Monday, July 09, 2007

Here is the long awaited review from me for the Cramster Riding Gear that I picked up…

For starters, I’ll remind you all what I had bought, I had picked a K2K riding Jacket for myself, a Velocity riding pants, a pair of MX2 gloves and the Dyna riding jacket for the wife…

Yesterday I went to a ride to Hoganekkal with my Silver Bulleter mates Ajey, XH and Keeny. This ride was basically to test the riding gear I had picked up, when I picked up these things I was very skeptical about the quality of the goods and kept thinking if I had paid a lot… but my thoughts changed after just one ride!

Fortunately or unfortunately I got to test the gear in all the ways I could think of, in just one ride! And I did become a loyal fan of it! How? Read on… Those of you who have ridden to Hoganekkal would know that the ride is pretty picturesque and the road offers pretty sweet twisties. Since I was riding with a pillion and a full tank, I couldn’t take too good judgments and managed to crash the bike at 70KPH, the fall was actually pretty scary, we skidded off the road onto the rock wall. The armor in our jackets took almost all of the impact of the fall and the abrasions, and the knee guard on the riding pants and the added padding took most of the bike’s weight. I was pinned down under the bike with the entire weight of the bike on the knee but didn’t feel a thing… must say that the jackets and the pants saved us!
The fall was not fatal but if it was not the gear it would’ve cost us a few broken bones. So on the safety front; I’ll give the gear a full 10/10.

Now the second part, on our way back, we faced pretty bad rains, here also the waterproofing of the gear was great! Didn’t feel a bit of the rains, not even the moisture inside the gear! So for the waterproofing also I’ll give the gear a full 10/10.

The MX2 gloves fit just perfect (just like a glove) on my hands, and the breathing vents in the fingers kept my palms very cool and dry.

There are a few suggestions though that I can give to KJ about the gear, the ladies jacket doesn’t sport any sort of air-vents or airflow system. That was the biggest complain of the wife during the ride that she was feeling a bit suffocated, so probably for the next lot that you bring out, you probably would want to keep this part in mind! J And the second thing I’d suggest is to bring in a few riding pants for the women also (you already got one prospective buyer here)! I walked off unscathed from the crash but the wife did sport a slightly bruised knee. So this is my bit of the review for all of you, my net connection at home still doesn’t work so you’ll have to wait for the pictures of the gear and how it saved us!

BTW, those of you who still are riding without proper riding gear, make sure you get yourself some decent jackets and pants; you never know when your bike decides to drop you off it

P.S. on a different note, my special kudos to XH, I’ve been with him on 2 rides so far and appreciated his riding style and a few special peculiarities that I noticed that I thought I’d share with you all…

  1. He always does a small praying gesture before he starts any bike, pretty neat to pay your respects to the machine you ride and the almighty!
  2. Till now, I’ve noticed XH always stay close to the newbie riders of the group, be it me or Keeny, he was always not too far and kept an eye on us.
  3. When I crashed, he was the first person who was at my aide and made sure that we are okay. Somehow, this gesture reminded me of the mother hen who tends to her chicks and makes sure that all of them are safe and around!
  4. The XH is not only an XH but probably one of the guys who knows if the bike (and the biker) are okay just by the sound of it!

Cheers mate! this post is just for you :-)

3 comments:

--xh-- said...

wow..thatz a lot of sweet words, bro :-) thnx for that. and thank god u both r sound and safe..

Prashant Das said...

very true about the safety issues...had a similar fall some days back on a ride...thanks to the gear nothing much happened :)

Anonymous said...

Hello, i just wanted to know if Dyna ladies jacket is fully waterproof and if the armour good ?

Chanderjeet@gmail.com