Keeping your COOL
By the time you read this, 2021’s incredible heatwave will be (hopefully) over. Like pretty much everyone, motorcyclists have had to find ways to cope with heat that threatens to melt roads and minds. And, judging by the riders I saw out and about, the most common method most bikers used to combat the dog days of summer was to ride around in T-shirts and jeans. ATGATT — all the gear, all the time — sounds like such a good idea when some insurance actuary starts reeling off motorcycle mortality statistics, but all the airbags and D3O non-Newtonian fluids in the world aren’t worth their CE ratings if they’re at home in the closet because you don’t want to ride around in a sauna.
And yet, ironically, the best time to test hot weather is actually when it’s cold out. Truth be told, though a ventilated jacket — or any, ventilated gear, for that matter — is only truly useful when it’s warm, if you want to test which ventilated jacket really allows the most airflow, nothing works like an early-morning spring chill.
Let me assure you — because that’s how I started my test — nothing will give you a better inter-garment airflow comparison than ratcheting up the throttle to 100 km/h in a six-degree chill while wearing a jacket full of holes. So, in what would seem like the weirdest contradiction in the history of motorcycle accessory testing — especially, again, considering this summer’s record-breaking heat — I spent a lot of time riding around in low temperatures in warm-weather riding gear. This is what I figured out, including my maximum temperature limit in each suit:
