# OT: Need input from motorcycle riders



## RebelAngel (Jul 23, 2014)

This Saturday my boyfriend and I are riding his motorcycle on a 98 mile tribute ride to honor Vietnam Veterans. I do not have leather anything, what should I wear? Expected high of 82, low of 61, 0% Chance of precip. There is a scheduled stop for gas and food and then at the end of the ride there's food and entertainment. Edited to add: We ride a couple to a few times a month but not almost 100 a pop, or nearly 200 in one day.


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## Chewy20 (Jul 23, 2014)

RebelAngel said:


> This Saturday my boyfriend and I are riding his motorcycle on a 98 mile tribute ride to honor Vietnam Veterans. I do not have leather anything, what should I wear? Expected high of 82, low of 61, 0% Chance of precip. There is a scheduled stop for gas and food and then at the end of the ride there's food and entertainment. Edited to add: We ride a couple to a few times a month but not almost 100 a pop, or nearly 200 in one day.



If you cant afford or dont want to buy a riding jacket then just wear jeans and whatever on top. I know there is a lot of people here that like to wear full leathers, but when I had my bike I would wear shorts and a tshirt (and helmet). May be stupid but I am still here with all my skin lol.


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## UnkiEMT (Jul 24, 2014)

If it's going to be a common occurrence, invest in a textile jacket, I personally wear a Tourmaster Intake 3.0, quite aside from the armor, the fact that it's got three layers (Mesh+armor, wind/rain proof, quilted) means that it'll keep you both protected and comfortable in a variety of conditions. If you're not going to be riding often enough to justify the expenditure, go for a heavy denim jacket.

Don't buy leathers, if you look at the performance statistics, they don't actually provide protection on par with textiles, motorcycle leathers at this point are a triumph of form over function, which I just can't agree with.

For the legs, wear something thick, I personally tend to ride in my EMS pants, but jeans would probably be better. (You may want to look into wind proof thermals, if you're going to ride in colder weather, readily available from your local CycleGear.)

On your feet, wear your duty boots (If you don't have actual motorcycle boots). Duty boots provide pretty much exactly as much impact and abrasion resistance as real motorcycle boots (Provided they come up over your ankle), the only place they really fall down is water resistance, mine claim to be water resistant, however I've found to my dismay that resistant doesn't include water spray at 70 miles an hour.

It goes without saying they you're wearing a helmet (Right?), for longer rides, though, even though I wear a full face modular, I like to also wear a pair of wraparound sunglasses (I have a pair of clear ones for night) to keep my eyes relatively well hydrated.


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## RebelAngel (Jul 24, 2014)

Definitely don't ride enough or long enough to make a $200 jacket investment worthwhile. We did consider trying to get into the Red Knights, maybe if we end up getting involved with them I'll gear up. 

I don't own a denim jacket. Maybe I'll just shove a hoodie in his motorcycle back pack thing and call it a day. 

My boyfriend has numerous leather jackets he wears, one he favors over the others, among uh "fancier" things he wears to ride particularly in the colder weather, but since the warm weather started he wears just t-shirts and jeans. He's almost a foot taller than I am and 100lbs heavier so I couldn't wear one of his extra leather jackets just for that ride.  



UnkiEMT said:


> If it's going to be a common occurrence, invest in a textile jacket, I personally wear a Tourmaster Intake 3.0, quite aside from the armor, the fact that it's got three layers (Mesh+armor, wind/rain proof, quilted) means that it'll keep you both protected and comfortable in a variety of conditions. If you're not going to be riding often enough to justify the expenditure, go for a heavy denim jacket.
> 
> Don't buy leathers, if you look at the performance statistics, they don't actually provide protection on par with textiles, motorcycle leathers at this point are a triumph of form over function, which I just can't agree with.
> 
> ...


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## RebelAngel (Jul 24, 2014)

Yes, I do wear a helmet, with face shield. I don't have special goggles or sunglasses though.



UnkiEMT said:


> It goes without saying they you're wearing a helmet (Right?), for longer rides, though, even though I wear a full face modular, I like to also wear a pair of wraparound sunglasses (I have a pair of clear ones for night) to keep my eyes relatively well hydrated.


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## Chewy20 (Jul 24, 2014)

RebelAngel said:


> Definitely don't ride enough or long enough to make a $200 jacket investment worthwhile. We did consider trying to get into the Red Knights, maybe if we end up getting involved with them I'll gear up.
> 
> I don't own a denim jacket. Maybe I'll just shove a hoodie in his motorcycle back pack thing and call it a day.
> 
> My boyfriend has numerous leather jackets he wears, one he favors over the others, among uh "fancier" things he wears to ride particularly in the colder weather, but since the warm weather started he wears just t-shirts and jeans. He's almost a foot taller than I am and 100lbs heavier so I couldn't wear one of his extra leather jackets just for that ride.



