Out In the Midday Sun

Out in the midday sun

AT LARGE

IT’S NO SURPRISE TO ME THAT MOST OF the world’s great religions emerged from deserts. Having lived in a few, I know what they can do to you, even with air-conditioning, polarized sunglasses, sunblock cream, aqueducts and a handy airport from which to escape. Deserts are weird, and they can make people weirder. As a species, we're intended. I believe, to live in lush green landscapes filled with apple trees, rolling hills and lots of racetracks. Sort of like England, minus the weather.

That thought occurred to me again as I saddled up for the annual BSA Owners Club of Southern California All-British ride. Naturally, this being Southern California, the ride began in the desert. (Most denizens of LaLa Land seem not to know that their gridlocked paradise is really just a desert with green added by way of piped-in water.)

The bikes were British (except for my pal Paul Adams’ 1954 Harley Model K, which stole the show), but the clime was arid. And just plain weird.

Weirder still, to the eyes of most of the guys who watched me climb aboard my loaner '67 Triumph T100, was the Hein Gericke V-Pilot jacket I was putting on. The mercury having already hit 90 or so at 10 o’clock, they knew I would be dead of heat exhaustion by the last checkpoint. Most guys relied on positive thinking and T-shirts to deal with the potential of a get-off.

The new black leather of the VPilot was hot as I zipped up, and I did wonder if its ventilation system would actually work. Testing the jacket was why I chosen to take it into the heat-generated mirages of the retro-ride. Having been around since 1984, the V-Pilot is hardly big news anymore, except to me. I’d never worn one until National Sales Manager Eric Anderson at the importer— Intersport Lashions West—responded to my queries about the state of the leather-jacket art by the simple expedient of sending me one to sample for myself. Despite Anderson’s rah-rah attitude, I didn’t really trust it. It seemed too simple a fix. I was ready to bungee it to the seat if necessary.

It wasn’t necessary. In spite of the superheated air and the merciless sun, the jacket’s four slanted chest and back vents worked as advertised. By the end of a hundred miles, I v¿as smiling. The thing worked. When we started climbing from the parched desert floor and the temperature dropped, I closed the front zips in small increments to control the cooling, and marveled at the simplicity of the system. And when the Triumph stopped stone-dead a mile from the finish line, the V-Pilot proved its worth as I pushed the bike up hill and coasted down dale, taking even faint wisps of breeze and cooling me.

Back at the rendezvous area, I peeled it off minus that sticky, clammy sensation you get with unventilated leather, and marveled anew at the jacket. I couldn't help thinking about all the times I would have loved to be wearing something like it, all the hot days when the sweat-drenched weight of my leather finally forced me to peel it off and chance a skin graft.

Prom when I began riding in 1963 to just a few years ago, the motorcycle world did not include alternatives like Hein Gericke stuff. Lor most of that time, “choice” was a word that meant “style,” not “function.”

Not any more. Now, “choice” means something. Something that’s the often-unappreciated gift of 25 years of progress in motorcycling. Not just bikes that will last in the

desert, but gear that will take you there and anywhere else you want to go. Gear on one hand like the V-Pilot for the traditionalists, and, on the other hand, like Andy Goldfine’s wonderful, do-everything Aerostich Roadcrafter suits. Or the new Kevlarbased sportriding suit from Jumbo.

In case you haven’t seen the latter, it’s an eyeball-popper, and not just because the stylists chose some fluorescent colors for their radical suits. They’re made of Keprotec, a textile strengthened with Kevlar, and the claim is that the suits are better than leather at everything we care about in protection and comfort, from water resistance to abrasion.

The Jumbo GP-1 suit is like a soft, pliable wet suit, but one which breathes. It’s absolutely bizarre to be knotted-up into the traditional roadracer riding position, wearing a one-piece suit which puts no stress on any joint, the way even the best custom race leathers do. Just as bizarre, really, as it is to don a heavy, blackleather jacket in the desert and still feel comfortable an hour later.

There’s more to all this than just benign manufacturers. There's the power of numbers. Our numbers. Which translate into money to be made. Twenty-five years ago, our market did not provide this staggering breadth of products, not because nobody was smart enough to invent or make them (although the technology in the Aerostich and Jumbo suits is fairly new), but because the assumption was that motorcyclists were neither numerous enough nor wealthy enough to pay the real price of innovation.

Today, in the world of 1 1-grand Honda touring bikes and entry-level machines that start at four big ones, that's not the case. Today, a smart guy like Andy Goldfine can take a chance on you and me being willing to ante up for a high-concept, nontraditional piece of fashion and utility, and manage at last to make a living at it. And slowly, so slowly, the world changes.

Except for the desert. The desert never changes. Fit only for mad dogs and Englishmen. Or Yanks on English bikes. 0

Steven L Thompson