ZUMZUMZUM- from Romania to Thailand on a bike

Since we stayed in Srinagar for a few days, we manged to have to bike gear washed (first time since we left home).
My jacket was so full of sand and dirt that the ventilation zippers didn’t work anymore.

I thought it would be a good time to make a short review of our gear.

Helmets:

Ioana’s helmet is an Arai Condor that we bought just before we left. After 2 months and 12.000km, the helmet is still ok, comfortable and silent. We had a small problem with the visor. It seems that Araihelmets are made for less dusty roads. The visor mechanism became clogged up with dirt to the point where it would hardly move at all. A bit of cleaning and lubing solved the problem (for now at least). In the Arai owners manual they show how to remove the visor but not the side covers, they probably assume that you always take the helmet to the dealer.

My helmet is a Schubert C2. I bought the helmet this spring, some 17.000km ago. This helmet had a hard life, from a few thousands km in snow and rain on our way back from Germany (see here), to desert crossings and a couple of pretty hard falls.
At the beginning I had a couple of problems with it, I even returned to the dealer because the visor would not close properly. After a while, I’ve become accustomed to it and now I really like it.
My main gripes are: the stupid side lock release (I’ve had the mechanism almost seize because of dirt), the top vent which is awkward to use, and the fact that is more noisy that I expected (although less noisy than my Shoei XR1000).

Jackets:

Both jackets are about 6 months old (about 15.000km). Ioana has a Rev’it Angel women jacket. There is a weird discoloration of the material on the shoulders.Otherwise the jacket is comfortable and seem reasonably waterproof although we had too little rain to be sure).
I have a Rev’it Off-Track jacket which is much more solid and better made. It has separate waterproof and thermal liners and it’s comfortable from 5 degrees to 35 degrees with just a t-shirt underneath. One issue with it is that with both liners the jacket is very bulky (this is the reason why we didn’t bought one for Ioana).

Pants:

We both have Rev’it Zip pants. They are light and comfortable, with hard knee protectors and soft hip and ankle protectors.
The main problem with them is that they have very poor ventilation and the waterproof liner is non-detachable. In Iran an Pakistan they were quite hot but we still managed to wear them.

Boots:

I have some 2 year old Alpine Star MX-S boots. I know they are a strange option for a touring boot, but I am comfortable in them and they are pretty bulletproof. I removed the toe sliders to make them look less aggressive. I am comfortable wearing them all day long.

Ioana has Rev’it boots (can’t remember the name right now). They are a light touring boot. While comfortable and waterproof, there seem to be a little misunderstanding. We thought that the “light” part refers to the boot while apparently Rev’it thought it refers to touring. The boots don’t seem to be very resistant, their soles already starting to come off.

    

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 5:38 am and is filed under gear, india. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.