In a world of largely online buying, some products seem ideally suited to remote purchase and some less so. Buying anything that needs to fit the body is hazardous, not only because all of our bodies and their many measurements, for example the length of our fingers, are different but because manufacturers’ sizing labels and systems also vary. When buying jeans we might turn up and the Levis store down town and take two sizes into the changing room, try one, then the other, then the first one again before making a decision about what to buy. Buying, say, motorcycling apparel from any of the online suppliers is far more hit and miss. It would be unusual to shell out on two pairs of armoured trousers (maybe costing £500 or £600 each), try them both on at home and return one of them. Most of us look carefully at the sizing advice and opt for the size that seems best – and when the much desired object turns up on the doorstep – perhaps a nice new crash helmet – we are probably hoping that we won’t have to defer our enjoyment and return it – not to mention the hassle of doing so. After buying a helmet that eventually turned out to be painfully too small (which I sold on eBay at a painfully large loss) and heated gloves that were also too tight and burned my knuckles (which I haven’t decided what to do with yet), I have promised myself that I would always buy this type of item in person. I have only partly succeeded.
The success part was my purchase of some hot weather gloves. I think global warming is having a significant effect both on motorcycling and on decisions about travel destinations more generally, though I don’t see the former talked about much. There are always uncomfortably hot days on most tours in Europe but a trip through Spain to Portugal a couple of years back took that discomfort into a potentially hazardous place where even expensive riding gear with all its clever vents could not protect me from the effects of heat exposure. And this must be more so for those riders who chose to travel further south, to Morocco for example. But even our generally miserable weathered UK is now dishing up many days of 30 degrees plus and if you unwittingly ride into one of those days you quickly discover that your normal riding gear is almost completely failing to protect you from the heat and is actually multiplying its ill-effects, apart from those stretches when you can ride at some speed and get some free ventilation. Last week was a day like this for me, innocently going on a couple of hours ride around Cambridge onto the fens. After half an hour or so, I realised that every part of me was too hot, my legs and my leather gloved hands particularly. My bike dash told me it was 31 degrees. As I am often looking for an excuse to search for new gear I decided to combat the personal impact of global warming in three ways: buy some new summer/hot weather gloves, some mesh trousers, and finally to dust off and get better armour for a Revit Air mesh jacket that I bought in 2010 and have barely worn since. Here are a few words about the gloves.
There is a huge choice of mesh, lightweight gloves. Some are very cheap, some expensive, some not intended for road use and some that are. There is rarely a glove that someone, somewhere has not given a bad review for – and when more than one person says, for example, that a particular glove tends to come apart at a particular place, then you have to cross that off the list. The one glove that no one seemed to complain about was the Revit Sand – version 5 glove. I like its looks and a non-black colour seems to make it feel cooler already.
I found a store in London, over in Fulham, that claimed to have all sizes in stock and jumped on the District line, along with a huge crowd of tourists travelling from Victoria to South Kensington, to find it. I had never heard of Urban Rider but the person working there told me they had been there for 18 years and had only recently branched out from catering for city riders into the expanding ‘adventure’ market, under the name, unsurprisingly of Adventure Rider.
The shop had an impressive stock, not just in the amount and choice but also in the brands they have chosen to sell – only, it seemed top quality brands like Klim, Belstaff and Revit. It was so good to confirm that XL really was my size in gloves, though these were designed with someone with slightly longer fingers than me.
So these Revit Sand 5 gloves fit and look good. But it will be a week or so before I get the chance to try them out though who can predict the weather? I’ll write more when I do.
The other bit of hot weather gear I bought is also made by Revit, their Rev’it Airwave 4 Textile Trousers – Anthracite. That’s another story.
