Wear your heart on your sleeve

The TTXGP World Series Final will be happening at the Daytona International Speedway, which is practically right next door for me (compared to Leguna Seca or Miller), so I’m going.

Like countless sports fanatics before me, I feel the urge to support my team by wearing their colors.

I don’t think that I’m going to be doing any face painting though (the paint wouldn’t do too well in a motorcycle helmet), so I figured that a T-Shirt would be nice.

The Brammo Stuff that’s on sale at their website didn’t inspire me much, so I figured that I might be able to come up with something on my own, and get it made on one of those T-Shirt printing websites.

I created a T-Shirt design based on a photograph of the Empulse, and then sent an email to Adrian at Brammo to make sure that they were okay with me making some fan gear. The folks at Brammo are great. Not only did Adrian give me approval for making fan gear, he also sent me their style guide and the Brammo Logo so that the fan gear I made could have the official Brammo Branding. w00t! The only caveat is that I am not allowed to sell fan gear. Fair enough.

Through the magic of Photo Shop and Cafe Press I ended up with this:

I think it turned out rather well. Even more cool was that a man working at the local movie theater recognized the brand and asked me if I worked for Brammo. (Ha! In my dreams!) I was delighted that somebody else in my small town actually knew about Brammo, and recognized my design.

If you like the design, feel free to make a shirt or two for yourself and your friends. I put the design on a couple of products: A long sleeved T (pictured above), and a short sleeved version. Then come on over the the TTXGP World Series Final and meet up with me!

 

Time for a new lid.

My old HJC helmet has been pretty good to me, keeping wind, bugs and rain off my face. Thankfully, I’ve never had to test it’s effectiveness for protecting my head in a crash, but it’s been over five years since I got it, so it’s time to get a new helmet.

There are a lot of helmets to choose from, but I decided to get either a Shoei or an Arai (even though they are the most expensive) since I had heard many good things about them. The Shoei was a little bit cheaper, but the Arai just fit me better and I was able to find one that was on sale but wasn’t too hideous.

HJC vs Arai RX-Q

How does my $200 HJC compare to the $600 Arai RX-Q (which I got at a closeout sale for $400)?

Noise

One of my biggest issues with the HJC was that there was a lot of wind noise. It turns out that the Arai is just about as noisy. There are two major source of noise: air hitting the visor, and air reverberating in the neck hole. The Arai may be a bit better than the HJC at preventing the neck hole noise, but it’s still too loud for me, so I’m going to keep using my scarf (which also protects my neck from the cold, rain and bugs).

I think that visor noise on the Arai is as loud, or louder, than the HJC. There’s not much to do about that except wear earplugs.

Rain

The vent covers on the HJC work better for keeping the water out than the Arai. The Arai’s vents scoop up the air and water and after riding through some very heavy rain for some time I felt a drop of rain water going down each of the vent holes. The HJC’s vent covers cover the hole, so the water is deflected and keeps out of the helmet.

The Arai is better at demisting. The chin vent can direct the air to the inside of the visor to clear it. The catch is that it doesn’t work all that well when I’m ducked down behind the bike’s windshield, so I have to lift my head into the wind to demist. With the HJC, I have to open the visor a crack, which means I have to take a hand off the handlebar for a moment, and it also lets in some rain.

Drag

The Arai is better than the HJC here. I feel less push back when looking forwards with the Arai, and less head twist when I turn my head. The HJC is a slightly longer helmet, and that extra length catches the wind and pulls my head around quite a bit more than the Arai when I’m looking to the side.

Visibility

Arai wanted to add a brow vent to their helmet, but didn’t want to weaken the helmet shell by putting a hole close to the opening. Their solution was to put the brow vent in the visor. That works pretty well, but those brow vents obscure the visor a little bit compared to the HJC. It’s not a problem; it’s just a bit weird seeing a couple of rectangles at the top of the visor.

Arai claims to have “Extremely Wide Peripheral View”, and perhaps it’s wider than some other helmets, but the HJC is also very wide. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two. I could see just as much looking left and right with either helmet on.

Weight

HJC: 1780 g. Arai: 1606 g. The 174 g difference doesn’t seem like much, but it’s quite noticeable when you pick them both up. I don’t think that they feel all that different when I’m wearing them. (Or course I may change my mind when I try riding with the HJC for a bit after spending the last few weeks with the Arai.)

Fit

The Arai is a lot more snug than the HJC. Perhaps it’s because the HJC is five years old, while the Arai hasn’t been broken in yet. That makes the Arai safer (the old HJC was moving all over my head), but also a but less comfortable.

