Riding warm on the cheap

Staying warm on the cheap is easy

There's lots of wonderful, high-tech (read expensive) gear out there that you can use to make your high-tech (read expensive) motorcycle more enjoyable.

You can have suspension that jacks up and drops off, multiple CD changers with Harmon-Kardon high fidelity, multi-channel, quadraphonic stereos with amateur radio and, well, you get the drift.

But those rides aren't for everybody. Some of us can only afford to ride on the cheap. We wear old A&N winter clothes with multiple sweatshirts because real gear can be expensive. We buy cheap helmets and Kmart gloves. We ride small displacement used bikes that we buy for a couple of grand.

For us, riding in the cold, even when gas costs are soaring, is an exercise in frozen fingers, running noses and punishment worthy of the Spanish Inquisition (hey, no rider expects the Spanish Inquistion.)

There are ways to get good gear cheap. There are all sorts of Internet sites that offer deals on a regular basis and all you have to do is Google and surf. MAW (motorcycle accessory warehouse), Newenough.com and Motorcycle Closeouts.com are among them, but there are many. Local dealers have bargains available as well.

If you have a modicum of tool talent, you could be some heated grips to keep hands warm and install an added electrical outlet to power some heated vests, gloves and such. But if you are a mechanical 'tard or a toolturd such as I, how do you make sure you can ride with warmth?

Yesterday (that would be March 26) I took a little trip over the mountain to see the dealers in the Valley. At 40 degrees, travelling 60 mph, my clothing and exposed skin would be feeling wind chills of, um, let's see, uh, 25 degrees.

That means numb fingers in the gloves within about 30 minutes and numbing toes and chilled upper body.

There are ways around it however.

At local sporting goods stores you can pick hand, foot and body warmers, little chemical packs that, when exposed to air, create warmth that lasts for up to eight hours or more.

It sticks. It stays warm. You're now known as Toasty Toes.

Getting ready for the highway, the most important thing to keep warm is your hands. Sure, if the body core drops in temperature, you shiv

er, lose coordination and make really, really poor judgments. In short, you become a teenager. Just kidding.

But your hands tend to cool down sooner than your body, being as they are the farthest from your heart and the body shuts down circulation to the extremities before the brain and core. So, couple your good, solid, warm gloves (ski gloves will work if you don't have real cold weather motorcycle gloves) with the smaller hand warmers. Unpeal, slide them in and position them as far forward in the glove as possible. That keeps the warmth near the fingers.

Second, put on a pair of good socks and attach the footwarmers to the bottom. They will keep your feet warm without being uncomfortable, even when you're walking around the showroom getting your leg up on some Bandit.

Put it in your jacket or shirt and keep the chest warm.

With the feet warm and the gloves toasty, take the leap and open the body/hand warmer package and place one each in interior pockets of your jacket. Or, for real cold days, put one each in the breast pockets of double-pocket flannel shirt.

Taking the test ride with the warmers proved their worth. Cruising up US 250 to Wayne's Cycle Shop to eye the NT700V tour/commuter bike and the new Ninja 1000, the upper body was fine, the feet were great and the fingers were cold, but there was no ache. Nothing a little hot coffee at the shop wouldn't cure.

Taking I-64 over to Shenandoah Buell/Harley Davidson, the hands stayed warmer as the ambient temperature rose and the rest of the body was great.

The ride home proved the same. Again, the fingers chilled a little, but never became painful or too uncomfortable. Now and then I had to release the handgrip to shake the glove and reposition the pad, but that's no big deal to a guy who rides a 500cc single -- the hands get a shaking on a regular basis anyway.

So, don't let colder weather keep you off the road. Put on the clothes and insert the pads.

May The Ride be with you.