Bikers and Motorcycles: Keeping Out Cold, Wind, and Rain
I recently rode a bike on a 400 mile trip up the West Coast on a day when the temperatures were in the 40's - 60's. As I rode, I thought a lot about what I had done to prepare for this ride along the coastal waters, through the mountains, and in the valleys of the El Camino Real. There were four places where my body had to fight the elements of wind and cold that day. They are the same places on every biker. If uncomfortable cold and wind get in any one of these places, you are in for a miserable day. They are:
1. The lower legs from the ankles up to the knees
2. The hands and wrists
3. The waist and chest
4. The neck
The secret to a comfortable ride - regardless of the temperatures - is simple. It is just one thing: the cold air must be shut down and shut out completely. 100%. No leaks of any kind. Total exclusion of even a wisp of air. No seepage in the slightest degree. Nothing. Let's take each of the four areas where you must totally cut off all air entry.
Lower legs and ankles up to the knees. I have used many lower extremity defenses over the years. Boots and chaps primarily. Sometimes long underwear. I usually climbed into cowboy boots or Gortex-lined hiking boots over which flapped leather chaps. But even then the tactics I used have not worked well against cold wind. It makes no difference if you use chaps over your pants - and even wear heavy boots - because the wind will just come up sailing up your pants legs and intolerably air-condition your legs with an annoying and consciously-felt cold breeze that will shorten your endurance and make you generally wretched on a prolonged ride. But on this last trip I employed a newly acquired approach made possible only by the boots I was wearing. I had purchased from Stompers in San Francisco just a few months ago a pair of Wesco, leather-lined, 16' tall boots that came above my calf and just below my knee caps. Very good, but still not good enough. I could still feel cold breezes snaking up my pants and blowing on my knees. The major difference came when I pegged my pants legs, pulled my socks above the bottom of the pants, and then jammed my feet into the boots. Just like a motorcycle cop. Bingo. Problem #1 solved. The wind was entirely choked off from coming up my legs. Add a thermal liner under your pants, and it is even better. So some kind of tall boot that will give you the ability to tuck your pants into them will eliminate this problem on the lower part of your body where you will be taking the wind in the most open position on the bike.
Hands and wrists. I probably have five pairs of gloves that I use for riding. I discovered something in the last few cold-weather rides I made that has changed everything for me. First, the cowhide leather gloves that most of us have are not the most effective in colder weather. They tend to be too thin and too short. So I bought a pair of elk skin gloves. Though they are short also, they are much thicker, more durable, and do a better job of standing against wind and cold. But not even those are adequate on the kind of ride I did the other day for 400 miles.
Some years ago I bought a pair of leather gauntlet gloves. This was a good idea in concept because the gauntlet will come up over the sleeve of your motorcycle jacket and not allow the wind to fly over your wrists and up your sleeves. But even then, those gauntlet gloves come up short. Leather gloves just aren't the most effective insulator against bitter wind and cold. If you use a leather gauntlet glove in cold weather, you are defeating your purpose. It would be like having a screen door in a submarine. There is a better way.
A few years ago I was into skiing, and one day I bought a pair of textile nylon gauntlet gloves from a discount outlet. These gloves were black and yellow on the outside, could be cinched tight, and had some kind of gripping material in the palm for holding a ski pole. The textile material of the glove was lined with Gortex, which is a lining that is a wind-breaker and is impervious to water penetration. It will allow the moisture from the inside to escape, but it will not allow water to penetrate from the outside. As an aside, I still own a pair of leather hiking boots that are lined with Gortex. On a motorcycle trip one night on a two lane highway in central Michigan, I was wearing those boots for about three hours in a rain storm that was comparable to anything I had seen in Florida. My rain jacket and pants were lined with Gortex too. I would have been drenched to the bone within five minutes in that storm, not counting the water that splashed on me from oncoming traffic. When I got to my destination and removed my jacket and pants and shoes, I was BONE DRY. That is Gortex.
