Helmets galore....
When you have a motorbike, one of the biggest and most personal decisions you will ever make - besides your pillion passenger - is your crash helmet. Do you buy what you can afford, what looks good, or do you buy for safety and comfort...? For the past couple of years I've never really had a helmet I was entirely comfortable with.
I love flip-face helmets and my first was a Caberg, which was good but it always felt a bit claustrophobic - so I bought a HJC C70. It was a great helmet, but I still had to shave some of the polystyrene from the inside to make it fit comfortably. We did spend a year touring together so it wasn't that bad and I could easily spend three hours riding and not feel uncomfortable.
But - knowing I was going to north Africa, I wanted a helmet with better ventilation and a peak, so I bought the Scorpion ADX2. Yep, it had a peak but alas, the ventilation wasn't the greatest, so I bought the HJC i80. It was a better helmet than the ADX2 in terms of ventilation, but there were issues.
I thought it would be a good fit, as its based upon the i80, but the inside was different because I had to shave quite alot of polystyrene from the inside to make it comfortable. The biggest annoyance was when it rains, because lots of water runs down the inside of the visor. The ventilation wasn't that brilliant either, because on cool or cold days you would always have to crack the visor open - but the gap for the first setting was big, and if it was raining, the spray would fly through the gap and into the helmet and onto my glasses. Yes, I got it to fit like a glove, but I would get very frustrated with it on wet days.
So, I've bought a Schuberth E2. Why...? Well, it fits...! It costs an arm and a leg, and I've had to rent out a kidney to buy it - but right from the start the helmet felt comfortable. The proper test will happen when I ride with it, but sitting in my armchair in my flat for over an hour with my helmet on - it felt very comfortable. We'll see if I made an expensive mistake when I get the bike back on the road again.
Why the need for a Peak...? You know, I always thought having a peak was just a load of BS: just another fashion accessory from the adventure biking world, but when you are in a hot country with very strong sunlight - a peak does work. When I got to Morocco with my ADX2 - I was so happy to have a helmet with a peak, especially when riding south. It also works well in the UK when the autumn sun is low in the sky. It does work and I'm now a convert.
