Gear
by Titus Gee
Gear.
I like it.
I think that’s a sufficiently masculine beginning for a post that’s basically about fashion.
Anyway, it’ll do.
OK, fine, I’ll add some Hemingway, just for good measure. This line from “Big Two-Hearted River” has lingered in my mind for almost a decade, since the very first time I read it:
Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all his equipment hanging from him.
A simple line, but I like it. The story’s about a guy on a fishing trip (OK, it’s really about madness, or maybe PTSD, but there is a fishing trip involved). Point is, the spirit of that line stuck with me — that pleasure of wearing gear meant for a certain place and purpose.
Functional.
Appropriate.
Riding gear is like that. Especially the leather. All the best gear comes, one way or another, from the leather shop and the blacksmith’s forge. I buy mine in black with silver trim to match the Nighthawk.
It starts out shiny, soft and expensive-looking — not really gear yet but pretty. Then over the months and the miles it wears in, soaking up waterproofing oil, rain, snow, and sunshine. It takes on the form and lines of my own bones. It becomes mine, skin of the beast that is half machine. But a skin that constantly changes.
It didn’t take much to get started — a helmet to keep the California fuzz at bay, a Dickie work coat handed down from a river barge captain out of Louisville — but the more I rode, the more my collection grew. The year-round rider has to morph to match the weather.
So now I have:
Gloves, running the range from fingerless summer grips to triple-layer snowmobile mitts for long winter treks.
Shaded visor for the sunny days;
clear visor for night rides.
Heavy, lined coat and chaps for the cold;
Kevlar mesh jacket and reinforced jeans for the heat.
Rain slicks for the wet days.
Boots every day.
Even the Nighthawk has its saddlebags, rain cover, and optional windscreen.
And of course there’s the wish list.
At every stage and combination, the raw functionality of good gear feels somehow satisfying. Seems like that practical element has leaked out of our mainstream, American, jeans-and-T-shirt culture. Half the time you can’t even find a place to put your wallet.
Wearable equipment feels like a throwback to another age. Knights had it in their armor and personal arsenal. Cowboys had it with their boots and chaps and lariats. And now riders have it, borrowing from both traditions — battle and survival. Makes gearing up feel kind of epic, I guess.
To be fair, a few other gear bastions have survived in Western culture. At the far end of the spectrum, formal wear can give a gear-like satisfaction. There was a time when I wore a tuxedo almost as often as I now wear chaps and boots, and there again I found a certain drama in the preparation. I reveled in the unique design of the uniform — cuff links and cummerbunds, front pleats and shirt studs and satin trim. Each part had a purpose, functional in its way and appropriate for that setting.
One Saturday night, not long ago, I got the chance to live in both these gear-laden worlds. Invited by one of my more refined friends, I took the Nighthawk down to LA for a student show from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. I zipped the chaps over my suit pants, tucked my french cuffs into my winter jacket, and packed my tissue-wrapped dinner jacket into a saddlebag.
The parking attendant looked a little startled as I pulled up behind a Lexus and in front of a Hummer H2, but he let me in. I parked near the door and made my transformation under the quizzical glances of a half dozen little black dresses headed for the door. A photographer on the red carpet stopped to record the result of my efforts, just in case I turned out to be an eccentric Somebody. (Sorry, man.)
My friend and I cocktailed and four-coursed our way through the evening, commenting on the performance art that is runway fashion design and chatting with our tablemates — a flamboyant textiles buyer with bulked-out boy toy in tow and a reporter from the Czech Republic.
Three hours later I was back in the parking lot hiding my finery under leather, then merging the Nighthawk back into northbound LA traffic. Just another geezer on a bike.
That Sunday, I put my rain gear on and threw my body down a snowy mountainside.
Gear.
Yeah.
I like it.
