motorcycles, technology, music, business

I am a member of the Boston Sport Bike Meetup.com Group. I have only been able to go on two rides so far but they have both been fun.

I have been “planning” on doing a New Hampshire trip on my own this summer. I even have the route all mapped out and loaded in my GPS. But I wasn’t getting out the door. I was unsure of whether to do it in one day or two and I wasn’t sure how much money it would cost and so on. It would have also been my longest ride to date and I may have been intimidated by the miles in my route.

One day I see a scheduled meetup to do a slightly shorter version of my planned trip. I decided that since I wasn’t able to motivate myself to go on my own, I would make myself go on this ride.

We met in the morning, north of the city. It took a bit of getting used to for me to adjust my timing to allow for many riders, up to 15 at one point. I normally ride solo, and as we all know traveling in groups can be a bit of a hurry up and wait situation. There was a bit more futzing around than I would have liked and lunch was much longer than I would have liked but I enjoyed riding with the group and therefore the slight inconveniences were worth it.

I used my Garmin 60CSx to map my route. At Lincoln, NH several of us decided to head home while the rest continued on a bit more.

My Route:

View Larger Map

For a graphic showing the approximate speed and elevation of the ride go to me Garmin Connect activity page.

The Kancamagus is a lot of fun. It is almost as good as so many roads in Northern California. If it weren’t for the cars it would be a fantastic road. I put together a shorter video of some of the twisties. Recorded using a U-bolt camera mount and a Flip Mino. The bike you see most of is Tim’s Ducati 848. I, of course, am on my 2006 Yamaha FZ1.

I hope to get up there on another ride this summer. Hopefully following the route I have mapped out. I would be more than happy to do a smaller group ride of maybe 4 to 6 people. It seams that the best size for motorcycle trips is also the best size for project teams.

Thanks for reading and happy riding.

First let me start with the previous glove. Up until yesterday my summer motorcycle gloves were a pair of Wilson’s Leather auto driving gloves. They have served me well and of course allow a lot of air (and sun) through. I have the circle tan lines to prove it.

I had been wanting new gloves for some time, but it wasn’t until my old gloves started to rip that I felt I could purchase some. One bummer is that I just discovered that these gloves are iPhone compatible. The new ones are not.
I don’t know about you, but I go to webbikeworld every single day and read all of their reviews and articles. They have some good reviews on summer gloves and to make a long story short, the Joe Rocket Atomic gloves scored high in ventilation and comfort, low in protection. I had been eyeballing other gloves but $40 dollars seemed to be an ok price, since I am a ‘starving’ grad student.

These gloves are pretty nice. they do allow some air in, especially when I spread my fingers. They are a little tight where the fingers meet the rest of the hand. This must be the most challenging part of glove making since this is where my old gloves ripped. I am hoping they stretch out a little.

The main thing I miss about my old gloves is the air holes on the inside of the fingers and palm. I might punch some of my own in the fingers, since the inside of the hand is where the majority of the sweat glands are.

I agree with webbikeworld that the protection is minimal, but minimal is better than nonexistent.

As a side commentary: The motorcycle shops in the area all seem to carry no name brand gloves, with the exception of one BMW/Ducati dealer that carries only BMW/Ducati gloves. None of the shops seem to carry the bigger names. The local shops also don’t carry the lower cost gloves. So even though I really wanted to give the local guys my business I couldn’t.