Here at Bike Stop we’re constantly looking to get the best gear into our shop – all 7 showrooms of it and the range of brands on offer just keeps growing! Plus our online shop has about all the gear you could ever need for biking. Just recently we’ve expanded our range to include Resurgence gear, a brand many probably haven’t heard of. They’re very popular with the café racer and retro bike scene thanks to their combination of classic style and great protection. It’s fair to say this kind of gear is ideal for the biker who wants to look good both on and off the bike, the classic biker look will almost certainly never go out of fashion after all!
At some stage in every brand’s life it has to start from scratch and prove itself as worthy of attention. The other thing it needs to gain is trust and there are few things that this is more important with than with the most safety critical piece of gear a rider owns – a crash helmet. Nexx is a Portuguese newcomer to the helmet scene and making waves thanks to its great design and quality.
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve covered some of the tech that you can find in Dainese’s latest and greatest kit. This week we’re looking at their boots and their crowning achievement so far, airbag-equipped D-Air.
Last week we touched on a good few of the various technologies you can find in motorcycle gear, what they do to keep you safe, warm and dry as well as giving you some kind of guide to what each of the terms are referring to. Dainese has such an extensive number of technologies used in their gear that we’re going to take a second look at some of the other ones they have available to you as a motorcyclist.
The number of different technologies that are available in bike gear nowadays is slightly mind-boggling. Gone are the days of simple leathers, denim or waxed cotton, now there are membranes, thermal regulation on top of different types of impact and abrasion resistance. Unfortunately for the hapless biker, brands often have their own versions of each thing, but fortunately we’re going to go through some of the ones most common to Dainese (and next week we’ll examine Alpinestars). Hopefully after this you’ll be a bit more confident decoding what means what!
Sometimes it can be quite hard to recommend full-on summer gear to UK bikers – not so this year! We’ve been having minimal rain and a decent amount of sun that’s ideal for digging that vented gear out to enjoy sticky roads and clear blue skies.
Summer is most definitely with us with the UK having seem some scorching temperatures that make riding a bike a sheer necessity for the sticky tarmac and a guarantee of no frozen fingers or toes.
If you’re in the market for a quality set of gear with racing pedigree and Italian flair behind it you’re spoilt for choice in the motorcycling world, with Dainese and Alpinestars being two of the hard hitters in this segment. There is a third contender who is very much worth your consideration however with a reputation as good as the aforementioned brands; Spidi (not to be confused with Sidi or Spada!)
There’s an age-old challenge for bikers that’s still an issue for some – communication while riding. A fair few have discovered the ride-changing tech that can be found in the average helmet intercom, but some will be using older models with the foibles that come with them and others might still be wedging a pair of earbuds under their helmet.
While you may only want to go for brands that you’ve heard of, know and trust you could be missing out on new kit that might even be better or cheaper. Helmets, thanks to the massive R&D big companies sink into their development, have an absolutely huge price range and it’s very hard to tell apart a helmet that’s ‘worth it’ versus one that’s not.