Honestly anything that's not made for riding is just going to be meshed into your skin if you crash, so really just wear whatever is comfortable for you.


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## 9D4 (Jul 24, 2014)

Agreed with unki on almost everything.
Everyday riding I wear a textile mesh jacket. Have a full set of leathers, but only wear them on track days... Or mountain pass days. 
The boots is where I don't agree. My riding boots have a ton of support in the ankle, to keep you from rolling it. 
Not that it matters. You won't be purchasing anything like that for one day. I wouldn't. If it gets to be even semi common, I would. 
I would go with the helmet. Don't worry about jeans and a hoody. It's not going to do anything. If it was a super heavy like carrhart, I would think about it. But it's definitely too hot for that. So. Just go with a tee, jeans and over the ankle boots.


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## Handsome Robb (Jul 24, 2014)

RebelAngel said:


> Definitely don't ride enough or long enough to make a $200 jacket investment worthwhile.




Famous last words. 


200$ is cheaper than skin grafts and hospital stays. Riders down without gear are an ugly sight.


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## UnkiEMT (Jul 24, 2014)

Handsome Robb said:


> Famous last words.
> 
> 
> 200$ is cheaper than skin grafts and hospital stays. Riders down without gear are an ugly sight.



I'll note that more than that, motorcycle jackets have utility beyond just riding.

Take the armor out, and mine is hands down the warmest winter jacket I've ever owned. Plus, the fact that it's convertible makes it ideal for traveling.


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## Handsome Robb (Jul 24, 2014)

UnkiEMT said:


> I'll note that more than that, motorcycle jackets have utility beyond just riding.
> 
> 
> 
> Take the armor out, and mine is hands down the warmest winter jacket I've ever owned. Plus, the fact that it's convertible makes it ideal for traveling.




Agreed. The leather ones are a little different, not sure if wanna wear one around but a lot of the textiles I've looked at were really comfortable. I hate going to the motorsports store...makes me wanna spend money. Bike next spring is the goal unless I end up moving then that'll take priority.

I'm all about saving money where I can but personally, safety gear isn't one of those places. My sled helmet was like 450$ and I got flak for buying it from a lot of riding buddies. I shoulda taken a picture after the sled accident before I threw it away. Thing saved my life and I didn't even end up with a concussion.


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## teedubbyaw (Jul 25, 2014)

UnkiEMT said:


> Don't buy leathers, if you look at the performance statistics, they don't actually provide protection on par with textiles, motorcycle leathers at this point are a triumph of form over function, which I just can't agree with.




As a long time rider, road racer, and gear advocate, you are 110% wrong. Not only does leather have infinite more abrasion resistance than mesh or textile, it is far more functionally better than the latter 2.


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## UnkiEMT (Jul 25, 2014)

teedubbyaw said:


> As a long time rider, road racer, and gear advocate, you are 110% wrong. Not only does leather have infinite more abrasion resistance than mesh or textile, it is far more functionally better than the latter 2.



While I understand the arguments for leathers over textiles, I strenuously disagree with them.

That being said, I refuse to turn this into yet another "Textile vs Leather" thread. If anyone's curious, google for it, they're as common on motorcycling forums as "EMT-B -> EMT-P vs EMT-B -> EMT-I -> EMT-P" threads are on EMS forums, and just as likely to change anyone's mind.

On a side note, the engineer in me cries a little at the phrase "110% wrong".


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## teedubbyaw (Jul 25, 2014)

It's simply not a debate. Leather is better. I've crashed in all 3 and have the scars to show for failure of synthetics. And while textile holds up for a decent amount of crashes, and is better than jeans, it's still a synthetic material that will fail. 

If you had simply recommended textile instead of implying that it's better than leather and that leather is a gimmick, I'd have been fine with that. Textile is fine for the street, but it's not better than leather. 

And the extra 10% was for emphasis


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## Carlos Danger (Jul 25, 2014)

teedubbyaw said:


> It's simply not a debate. Leather is better



Evidence?


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## teedubbyaw (Jul 26, 2014)

Remi said:


> Evidence?




Seriously? Is not obvious that leather is better than a synthetic textile material? 

Here's evidence for you: crash at 140mph in textile and let me know how that works for you. There's a reason why any and every road racing organization does not allow textile.


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## Carlos Danger (Jul 26, 2014)

teedubbyaw said:


> Seriously?