For some reason, the HJC does a better job at holding my glasses in place. This is probably due to how the padding is arranged in the two helmets. I’m going to get a new pair of glasses anyway since the pair that I’m wearing right now aren’t too suited for tucking my head down under the wind. When I do that, I end up looking over to tops of my lenses, which doesn’t help me much.

Conclusions

The Arai is a better helmet than the HJC — better venting, better demisting, lighter, and smaller — but the HJC was a very good Snell rated helmet, and a heck of a lot cheaper. I thought that a top of the line helmet would be worlds better than a mid range helmet, but it turns out that “best” is just a little bit better than “good”.

The next time I buy a helmet, I’ll probably try a less expensive helmet, since paying three times as much doesn’t give you a helmet that’s three times better. As long as it’s safe and fits well, any helmet should do.

Level Up your Riding Skill

I have owned sports bikes for about ten years, and I’ve been riding them, on and off, for most of that time. A couple of weeks ago, I realized that I still don’t know all that much about riding.

Let’s back up a bit.

After years of waiting, the specifications of the production Empulse were finally revealed on May 8. I was pretty stoked about that, and was eager to see what some professional reviewers had thought about the bike. Susan Carpenter of the LA Times reviewed the bike the next day, but at that time Brammo wasn’t allowing anybody to actually ride it.

Three months later, Wes Siler became the first official journalist to be able to ride the Empulse. He gave it a very positive review on Hell for Leather’s website, which was very gratifying considering the rather negative review he gave of the Zero DS. After reading the review for the Empulse three or four times, I started to read some of the other articles on the Hell for Leather website, and came across an article titled: How to get your knee down. I’ve seeing countless photographs of riders with their knee down, so I figured that perhaps I should read that article and see what the big deal is with this knee thing.

Sean Smith, the author of the article says that getting a knee down won’t make you faster or safer, but:

The things you need to do to drag knee can help with speed and safety though. Look at knee down as a sign of proper riding form rather than an end unto itself.

So, I’ve been working on improving my riding through a turn, with a probable side benefit of being able to drag a knee if I want to. The things I need to work on are:

• Shifting my weight to the inside of a turn.
• Keeping the balls of my feet (rather than my heels) on the pegs.
• Holding on to the bike with my legs, and keeping the weight off my arms.

I think that the Ninja 500R is a pretty good bike to learn on since it’s not crazy powerful, but it was designed for the track and so it has features that allow tight turns. Notably, the gas tank is shaped to allow me to hold onto the bike with my knees. On the other hand,
Florida doesn’t have geography that requires tightly curved roads. When there’s nothing but swamp between two cities, there’s no reason to put a bend in the road, so they are mostly all dead straight or gently curved. So far, the best curves that I’ve been on are highway interchanges. The only other tight curves I’ve been on are intersections, which is not a very safe place to practice cornering.

In the few places where I was able to execute a proper turn, hanging off the bike and going at the right speed with the right gear engaged, I have to say that it felt pretty good! Most of the time, though, my tight turns have been a bit rough. I’ll keep at it, and one day the feeling will become second nature.

In his article, Sean Smith said something that resonated with me:

Congratulations, you now deserve the bike you’re riding.

I have a fine riding machine (the Ninja 500R) and expect to get an even finer one (Empulse R) soon. I believe that learning how to ride those machines well will make me a safer rider and make riding a lot more enjoyable. I want to deserve to be an Empulse R rider. I don’t want to be that guy who has a fantastic bike but rides it like a scooter. If he’s going to ride it that way, he should ride a scooter!

Your Wait Is (nearly) Over

I got a very welcome email today. It was the email that asked me to confirm that I wanted to buy an Empulse. After waiting for over a year, the bike is finally going to be available to the general public. (I can’t be too unhappy; some people have been waiting for two years!)

The wait isn’t quite over yet though. First off, even after cleaning out the pre-order list, I’m still 595th in line (I was 935th before!) Of course there are a number of people in that list who have already decided not to buy the Empulse (some of them bought a Zero instead), and I expect many others to wait for the Empulse non-R which is $2,000 cheaper but will only be available next year. I’ve had enough of waiting, so I’m going to buy the Empulse R, which means my true position in the line is perhaps around 200 (but I’m totally guessing here).

Miller Motorsports Park

Something else that happened today is that the Brammo Team took first and second place at the TTXGP race at Miller Motorsports park. Add those 45 points to the 61 that they had already earned in previous races, and the result is that Brammo wins the North American Constructor championship for the second year in a row. Congratulations Brammo!