Now its the moment for investing in some decent motorcycle boots and motocross/enduro boots seem to offer the best protection. Yesterday I bought some Alpinestars Tech 3 boots:
Shopping is a strange experience. In this case I had to endure the gratuitous comments of shopkeepers along the lines of ‘well, you don’t strike me as a supermoto rider. No, really. How long have you been riding then?’ My answers are usually bumbling and mumbling. Yesterday after a good ride upto Peterboro (apart from getting completely lost around the roundabouts there giving rise to some not too bad u-turns) I investigated the off road specialist shop above the Suzuki dealer Stamford Superbikes. At last a shop that actually stocked Aplinestars boots. But they only stocked the top of the range nearly £400 lumps of highly protective concrete – ‘they drop a ton weight on them to test them’ the young assistant told me – and the ‘entry level’ boot for £169 which is what I walked or rather hobbled out with as a kind of gentle introduction to wearing boots that don’t bend at the ankle. Unfortunately once on the bike in the carpark outside the shop I realised that I coudln’t do useful things like change gear in these boots so slipped back into my old carpetslippers I rode there in and strapped the huge Alpinestars to the back, resolvng to find an hour to spare to learn the new technique I’ll need to actually go anywhere in these boots – or adjust the machine or buy some snazzy and overpriced new part from Touratech specially made for riding in these ridiculous boots.
Month: November 2009
Book on my Christmas list
Its the nicely titled ‘Riding with Rilke’ by Ted Bishop. Here’s (what I think is) the opening paragraph:
It wasn’t a mid-life crisis: it was mid-life money. I had inherited some cash and was desperately afraid I would do something sensible with it, like put it on my mortgage or into mutual funds. So I bought a Ducati Monster. I had the fall term off and planned to go to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, the improbable location of the best archive in the world of British modernist writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, and T.E. Lawrence. Then I got a travel grant from the Ransom Center. They didn’t say how I had to travel. September would be perfect for a ride.
Good eh? As the reveiws say, a book about biking for people with an A level in English Literature.
Travels this year
This year I’ve visited four new European countries: Lithuania, Portugal, Czech Republic and Slovakia. There’s still something about those Eastern countries that draws me. See this map from world66
create your personalized map of europe
or write about it on the open travel guide
Star wars and lids
People don’t seem to talk about it much but it seems to me that the original Star Wars films from the 1980s were influential in style terms – in terms of computer games, vaguely Zen philosophy and, of course, motorcycle helmets. The lid I’m currently trying to get hold of seems to owe somethings to those nasty anonymous storm troopers.
nasty storm trooper