Anyway, inside these Gortex-lined gloves was another liner glove made of polar fleece. By now, most of us know of the insulating power of fleece and its wicking qualities. So these gloves had two layers of protection for my hands. One was a fleece liner that wicks moisture overlaid with a Gortex lining inside a nylon shell. I had a wind and water barrier over a polar fleece glove with a cushion of air in between for insulation purposes. The name on the gloves was "HotFingers." This was the best glove purchase I have ever made for $10. Now, if you are saying to yourself, "Wow, you stole those things," then you better hustle down to Costco as fast as you can because those very same gloves are sold there every winter season for $14.95 under the brand name "Head." They come in black with a touch of white on them. They have them there in cases.
Anyway, when I feel cold creeping into those elk skins, I whip those things off like lightning and place my digits in the most comfortable, cold-cutting gloves known to mankind - those black and yellow "HotFingers." I pull them high over the cuffs of my leather jacket, cinch them up, and Bingo! Problem #2 solved. The cold wind is entirely cut off from my hands and wrists for hours of riding.
Waist and chest. A good motorcycle jacket will easily take care of wind coming up around your waist or into your chest area. To demonstrate how important it is to keep this space warm and draft free, all you have to do sometime is wear a heated vest. It is common knowledge that if you can keep the core, or the torso, of your body warm, you can probably endure most other cold closing in around you. A lot of motorcyclists cannot wear a heated vest because they don't have the necessary electrical outlets on their bikes. So here is where you need to get this part right when it comes to the right jacket being your life-saver against biting temperatures. Most people will tell you that your jacket needs to fit tight around the waist. Remember, the secret to keeping out cold wind is shut it off completely. I have read a lot of recommendations to purchase a short leather jacket. But unless you are only a fair weather rider, I strongly suggest you buy one that comes below the waist in the back and almost to the seat. The front should come down to where your thighs bend in the front without causing the jacket to balloon up. And make sure that it is sufficiently tight enough to make it impossible for air to get in under your jacket at the waist. I have had jackets that merely zip up the front, and I have felt cold air seeping through the zipper. You are going to need more clothing underneath to stop that air from touching your chest. So try to purchase a jacket that has a leather flap behind the zipper so that the cold cannot sneak in. A jacket made of the thickest leather you can buy will be the most effective. If you do this right, you will not need a heated vest. The heat of your own body, along with an insulated lining and a light liner like polar fleece, will warm the inside because not a leak or puff of wind can sidle in and park against your skin. Bingo again. Problem #3 solved.
Neck. Here is the fourth line of defense that must be set up. If cold air is coming in around your neck in the front or back, you are opening the door to misery, fatigue, and taut, cramped upper body muscles. The secret here is the same as it is with all the other areas. Cut off the cold wind 100%. You will often see a lot Harley riders in inclement weather with a hooded sweat shirt sticking up over the collars of their leather jackets. The reason for this is to shut out the wind around their necks. A nice thick hood will do this absolutely perfectly as it bunches around your neck and up against the back and sides of the helmet in a two to four-inch wall. You won't feel anything around your neck except the cozy warmth and cushion of the hood as it buffers your skin against icy fingers outside. In fact, a hooded sweat shirt under a leather jacket in cool weather makes one virtually impervious to cold. Those two things were made to go together.
But another equally effective - maybe even better - substitute for a hooded sweat shirt is a balaclava. The advantage of a balaclava over a hooded sweatshirt is that a balaclava can also cover your head and cover your neck 100% in front and back. AND it can also be lifted up over your chin, mouth, and nose to shut off all wind even coming in to the front or underneath your helmet. Use a balaclava AND a hooded sweatshirt, and you will think you are riding on a wood stove. So there's the last Bingo. Problem #4 solved.
