Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Saturday, April 9, 2016

Time for new crash helmets

I decided it was time to replace our old crash helmets, we had been using them for a good few years now and everyone knows that helmets don't last forever. The foam inside gradually compresses and although you don't really notice it they become loose fitting and wouldn't really do their job in the event of a getoff.
Here in South Africa we have no choice but to wear a crash helmet and I must admit that I would not be comfortable riding without one, I am so used to it after all of the years that I have been riding that I think that even if I did get the opportunity to tour America on a bike I would still wear one.
So off we went to our local bike shop, West Coast Yamaha in Vredenburg to have a chat with Monica. I have always favoured the flip-front helmet, whenever I cruise into a town the first thing I like to do is flip the front of the helmet up so Monica showed us the "Spirit FF319 Evolution" - it might sound a bit fancy but it was very reasonably priced at R1,600.
 It is a far more compact helmet and 100g lighter than my old HJC, although 100g is not a lot it certainly feels a lot lighter and very comfortable.
 A nice feature is the retractable sun visor, I may not have to wear sunglasses now. We went for a ride to test the helmets out and found them very comfortable but when I flipped the sun visor down I could hardly see through it and I thought "Oh no, this is not going to be any good!" my vision was a bit blurred.
When we stopped at our destination I was going to point this out to Janet but when I took the helmet off I realised that I had not pulled the protective plastic layer off the visor - duh! It worked perfectly on the way home. I'm happy with my new helmet and Cat likes the box.

5 comments:

Michael said...

100 bucks or so is not too bad for a helmet. In Florida we don't have the helmet law and I do enjoy cruising around with no helmet but always wear on long trips.

I am looking forward to reading about your long upcoming trip.
Ride safe and enjoy.

the rider said...

Thanks Michael, I had a ride down to Capetown today - 130kms only but the new helmet was great, thanks for reading my stuff and I appreciate your comments. Two weeks until my ride, getting excited now!

Trobairitz said...

Leaving the plastic film on sound like something I would do.

Nice looking helmet!

Buy a helmet, get a cat trap for free. Sounds like a deal.

Anonymous said...

Not a bad price. Had a look at those as mine is 3 years old now with the odd knock and drop. Time to start getting serious about this then.

the rider said...

Gerrie try one on, really comfortable and much lighter, I'm sure it's going to work well for my trip to KZN.