Selene has be sulking under the veranda.  She is a little mad at me for being a bit too careless when covering her up the other night.  A part of the cover melted onto her pipes and now I have a rather large clean up job ahead of me.  Oops.

Guys and bikes

I have some observations about how guys react around motorcycles. You can file these under stereotypes if you want, they are just silly little things that make me smile. They are also the things I encounter most when I start talking to a guy about my bike.

1. "Nice bike!" Usually follows after, "Is that your bike?" Well, I'm standing by it and I'm dressed in leather, you do the math.

2. "What year is it?" As if that matters. I get this so much that I'm thinking of having it painted on the tank.

3. "How fast is it?" Um, it can do the speed limit.

4. "I used to have a bike, but the wife made me get rid of it." Um, what now? You'll have to pardon me, but no one could ever make me give up my bike. Oh, and my wife? She told me to buy a new one. ;) You may need to rethink your situation.

5. "I'm thinking about getting a bike." I hear this one a lot. Around here you'll sometimes hear, "or maybe an ATV..." added after. Always good for an internal chuckle. Months go by and they are still thinking about buying one or the other.

Oddly enough, I have never gotten the horrible crash story where someone's friend's relative lost "X" number of limbs and swears they will never again look a bike, let alone ride one.

Honestly, I prefer it when no one bothers me. I'm riding, I'm relaxing, I'm trying to get away from everyone else. For the most part, I am left alone and that's just fine by me. You think it could be the outfit?

Divided attention

There are some days that I think I shouldn't be on bike. Days where it seems like I'm not paying attention enough and that my mind seems to be wandering too much. But they have all been minor things and it really didn't bother me too much.

That changed on my last ride home from work on April 16th.

The whole ride home my mind is constantly wandering from one thought to another. Cars passing me on our multi lane main street are actually taking me by surprise because I'm not paying attention to my mirrors. My mask and goggles weren't seated correctly and wind kept making my eyes water.

I could handle that stuff. It was only a short ride and I knew it wouldn't be long before I would be home. There was one last thing though and it really bothered me. Actually, it's still bothering me now.

I was approaching an intersection and I was preparing to turn right. The light was green and I didn't have to worry about oncoming traffic. I took the turn and did so many things wrong that I'm surprised I made it home that night.

First, I looked down, saw dirt in the turn and proceeding to drive through it.

Second, I powered through the turn which caused my rear wheel to slip on the dirt that I had been watching.

Third (and this is the one that really gets me), I put my foot down. I PUT MY FOOT DOWN! The bike wasn't going down and my foot hitting the road actually made the bike even more unstable. All I could hear after that was my foot loudly slapping the road. Aside from falling asleep and blowing through an intersection years ago on my Kawasaki, it's probably one of the dumbest things I've done.

You'll have to forgive me, I tend to dwell a lot and I still haven't forgiven myself for slapping that road. It all boils down to inattention and not having a clear enough head to be riding.

So how about you? Got anything motorcycle related that you beat yourself up for? Or are you a little more forgiving of yourself then I am?

New shoes

Well, I'm a little late with this, but as you know...I've been forgetting to catch up on a lot of things. :)

So here she is in all her glory sporting her brand new Metzelers.

Ain't she sexy?

Prolonged Jafrum helmet review

While browsing my own archives I realized that I'm behind on a few things. One in particular was a review of the Jafrum helmets that were purchased last year. I was supposed to give a full and final review after a month of use...oops.

So here it is, the final review of our Jafrum shortie helmets.

The ones purchased were the 100 series DOT Beanie. I wanted a short style helmet and didn't really want to shell out a ton of money for another helmet when we already had brand new Icon Alliance SS helmets. The two Jafrum helmets cost less then one Icon helmet and that included shipping and duty.

I was very hesitant about buying helmets online due to the fact that you can't be sure they are going to fit properly. After measuring our heads twice and considering our Icon helmets were extra large (I find full face helmets are always bigger), we figured that a large would be fine for both of us. The website has a sizing page that was quite helpful in figuring out the size we needed. Upon receiving the helmets and trying them on, though, I realized we could have gone a size smaller. Joey's helmet is rather loose and so is mine. The only plus for me is that I always wear a do-rag or cap underneath it so it stays rather snug.

The helmet comes with a visor that attaches to the front via three screws. I removed mine and Joey kept hers on. It's easily removable and you can get a face shield that attaches to the same spot. The face shield is a separate purchase though and comes in clear, smoke or mirror tint.

The colour we went with was flat black, but it doesn't look like the helmet was actually painted. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was covered with a plastic/vinyl type of material. That works for me as I have found the helmet is very difficult to scratch. As a matter of fact, the only flaws on the helmet right now are some paint marks picked up from the occasional meeting with a wall.

The padding on the interior of the helmet is sufficient for its purpose. There are no hard spots or uncomfortable areas that take against the old noggin. There is even a nice pad that covers the crown of the head.

I was worried about the sturdiness of the straps. They felt cheap and it didn't look like they could take a lot of stress. The inside of the strap is felt lined, but the exterior portion seems to be made of a vinyl type of material. Contrary to what I thought, it has held out rather well. If anything, the straps have become more pliable and comfortable. Believe me, I don't treat the helmet like a baby. I want this one to have a used look and it has more then easily dealt with my punishment.

The only real complaint I have is about the buckle. It came with the seat-belt type strap closure and it's kind of finicky. Once it's closed, there are no problems and it won't easily let go, but the real problem is getting it to click into place. Sometimes it can take a bit of effort to get it to snap in. You can double or triple that effort if you are wearing gloves. The release button is really small and next to impossible to handle with gloves on, let alone bare hands. I've had my issues with it, but Joey is always having problems getting it to snap closed. On the plus side they do have the D ring loops as well, but the only way to use them properly would be to cut off the seat-belt closure. Otherwise the seat-belt portion flaps around in the wind.

We purchased these helmets last August in hopes of being able to wear them when we took our trip to Niagara Falls. We wore the Icons for the trip up and back, but used the Jafrum helmets for any rides around the Niagara Falls area. For the trip, the Jafrum helmets were bungee netted to the top of our luggage and were submitted to heat, cold and one very wet evening. They survived it all without a problem and mine has become my regular helmet. The other night, I took out my Icon to go for a short ride and realized that it was still covered in all the bugs that we had picked up from our trip back from Niagara Falls. I chuckled to myself as I realized that the cheapy little helmet had become my favourite to wear.

I like the open air feel of the beanie/shortie and it's as close to no helmet as I'm going to get in Canada. As for the Jafrum brand, it gets a thumbs up from me. The build quality is good, it's comfortable for long periods and it's quite affordable. Would I buy from them again? Definitely.