That takes care of wind and cold. But what about RAIN? If you are a BMW style rider or a Sport Bike rider, then you probably wear a textile jacket or may even wear a full riding suit, in which case, rain is irrelevant because these riding clothes are generally water-proof. But if you have a leather jacket and get caught in rain, you have a potential problem. You can apply all kinds of water proof stuff to leather garments, and you will be okay for a while. A while. Not long. In a prolonged downpour, your leather garments are going to become like a ShamWow, a sponge, and Hoover Dam all rolled into one. I once rode through a downpour in a leather jacket for about 100 miles. When I got home, I could have used my leather jacket at Bally's Total Fitness to do bench presses.
I have not seen many leather jacket riders come up with good solutions for the rain problem. They just go with the leather in the weather. But remember that stuff called GORTEX? There's your answer. If you are in leather, go to a place where they sell ski jackets and buy one with a Gortex lining. Gortex-type material goes by different names. It is probably less expensive if you buy Gortex performing products under another name. You can buy yourself a very nice multi-purpose ski jacket. Use it for skiing, a rain coat, winter activities, and rain gear on a motorcycle. They are wind-breakers that are stylish, colorful, lightweight, breathable, warm when layered, and can be rolled up and compressed. Put it on over your leather jacket when it rains and be as dry as the Sahara Desert. You will be very visible in stormy weather too. I also bought some bibbed Gortex ski pants that even fit right over my chaps too. Ski clothing made for inclement weather over your motorcycle gear is going to look a lot better than some of those goofy looking, pastel, pajama-like rain covers that some motorcyclists have the brass orbs to wear . If you are a Harley Style rider [See my article "Every Biker Has A Style (Even If He Doesn't Know It)"Click Here], sure, it may make others think you are going GoldWing Style with a colorful ski jacket, but your leather jacket won't cause the whole house to cave in when you hang it up to dry out for a week while you prepare to spend two hours hand-rubbing Huberd's Shoe Grease back into it to recondition the leather.
Now if you really hit some hyper-cold weather, like the 20's or 30's that I have even ridden in, just fasten the ski jacket over the leather jacket and jump into those Gortex ski pants. You will be able to ride in the Iditarod and be as toasty as if were sitting before a roaring fire. You'll be warm. You'll be dry. The leather will be dry. BONE DRY. EVERYTHING. BONE DRY.
1. The lower legs from the ankles up to the knees
2. The hands and wrists
3. The waist and chest
4. The neck
The secret to a comfortable ride - regardless of the temperatures - is simple. It is just one thing: the cold air must be shut down and shut out completely. 100%. No leaks of any kind. Total exclusion of even a wisp of air. No seepage in the slightest degree. Nothing. Let's take each of the four areas where you must totally cut off all air entry.
Lower legs and ankles up to the knees. I have used many lower extremity defenses over the years. Boots and chaps primarily. Sometimes long underwear. I usually climbed into cowboy boots or Gortex-lined hiking boots over which flapped leather chaps. But even then the tactics I used have not worked well against cold wind. It makes no difference if you use chaps over your pants - and even wear heavy boots - because the wind will just come up sailing up your pants legs and intolerably air-condition your legs with an annoying and consciously-felt cold breeze that will shorten your endurance and make you generally wretched on a prolonged ride. But on this last trip I employed a newly acquired approach made possible only by the boots I was wearing. I had purchased from Stompers in San Francisco just a few months ago a pair of Wesco, leather-lined, 16' tall boots that came above my calf and just below my knee caps. Very good, but still not good enough. I could still feel cold breezes snaking up my pants and blowing on my knees. The major difference came when I pegged my pants legs, pulled my socks above the bottom of the pants, and then jammed my feet into the boots. Just like a motorcycle cop. Bingo. Problem #1 solved. The wind was entirely choked off from coming up my legs. Add a thermal liner under your pants, and it is even better. So some kind of tall boot that will give you the ability to tuck your pants into them will eliminate this problem on the lower part of your body where you will be taking the wind in the most open position on the bike.
