Different gear for different rides: What are your priorities?

I make compromises. I wear a mesh jacket when it’s a thousand degrees out, because it’s more comfortable than my leather one. And that’s just the beginning. Some people are firm believers in All The Gear, All The Time (ATGATT), but I think most of us take a more flexible approach. “All generalizations are false, including this one,” goes the famous Mark Twain quote and hey, maybe he was talking about ATGATT. We ride motorcycles, after all, so we must have some comfort level with shifting levels of risk.

As a kid, I was extremely uncompromising because I thought the gear was cool. Mick Doohan was my hero and he was always covered head-to-toe in fresh kit. That meant that when I bombed around the yard on my dirt bike I wanted to wear all of the gear I owned. Huge, bulky roadracing gloves, armor if I had any that fit, and my dad’s hand-me-down racing helmet. (I used my allowance to buy a tinted visor.) My pops would sometimes bop over to a neighbor’s house in the summer in an open-face helmet, and even before I had body hair I would let him have it like he was betraying the rules of the house. How could he wear that? Chin exposed! Is he nuts?

Now, as an adult, I really enjoy an open-face helmet, under the right circumstances. I typically only use it for hopping around the neighborhood on my 50 cc scooter, but I’ve come to love the wind on my face and the ease of being able to talk to a cashier without taking my helmet off. Beyond that, I’ve noticed a different kind of engagement with people as I ride — pedestrians are friendlier and drivers are more apt to make eye contact — which I attribute to my face being visible. I also noticed my peripheral vision is much wider. Riding around on a Honda NC750X recently I realized my beloved full-face lid blocks my view of the mirrors in my natural riding position, where an open-face would not. It’s a compromise in impact safety, no doubt, but I would argue there are some gains, too.

What’s your priority list of gear?

A game of hypotheticals to play with your friends (or in the comments below) is to ask which gear is most important to you. If you could only wear one piece of equipment, what would it be? I really hope your answer is a helmet.

After your first choice, what would be next on your priority list? A jacket? Gloves? I think around town I might opt for gloves first, because hands are delicate and they always hit the ground first. If the speeds were going to be high, I’d go with a jacket to have some armor and abrasion protection. Riding pants would probably be last; I would rather have regular denim and good boots than armored jeans with sneakers. Ankles are complicated and important. My riding variables and personal sensibilities are different from yours, and I assume we all would come up with lists that have similarities but aren’t identical.

Hearing someone else’s point of view can change your perspective, or even your priorities. Early in my moto-journalism career I received a pair of gloves to test from Alpinestars. They were city/street gloves, a full-gauntlet design with molded carbon fiber over the knuckles and multiple layers of leather in impact areas. But they had a glaring error: no wrist-closure strap. I’m a roadracer at heart, but damn, even if I weren’t I would vividly remember that ultra-slo-mo crash shot that Bruce Brown captured in the original "On Any Sunday," where a racer’s glove flies off as he flops along the asphalt. No wrist strap on a modern street glove seemed asinine.

A few weeks later I got the chance to meet the CEO of Alpinestars and I took the opportunity to ask about the strapless gloves. His answer was confident and simple: If people have to buckle or strap a glove in place, they might choose not to wear gloves at all. Part of his motivation is selling gloves, obviously, but I agree that I would rather someone wear gloves without a wrist strap than no gloves at all.

In that same vein, an old racing friend of mine caught me mocking a rider wearing a decades-old helmet on the street. “Hey, it’s better than no helmet,” he said, and he’s right. A clapped-out old Bieffe from the ‘90s is better than nothing. Much better than nothing, in fact, according to a study of hundreds of used EPS-lined bicycle helmets published in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering.

WWMDD? (What would Mick Doohan do?)

Having the conversation with yourself and/or some riding buddies can be a good way to assess what you think is important and why. It’s also a good way to check yourself and make sure your gear choices truly match your protection priorities. I could argue that wearing a mesh jacket on a hot day is safer because I’m not distracted by being too hot. The truth is that I am also making a compromise to be more comfortable and a little less protected.

If there’s someone reading this who suits up in full-factory, airbag-equipped, money-no-object set of gear every time they go riding, my hat’s off to you. I love my Aerostich and my sport-touring boots and my full-face Shoei. That will always be the kit I feel best in. But I’m no longer that kid pretending to be Mick Doohan. And even if I were, the last time I saw a photo of Mighty Mick on a bike he was riding a scooter; wearing jeans and sneakers.

I’ve reached the point where I think that different circumstances allow for different gear, and maybe he has, too.