Yeah, seriously. Forgive me for wanting to see a reference stronger than the word of some random dude on an EMS forum whose real name I don't even know. Silly 'ole me.

Look, YOU are the one making the sweeping, absolutist statements here. If leather really is as clearly superior as you say it is, it shouldn't be hard for you to point us in the direction of something objective that supports such a strongly held belief. Right?




teedubbyaw said:


> Here's evidence for you: crash at 140mph in textile and let me know how that works for you.



That's nice. Very constructive and helpful.

The next time you honestly question the necessity or efficacy of a clinical intervention, I'll remember to snarkily instruct you to inflict an injury or illness on yourself that may be an indication for the intervention in question, undergo the intervention, and then use your experience as evidence to support or refute your position.


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## Chimpie (Jul 26, 2014)

Keep it civil folks...


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## teedubbyaw (Jul 26, 2014)

Remi said:


> Yeah, seriously. Forgive me for wanting to see a reference stronger than the word of some random dude on an EMS forum whose real name I don't even know. Silly 'ole me.
> 
> Look, YOU are the one making the sweeping, absolutist statements here. If leather really is as clearly superior as you say it is, it shouldn't be hard for you to point us in the direction of something objective that supports such a strongly held belief. Right?
> 
> ...




I've been on my phone for every reply. You're more than welcome to google things on your own time. 

This is silly. There is no debate between the two. Why you insist on trying to make an argument to disprove something so clear cut is beyond me. 

Talk to me when you start racing motorcycles and crash at triple digits. Or do you even ride?


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## UnkiEMT (Jul 26, 2014)

Alright, I didn't want this, but since it seems likes it's going to happen anyhow, let's actually have the discussion. (Note: Throughout this, I'm going to be talking about mid and high end gear, I'm ignoring both the 50 dollar bilt textiles and the lightweight calfskin leathers.)

For a very long time, textile couldn't even begin to approximate the abrasion resistance of leather. Over the course of the last about 15 years, and especially in the last 5 or so, textile has been making great strides to catch up. That being said, even today's textiles can't really match a heavy or superheavy weight leather for abrasion, best you're going to get is about a third as good. This is largely why people on the leather side of the argument are so adamant that leather is superior.

The problem with that is that abrasion resistance isn't everything to consider when you're talking about protective apparel. You've also got puncture resistance, cutting resistance, tearing resistance and bursting resistance. (Leaving aside the matter of hard armor, since theoretically there's no reason leather armor can't be just as well provided with hard points as textiles, though generally it isn't.)

Puncture resistance is fairly straight-forward, high end textiles and leathers both offer approximately the same resistance (though leathers tend to slightly edge out textiles in that regard.)

Cutting resistance is better in textiles, since one you pierce the leather, it's resistance drops down significantly, whereas textiles maintain almost the same resistance throughout the cut.

Tearing resistance is phenomenally better in textiles than it is in leather, both have similar resistance to the start of the tear, but once a tear has begun, textiles keep almost the same resistance to the continuation (minus the additional leverage granted by the opening), whereas leather has almost no shear strength once a tear is opened.

Bursting resistance is whether or not the garment itself will hold together during an accident or whether the seams will burst. This one is the trickiest to talk about, because you have to talk in generalities about construction, and there are of course exception in each direction for each side of the debate, moreover, sadly you can't just let price be your guide in making the determination, as some very expensive gear on each side performs surprisingly poorly. With all of those caveats, though, generally speaking textiles have better bursting resistance than leathers do. This is for a few reasons. First, See above about what happens to the shear strength of leather once it's been pierced, in this case by the needle. Second,, it's bloody hard to work with leather, thus you wind up with manufacturer cutting corners by doing things like using single row interlock stitching rather than the double row lock stitch that you commonly get in textiles (Again, I'm talking generalities here!). Third is that textiles wick moisture away from the thread after getting wet, whereas leather holds the moisture that wicks down the thread into the hold, which weakens both the thread and the leather.

Now, having talked about the physical properties of leather and textiles, let's talk briefly about uses, because that's something I commonly see people ignore.

When you're track racing, you're riding at high speeds in a controlled environment. If you go down, you're going to hit the ground, slide along good asphalt (and maybe gravel/grass) for a good long while, and hopefully stop before you hit the barrier, but maybe not. If you (and another rider) are exceedingly unlucky, you might get hit by another bike. In that scenario what you want is very good abrasion resistance for the slide, and hard points for barrier and/or the other bike and, of course, good bursting resistance, because no garment will do you any good if it comes apart on you. Leather makes great sense for this.

