Wind On the Chin

Wind on the chin

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF LEAVING our driveway, heading out on what would be a 4600-mile tour of the upper West and British Columbia, I knew I'd made a mistake. I had either the wrong helmet or the wrong fairing, or both. The problem was wind noise. Lots of wind noise.

The airflow coming over the top of my abbreviated BMW R100RS fair ing was intersecting perfectly with the bottom of my aerodynamically designed full-face helmet. The junc tion of wind and helmet, at any speed above 45 mph, created a constant roar, similar in pitch and intensity to the sound of an F-4 on takeoff. This would never do.

I pulled over to the side of the road and shut off the motorcycle. Barb looked quizzically over my shoulder. "What's wrong?" she shouted from within her own full-face helmet, her voice muffled like the mummy's in an Abbot and Costello movie.

Oh boy. You'd think after years of riding, I'd have these things figured out. But no. One minute before leav ing the house I'd made a snap deci sion on which helmet to take, and it was the wrong one. My open-face helmet, back at the house, was dead quiet when I rode the Beemer. Some subtle difference in shape. padding or angle allowed it to blend almost silently with the windflow over the BMW's low fairing.

Normally, I wear an open-face helmet when I ride-a Bell Magnum with a dark-tinted, five-snap plastic faceshield-much to the chagrin of friends who are either fashion-con scious or concerned about safety. Why an open-face helmet, they ask?

Glasses are part of the reason. Age and green computer screens have caught up with me, and I have taken to wearing glasses when I ride, espe cially if I want to be able to read the map on my tank bag. or distinguish a dead skunk from, say. the Empire State Building.

Anyone who wears a full-face helmet knows it's a pain to feed a pair of glasses in and out of the visor slot. Makes you feel like one of those homebuilt airplane guys. trying to get a Starduster biplane out through his basement window.

The other reason is glasnost. Openness. An open helmet with a flat shield gives you better peripheral vi sion, a less restricted panorama, wind on the chin and a general feeling that you are a part of the world you are viewing, rather than an invader from space. who, Darth Vader-like, hears mostly his own breathing.

And, speaking of hearing. I think you can also hear the mechanical sounds of your bike better in an open-face helmet. This is an impor tant advantage if you tend to ride slightly dated, non-Japanese bikes. Inquiring minds want to know what's going on down there. Or, more spec ifically. what's going wrong.

Talking is af~o e'~tsier iii an openface helmet. You can shout to your passenger or another rider and be heard. Or, if you can't be heard, oth ers can at least see that your mouth is moving and attempt to read your lips. Nothing worse than trying to com municate with only your eyeballs: fright is easily confused with lust. Or hypertension.

So with all these wonderful advan tages to the open-face helmet, why on Earth did I elect, at the last minute, to take my full-face helmet on a two-week tour? The multi-part answer is fairly simple: bugs, rain, cold, sleet, hail, gravel trucks, fresh tar, slow birds and big black chunks of truck tire.

We were off on a very long trip, in autumn. We'd be crossing the Rock ies in late September. when the weather could do anything, and prob ably would. Typically. there would be plenty of road construction-and gravel trucks-in the mountains. I could easily imagine many days when the chinpiece of a full-face helmet would blend very nicely with my ban dana to repel minerals, weather and random wildlife.

The BMW was capable of very high cruising speeds in the wide-open Western spaces. while the fairin~ covered the rider only from mid shoulder down. This combination turned stinkbugs into hollow-poini bullets, sleet or sand into nature's own bead-blaster.

I thought about all these things as sat by the side of the road, a couple 0: miles from our house, motorcycli idling, poised on the brink of ou great Northwestern tour. I hate( turning around and going back, onc I'd started the trip.

"We'll tind a taller windshield at a BMW dealership somewhere on the trip," I told Barb at last. "I should have ordered one before we left. In the meantime, I'll just wear earplugs. I've got some in the tank bag."

We never did find that taller wind shield. I wore earplugs for the entire trip, further isolating myself from mechanical reality and the world in general. But I was glad many times for that wrap-around chinpiece. Cold rain streamed around it in Alberta: motorhome-propelled chunks of tar exploded against it in Montana; in sects everywhere zeroed in on it like 50-caliber tracer rounds. Yet when we arrived home, no dental work was needed. A pretty good trade-off for a little inconvenience and some mild claustrophobia.

Next time?

Next time we go on a 4600-mile tour I'll wear my good old open-face helmet and simply use a taller wind shield to intercept all these stray ob jects. Even my Celtic ancestors knew it was better to stop arrows and other projectiles with a big flat shield than to catch them on the chin or fend them off with your helmet.

Come to think of it, the Celts didn't even wear helmets. They prob ably wanted to see and hear what was going on around them. It may have been the Teutons who perfected per sonal armor and full headgear. The low-cut, aerodynamic windshield came later.