None of the Gear, All the Time

I just returned from a Thanksgiving trip to Arizona, the land of 340 days of sunshine and no helmet laws. The sheer number of motorcycles on the road there means almost endless opportunities for motorcycle gawking.

Things Used By Arizona Riders In Lieu of a Helmet:

• a straw cowboy hat
• a bandana
• a pair of sunglasses
• a ski-mask type thing that covers the lower half of one’s face
• a sweatshirt hood
• a comb-over

Science Isn’t For The Timid

In Arizona, the fashionable biker wears a t-shirt and jeans. Having lived in Oregon for 98% of my life, Arizona is as foreign as Rome. This t-shirt and jeans dress code had me mighty curious. Is 70 degrees in November really too hot for wearing a real jacket? Do the cool points earned by not wearing gear also bestow magical protective properties? How would my soft girl cheeks feel, bathed in the full force of the wind called Freedom?

Opportunity arrived in the form of a Honda scooter: a humble Reflex 250. I have a soft spot for Hondas sporting small engines. However, not wanting to be on the hook for any damages in the event of a scooter-related mishap, I was to be the passenger during today’s experiment.

Barry Marshall had his beaker of H. pylori. Salk had his vaccine. I had a complete lack of any sort of protective gear from the neck down. Beetle helmet and sunglasses in place, I was ready for my ride on the wild side.

Dear Arizona Riders Who Wear No Gear: You People Are Crazy!

Five seconds was about all it took for me to realize that my NOTGATT experiment would be an unpleasant experience. After a rather wobbly exit from our subdivision — did I mention I was clinging to someone who had never ridden this particular scoot before? — I felt as vulnerable as if I had been dumped naked on the hood of a speeding truck and told to hang on for dear life.

My sweatshirt and jeans seemed awfully thin against the look of the cracked and pothole-dotted pavement speeding below my sneaker-wearing feet. The wind, while exhilarating for the first few minutes, quickly turned cold and biting as it blasted through my sweatshirt and stole all my heat with it. My trusty Oakleys, which have never let me down before, succumbed to the windy assault as well. By the time the needle climbed to 65 on the speedo, soggy tear tracks trailed from my eyes to my ears.

And oh, my poor, poor ears. We pulled to the side of the road after ten miles, and my ears, frozen and deafened by the wind noise, let me have it with the mother of all brain fogs and a piercing pain that seemed to emanate from the depths of my ear canals. And best of all, we had another ten miles on the way home to look forward to!

They say you can’t knock something until you’ve tried it. Well, I’ve tried it, and I’m knocking it something fierce. This kind of riding just isn’t for me.

Tagged as: Motorcycling