Right Boots For the Bike
Right boots for the bike
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
THERE IS A FAMOUS STORY, WHICH I’M told by reliable sources is true, about an upper-class British race driver of the Fifties who came in for a pit stop during the 24 Hours of Le Mans, right at dusk. While the car was being refueled, he retired to the back of the pit garage and began changing shoes, taking off his brown loafers, carefully storing them in his gearbag, and putting on a pair of black Oxfords.
“What are you doing?” the team manager asked, glancing nervously at his stopwatch.
“A gentleman doesn’t wear brown shoes after sunset,” the driver explained.
A little extreme maybe, but not too hard to understand. Nothing feels quite as awkward as having the wrong footwear for the occasion. Especially if you ride motorcycles.
I must confess to having quite a few pairs of boots kicking (?) around in the back of my closet, most of which are intended for motorcycling. The number represents not so much some weird fetish as a life-long search for comfort and practicality, though it has always seemed to me that certain types of boots go naturally with particular kinds of bikes.
When I started riding in the early Sixties, most riders wore anything they happened to have on their feet, but we “serious” guys generally wore lace-up work boots, in deference to the flattracker and desert-scrambler tradition, while a very small number of really tuned-in roadracers had Italian or English buckle-backed, zip-up roadracing boots, like Hailwood and Ago wore.
But if you rode a high-pipe Triumph or a Honda scrambler, a good pair of Red Wing work boots were the thing-well broken-in, of course, so you looked as if you’d been riding for 12 years, even though you were just 16. This is what I wore, as I always had a summer job that required them anyway. For more formal occasions, like dating, cowboy boots of the suede/roughout lowers variety (see Dylan, Byrds, etc.) or Clark desert boots were considered cool. Very Sixties.
Can’t shake it. To this day, when I get ready to ride my high-pipe Triumph 500, I usually go for the work boots or a really beat-up pair of pigskin cowboy boots I’ve had since Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was too young to leave home. Nothing else feels right. Black roadracing boots seem completely out of place on this bike, like spats at a Neil Young concert. Yet roadracing boots seem ideal on an old low-pipe roadburner, such as a Bonneville or Norton Atlas. Tradition again.
Harleys give you a little more latitude because there are essentially four schools of style at work here: Biker, Cowboy, Early Elvis and CafeRacer (XLCR).
Whenever I plan to go somewhere on a Harley, I seem to gravitate toward either cowboy boots or a well-brokenin pair of black engineer boots that look as if they’ve been dipped in creosote and 60-weight. My older sister, Barbara, used to call these “hoot boots” when she was in high school, and they were indeed the chosen footwear of the Rebel Without a Cause crowd she knew so well.
Of all the boots I own, these are the most comfortable because they frankly concede that the front of the human foot is shaped more like a ping-pong paddle than a cement trowel or a stiletto. Also, they have steel safety toes, so I wear them any time I have to cut up a fallen tree on our property with a chain saw. You can laugh at falling logs.
And then there’s the Early Elvis footwear. This is, essentially, a pair of flashy loafers worn with white or Argyle socks. This grand tradition started because you can actually wear lightweight loafers comfortably on a Harley of the Glide family. The bike has floorboards and a rocker shift lever, so you don’t have to mash your toes. Elvis knew.
On any kind of sportbike or sporttourer, it’s usually the zip-up roadracing boots I go for. Older classic road bikes-Vincents, Velocettes, Gold Stars, etc.-seem to require a good pair of English road boots, such as the Gold Tops (which, in an odd case of oversight, I don’t have-yet) that you see in English publications. Like a lot of English riding gear, these seem to have their roots in the equestrian tradition. (“Saddle up the roan, Smithers, the Brough’s broken.”)
Strangely, one type of shoe I almost never wear when riding is a tennis shoe or running shoe, though I have friends who do. These always make me feel underequipped for the job, as if I’d brought a knife to a gunfight. Maybe it’s an old paranoia about crashing. I’ve had a couple of roadracing crashes in which my boots have taken a pretty good beating, especially in the ankle pads. In any case, I figure you wouldn’t wear motorcycle boots to play at Wimbledon, so why ride in tennis shoes? Unless the temperature is above 100 degrees, of course. Then they feel good.
But whatever kind of boots or shoes you choose for riding, the best part is just getting up in the morning and putting them on. It’s one of those rituals full of promise, like turning a fuel valve or flipping down a faceshield. Ready to go. Dragging familiar riding gear of any kind out of a closet is one of my 10 favorite forms of anticipation. Can’t remember, offhand, what the other nine are.
Tradition is all very well, but I have to admit there’s another factor that crosses my mind when selecting a pair of boots for a ride: walking comfort.
If I am planning to ride any motorcycle made in a certain country (won’t say which), I always try to choose a pair of boots that will allow me to walk several miles to a phone, or the nearest farmhourse, without too much discomfort. Preferably black, if it’s going to be after sunset.