Street riding is a whole different ball game. You're riding at much lower speeds, in an uncontrolled environment. You don't need the same abrasion resistance, because you're not going to be sliding along nearly so long (If someone is doing 140mph on the road, I hope they're not wearing any gear at all, we need them out of the gene pool.), but who knows what you're going to hit. Maybe you'll go through a windshield, maybe you'll go into a stop sign, maybe you'll run into a barbed wire fence, maybe you'll slide through rocks (as opposed to gravel). In those scenarios, the other forms of resistance become vastly more important, and that's where textiles shine.

Bah, this wound up being much more of a wall of text than I wanted it to, sorry about that, here, have a:

TL;DR: This is not a simple debate, Textiles and leathers each have their strengths and weaknesses, what you wear should depend on what you need, not a grand sweeping statement. In general, leather for track racing, textile for road riding.


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## teedubbyaw (Jul 26, 2014)

Let me quote myself...



teedubbyaw said:


> If you had simply recommended textile instead of implying that it's better than leather and that leather is a gimmick, I'd have been fine with that. Textile is fine for the street, but it's not better than leather.




This was all over a poorly worded implication. Sure, there's a lot into comparing the two, but one is better than the other. That's it.


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## UnkiEMT (Jul 27, 2014)

I will admit some culpability in that I did not specifically call out that I was referring to street gear, while giving advice to someone about street gear.

Also, the whole up shot of my wall of text is that neither is clearly superior to the other. But if that is the way you want to interpret it, you go on with your bad self.


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## Carlos Danger (Jul 27, 2014)

teedubbyaw said:


> Why you insist on trying to make an argument to disprove something so clear cut is beyond me.



I'm not making this into an argument. I simply asked if you had evidence to support your strong opinion (apparently you don't), and I'm not sure why that got your panties all bunched up and resulted in snarky replies.


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## teedubbyaw (Jul 27, 2014)

Remi said:


> and I'm not sure why that got your panties all bunched up and resulted in snarky replies.



Because it's a ridiculous argument. I do not care what people wear. Wear a thong while you ride a motorcycle. It doesn't bother me.


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## 9D4 (Jul 27, 2014)

teedubbyaw said:


> Because it's a ridiculous argument. I do not care what people wear. Wear a thong while you ride a motorcycle. It doesn't bother me.


It'd bother me if it was a guy, :unsure:

To the the actual thread, I'm interested in stats on this now. I haven't been able to find any at all. If any can find some that are actually relevant, it'd be appreciated


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## UnkiEMT (Jul 27, 2014)

9D4 said:


> To the the actual thread, I'm interested in stats on this now. I haven't been able to find any at all. If any can find some that are actually relevant, it'd be appreciated



I'm into the final prep work for a working vacation right now (10 hour 'til takeoff!), but if I have some lying around in the hammock time while I'm down there with nothing better to do, I'll see if I can't put together the reference material for you.


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## RebelAngel (Jul 28, 2014)

Still not buying a $200 motorcycle jacket. 



Handsome Robb said:


> Famous last words.
> 
> 
> 200$ is cheaper than skin grafts and hospital stays. Riders down without gear are an ugly sight.


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## RebelAngel (Jul 28, 2014)

My update:

I ended up wearing a canvasy type Old Navy jacket with lining in it that I found at the thrift store for $3.00 (!!!), skinny jeans, the most motorcycle chick-ish shirt I had, and slouchy black knee high boots.

There were people in all sorts of gear, some die-hard looking types in their leather chaps and vests with their long beards, others in the more expensive Kevlar looking outfits, the guy with the nicest paint/vinyl job wore khaki colored cargo pants and no-name athletic shoes, there was even a chick wearing itty bitty jean shorts with a camisole and lace racer tank over the cami and some weird type of brown boot that went up to her knee, almost like a muck boot. Someone asked where her britches were and she responded that she had chaps in case it rained. Haha

We didn't crash, my butt didn't go numb, and it was a lot of fun! My boyfriend agreed we would do it again.

The President of the organization that hosted it told us to keep tight together because last year during some places the tribute riders were spread out 10  miles long. My boyfriend guessed there were at least 200 bikes there this year, but no real county for participants that I have seen.

I'll post the few pictures I took in a second.


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## RebelAngel (Jul 28, 2014)

We got there earlier rather than later. The bikes went over quite a few more rows by the time we pulled out. That's my BF with the leather jacket with the stripes down the arm, in the Steelers hat, stuffing his face with a pastry, haha.






Flags on the bike of one of the bikes





I took a picture while riding, as you can see we were going slower, that's why I snapped it





Music at the American Legion the tribute rode to. They had Jack and Cokes for $2.50! I liked the band a lot too.


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