Hands and wrists. I probably have five pairs of gloves that I use for riding. I discovered something in the last few cold-weather rides I made that has changed everything for me. First, the cowhide leather gloves that most of us have are not the most effective in colder weather. They tend to be too thin and too short. So I bought a pair of elk skin gloves. Though they are short also, they are much thicker, more durable, and do a better job of standing against wind and cold. But not even those are adequate on the kind of ride I did the other day for 400 miles.
Some years ago I bought a pair of leather gauntlet gloves. This was a good idea in concept because the gauntlet will come up over the sleeve of your motorcycle jacket and not allow the wind to fly over your wrists and up your sleeves. But even then, those gauntlet gloves come up short. Leather gloves just aren't the most effective insulator against bitter wind and cold. If you use a leather gauntlet glove in cold weather, you are defeating your purpose. It would be like having a screen door in a submarine. There is a better way.
A few years ago I was into skiing, and one day I bought a pair of textile nylon gauntlet gloves from a discount outlet. These gloves were black and yellow on the outside, could be cinched tight, and had some kind of gripping material in the palm for holding a ski pole. The textile material of the glove was lined with Gortex, which is a lining that is a wind-breaker and is impervious to water penetration. It will allow the moisture from the inside to escape, but it will not allow water to penetrate from the outside. As an aside, I still own a pair of leather hiking boots that are lined with Gortex. On a motorcycle trip one night on a two lane highway in central Michigan, I was wearing those boots for about three hours in a rain storm that was comparable to anything I had seen in Florida. My rain jacket and pants were lined with Gortex too. I would have been drenched to the bone within five minutes in that storm, not counting the water that splashed on me from oncoming traffic. When I got to my destination and removed my jacket and pants and shoes, I was BONE DRY. That is Gortex.
Anyway, inside these Gortex-lined gloves was another liner glove made of polar fleece. By now, most of us know of the insulating power of fleece and its wicking qualities. So these gloves had two layers of protection for my hands. One was a fleece liner that wicks moisture overlaid with a Gortex lining inside a nylon shell. I had a wind and water barrier over a polar fleece glove with a cushion of air in between for insulation purposes. The name on the gloves was "HotFingers." This was the best glove purchase I have ever made for $10. Now, if you are saying to yourself, "Wow, you stole those things," then you better hustle down to Costco as fast as you can because those very same gloves are sold there every winter season for $14.95 under the brand name "Head." They come in black with a touch of white on them. They have them there in cases.
Anyway, when I feel cold creeping into those elk skins, I whip those things off like lightning and place my digits in the most comfortable, cold-cutting gloves known to mankind - those black and yellow "HotFingers." I pull them high over the cuffs of my leather jacket, cinch them up, and Bingo! Problem #2 solved. The cold wind is entirely cut off from my hands and wrists for hours of riding.
Waist and chest. A good motorcycle jacket will easily take care of wind coming up around your waist or into your chest area. To demonstrate how important it is to keep this space warm and draft free, all you have to do sometime is wear a heated vest. It is common knowledge that if you can keep the core, or the torso, of your body warm, you can probably endure most other cold closing in around you. A lot of motorcyclists cannot wear a heated vest because they don't have the necessary electrical outlets on their bikes. So here is where you need to get this part right when it comes to the right jacket being your life-saver against biting temperatures. Most people will tell you that your jacket needs to fit tight around the waist. Remember, the secret to keeping out cold wind is shut it off completely. I have read a lot of recommendations to purchase a short leather jacket. But unless you are only a fair weather rider, I strongly suggest you buy one that comes below the waist in the back and almost to the seat. The front should come down to where your thighs bend in the front without causing the jacket to balloon up. And make sure that it is sufficiently tight enough to make it impossible for air to get in under your jacket at the waist. I have had jackets that merely zip up the front, and I have felt cold air seeping through the zipper. You are going to need more clothing underneath to stop that air from touching your chest. So try to purchase a jacket that has a leather flap behind the zipper so that the cold cannot sneak in. A jacket made of the thickest leather you can buy will be the most effective. If you do this right, you will not need a heated vest. The heat of your own body, along with an insulated lining and a light liner like polar fleece, will warm the inside because not a leak or puff of wind can sidle in and park against your skin. Bingo again. Problem #3 solved.
