Motorcycle Riding Equipment

Jeff Thompson: Hello! I am Jeff Thompson, with Motorcycle Riding Concepts and I am going to teach you how to ride a motorcycle today. Before we get started there we are going to talk about some safety gear which is important and there is no more important safety gear than we can talk about first than your motorcycle helmet. You will notice here on the table, we have four different motorcycle helmets for you to take a look at today. We have the Three Quarter helmet, which offers quite a bit of protection for your lower jaw, but it is open faced. So you get a lot of the environment as you are riding down the road, that's good and bad at times.

We have the Full Coverage helmet, which offers complete protection of your face with a shield that drops down and keeps the rain and the environment off of you face, as you are riding. They range in size and in expense level for which ever works for you.

Here we have the Half Helmet which is a smaller, less protective helmet but it's also a lot cooler in the summer time which people tend to enjoy that. This here, we have the Peanutshell helmet which is the lighter weight helmet that a lot of people like to use, especially when they are riding down to beach, you will notice that it doesn't offer much protection and in some states this helmet is actually illegal. Be careful when you go to purchase your motorcycle helmet, if you don't, that you look into your local ordinances and make sure that this helmet complies with the local ordinance.

Okay as we move forward to a several things that we should be concerned about when we go for a motorcycle ride, one of which is Rain Gear. Believe it or not when you leave the house in the morning on a nice beautiful summer day, it may not always be nice and beautiful, so somewhere on your motorcycle, you should strap rain gear to your motorcycle somewhere. You can get them in different sizes and expense level. They can be crushed up into a little bag and you can strap it to your motorcycle, always it is important to have a rain gear for your bike.

You should also be concerned about night motorcycle riding and in doing that you should carry a couple of sets of sunglasses with you when you go for your ride. A clear set and a regular dark set as well, if you have an open face helmet. Full coverage helmets have wind screens on, that you can get smoke in riding the sun and the day time as well but be careful at night when you are trying to ride a full coverage helmet with a screen that smoked, you may want to carry a pair of clear glasses with you as well.

Also you are going to need to carry some gloves, it's important that you get a pair of gloves that fits you and it is important to wear your gloves in the summer time as well, on a warm summer day, they protect the back of your hands from getting sunburn. Also you can protect your hands if you were to fall off the bike, when you hit the ground it could protect your hands from being damage that way.

But be careful when you buy your gloves, a lot of people want to spend a lot of money for the nice expensive gloves, when you can just go down to your local hardware store and buy an inexpensive $8 pair, throw away gloves when they are done you can just go and get another pair.

Let's move down to the end of the table and talk about some of the protective gear that's available on the market today. A lot of people especially on a nice warm spring day like this, would like to ride their motorcycle out on the street in short sleeves shirts. We recommend that you wear some type of protection on your arms whether it be a long sleeve T-shirt or sweat shirt or something to protect your arms. If in fact you were to have a fall or bugs into breeze and the roadway hitting your arms.

But if you will notice there are several different styles of motorcycle gear out here on the market today. There is the leather jacket, this typical and traditional motorcycle jackets that people buy. Be careful when you buy the leather jacket and get a lighter weight jacket that you can build the layers of clothing underneath it rather than buying that heavy expensive leather jacket over a T-shirt. Be concerned about how warm that jacket is going to get during the day.

This particular jacket has a zip in-zip out lining that you can take out, store away and then the jacket becomes much lighter as you ride down the road, it's much more comfortable. But on the market now there are lot of these new types of, mesh type jackets with the arm and elbow protection inside in the padding, these are very light weight and affordable, something to think about when you buy your motorcycle, it also has to go with the style of bike that you are riding as well.

Here is one with a little bit more color to it, if you are in to color and the style. Also think about the kind of leg protection that you are going to wear in foul weather. These types of chap type pants that you can buy, have padding and protection and as well they are good to wear in rain, as well as cold weather, and they are fairly inexpensive and you can store them away pretty easily. Okay now that we have talked about the motorcycle gear that you should wear, let's take a look at the motorcycles.