I have been riding for over a month now. And the only riding gear I bought was a jacket (review to come a little later), Z1R Helmet and Alpine Stars riding gloves. I used regular jeans as my riding pants and the Adidas Super Nova Trail 5 sneakers that I have come to love. Absolutely impeccable fit of the sneaker design worked flawlessly for my day to day activities. So I thought that if they are a great fit for my every day life they would fit me just fine when riding my bike. Motodisiac however kept telling me that riding boots make the whole world of difference. I did not think it mattered that much. I was wrong.

Almost the whole month of September we saw really warm weather. So riding in my Adidas did not seem to be that bad. The mesh cloth on top and on the sides of the shoe would provide just enough air to keep my feet from overheating. The ridges on the sole were a little annoying when I would try to shift gears. No big deal? So I though. Well it became a much bigger deal a little later.

As you might know I was presented with a challenge last weekend - to ride up and down Angeles Crest Highway. We saw some temperature drops to almost 55 degrees Fahrenheit. That was when I started feeling it. My toes became cold and numb in virtually no time. My desire to ride and further more shift gears declined rapidly. I am not even going to go into details of how my left foot would get stuck on the gear lever almost every time I’d want to quickly shift. The following Monday I went online and ordered me some riding boots.

The boots I got are Rev’it Freestyle. Rev’it is a brand from Netherlands (it is a small country in Europe for the folks who are unsure, not to confuse with Neverland). They arrived last Fri and today I took them for a spin. Wow, the whole world of difference. First and foremost I’d never get cold in these. Secondly the flat sole would make shifting very easy. Thirdly they just cool.

Well, as it turned out on Friday the third statement is highly questionable. I will say this - only two of my coworkers (one of them happens to be European as well) recognized them as cool. The rest of the office population called the boots ugly and tasteless. One of the popular quotes was that if I were to go have lunch or dinner anywhere other than McDonalds these would be inappropriate. Good thing is that I am confident and secure enough to not care. Being European myself I consider the Rev’it product line in general and boots in particular pretty cool looking and far from being ugly. What do you think?

Long story short - I thoroughly enjoyed my ride today. And from now on I have become a firm believer that specialized gear totally makes sense. I am shopping for riding pants now. The chances of me sticking to Rev’it are really high.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Riding, Gear, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.