Neck. Here is the fourth line of defense that must be set up. If cold air is coming in around your neck in the front or back, you are opening the door to misery, fatigue, and taut, cramped upper body muscles. The secret here is the same as it is with all the other areas. Cut off the cold wind 100%. You will often see a lot Harley riders in inclement weather with a hooded sweat shirt sticking up over the collars of their leather jackets. The reason for this is to shut out the wind around their necks. A nice thick hood will do this absolutely perfectly as it bunches around your neck and up against the back and sides of the helmet in a two to four-inch wall. You won't feel anything around your neck except the cozy warmth and cushion of the hood as it buffers your skin against icy fingers outside. In fact, a hooded sweat shirt under a leather jacket in cool weather makes one virtually impervious to cold. Those two things were made to go together.
But another equally effective - maybe even better - substitute for a hooded sweat shirt is a balaclava. The advantage of a balaclava over a hooded sweatshirt is that a balaclava can also cover your head and cover your neck 100% in front and back. AND it can also be lifted up over your chin, mouth, and nose to shut off all wind even coming in to the front or underneath your helmet. Use a balaclava AND a hooded sweatshirt, and you will think you are riding on a wood stove. So there's the last Bingo. Problem #4 solved.
That takes care of wind and cold. But what about RAIN? If you are a BMW style rider or a Sport Bike rider, then you probably wear a textile jacket or may even wear a full riding suit, in which case, rain is irrelevant because these riding clothes are generally water-proof. But if you have a leather jacket and get caught in rain, you have a potential problem. You can apply all kinds of water proof stuff to leather garments, and you will be okay for a while. A while. Not long. In a prolonged downpour, your leather garments are going to become like a ShamWow, a sponge, and Hoover Dam all rolled into one. I once rode through a downpour in a leather jacket for about 100 miles. When I got home, I could have used my leather jacket at Bally's Total Fitness to do bench presses.
I have not seen many leather jacket riders come up with good solutions for the rain problem. They just go with the leather in the weather. But remember that stuff called GORTEX? There's your answer. If you are in leather, go to a place where they sell ski jackets and buy one with a Gortex lining. Gortex-type material goes by different names. It is probably less expensive if you buy Gortex performing products under another name. You can buy yourself a very nice multi-purpose ski jacket. Use it for skiing, a rain coat, winter activities, and rain gear on a motorcycle. They are wind-breakers that are stylish, colorful, lightweight, breathable, warm when layered, and can be rolled up and compressed. Put it on over your leather jacket when it rains and be as dry as the Sahara Desert. You will be very visible in stormy weather too. I also bought some bibbed Gortex ski pants that even fit right over my chaps too. Ski clothing made for inclement weather over your motorcycle gear is going to look a lot better than some of those goofy looking, pastel, pajama-like rain covers that some motorcyclists have the brass orbs to wear . If you are a Harley Style rider [See my article "Every Biker Has A Style (Even If He Doesn't Know It)"Click Here], sure, it may make others think you are going GoldWing Style with a colorful ski jacket, but your leather jacket won't cause the whole house to cave in when you hang it up to dry out for a week while you prepare to spend two hours hand-rubbing Huberd's Shoe Grease back into it to recondition the leather.
Now if you really hit some hyper-cold weather, like the 20's or 30's that I have even ridden in, just fasten the ski jacket over the leather jacket and jump into those Gortex ski pants. You will be able to ride in the Iditarod and be as toasty as if were sitting before a roaring fire. You'll be warm. You'll be dry. The leather will be dry. BONE DRY. EVERYTHING. BONE DRY.
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