White Rice on the Head

Decided riding home one night, it was time for new helmets. MeAsWe's is probably pushing 10 years (way over due) and mine is at least 3 with well over 60,000 miles. Off to International Motorsport to look at some new ones. Helmets are very much of an individual choice and choices there are. You can choose from Shoie, Aria, Nolan, HJC, Bell, and the list just goes on and on. My very first helmet was a Shoei purchased with my Honda CB900C. It was silver so that it could be seen. Well for a shower gift the helmet had a design painted on it and the person painted it blue. While I created the design it was never my intention to have it painted dark blue.

I can not see ordering a helmet on line without first going to a dealer and trying them on. Fit is oh so important. A good fitted helmet can not be turned from side to side. It should move the skin, but not tear it off when moved from side to side. Then one should grab from the back and try to roll it off your head. No point wearing it if it can come off. It will feel tight when you first get, but it does break in.

My biggest criteria for a helmet was color, I wanted us to get either white, yellow, or orange. Didn't need any fancy design that everyone else has. I did try on one of those carbon helmets but really could not tell the difference in the weight and I didn't want to drop an additional 200 to 300 dollars on one. Also at least for HJC they have something like 3 colors, coppertone, red and carbon black. None of these colors met my criteria for color.

We settled on HJC's IS-16. It got very good reviews at WebBikeWorld. One unique feature is it has a sliding darkened lens that comes down inside the main shield. MeAsWe is especially suspecible to the sun, and for me, I am hoping this comes in handy when we are driving directly into the sun light in either first or last sun of the day.

Of course we had to adorn the helmets with some personal touches. First was the NER reflective sticker and we both put our IBA stickers on.





The nifty built in sun glasses on the IS-16



MeAsWe trying on the drop down visor



Price you ask, I paid too much at International Motorsport, so no more salt in my wound, OK? Sigh. I guess I could say I was supporting my local economy, but I sure did put a dent in my pocket versus shopping at NewEnough.com