January 2023 On The Mark

MARK BYERS

In the Hans Christian Andersen story, a queen put a pea under a combination of twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdown beds to see if a young woman could feel it and therefore, was a real princess worthy of her son. According to the story, even through all that padding, the lady felt the presence of the bedding contaminant and got no sleep, assuring the queen that she was worthy of the prince’s hand. This reminds me of motorcycling…how?

If you have ever gone on a ride of almost any distance from thirty minutes to multiple hours, you know that any contaminant, imperfection, or ill t in your riding gear can be ampli ed over time to be a major annoyance. For example, my track leathers have a small, hard piece near the wrist zipper that despite my best efforts, cannot be corrected. It causes abrasion and becomes a bigger distraction the longer I ride. I work around it by wearing a long-sleeve, wicking shirt under my leathers that keeps it from contacting my wrist. That shirt is so important that a couple years ago at VIR, I had to send Betsy to get me another one when I forgot it.

Ever get even the tiniest pebbles in your boot? I have no idea how they make their way past all those closures and velcro, but they do and one not much bigger than a grain of sand will feel like a boulder over time, poking into your psyche until you invariably have to stop and dump that sucker. Even without a pebble, a boot with a hot-spot that impinges on

your ankle or instep will become the equivalent of the iron boot of the Spanish Inquisition if you give it long enough. I’ve gone so far as to stuff a softball into a boot to push out a particularly annoying crease so I can tolerate wearing them again (it works).

Arai helmets had a tag line in their advertising: “Never wear a onehour helmet on an eight-hour ride.” Boy, is that true. I remember having a new - and very expensive - ip-front helmet (something Arai has yet to make) and wearing it for the rst time on a trip to Harper’s Ferry with friends. I had done my usual trial- t by wearing it in the house while watching TV and it didn’t appear to have any serious aws or t issues other than the snugness typical of a new helmet. Well, with wind pressure against the front, over time the rigidity of the energy-absorbing foam overcame the softness of the liner and created a hot spot the width of my forehead, about two inches above my eyes. It was like daggers being pushed into my forehead. Fortunately we were stopping frequently for photos and food or drink, so I was able to rest my painful noggin, but I considered drowning that lid in the Potomac. It went away soon after.

Gloves are another favorite place for the discomfort gremlins to assert themselves. A tiny crease in the palm, especially on the throttle side, will make your life miserable in a hurry. A less-than-artful seam on the inside will leave you with a red, abraded sore. Gloves are a particular problem of mine: they are invariably a little too long in the fingers if the palms fit and if the fingers fit, the palms are too tight. Then, after you sweat in them, they begin to become hard as rocks over time and are tough to put on. A travel trick is to get some lanolin hand lotion and go over those babies thoroughly. My most vexing problem is a winter or wet-weather glove with an inner liner that invariably turns inside out when you remove them. Then, getting the liner back into the glove with all the finger holes lined up reduces me first to profanity and thereafter, to tears. I have literally disposed of gloves after a considerable time of trying to get the confounded liners to fit back inside.

Finally, someone told me that motorcycle seats (or saddles) are made to feel good when you are sitting on one in the showroom. Unfortunately, after a few hours riding, they are invariably way too soft. Most of my machines end up with aftermarket seats with rmer foam more suited to long stints in the saddle. My old DRZ-400 was particularly offensive, with a factory foam contraption that had all the comfort of a 4X4 post. I guess it was to reinforce the idea that on a dual-sport, you should be standing up in rough terrain.