Item 1: I have Gerbing's jacket liner and gloves and have used them for several years now. In fact, about a year ago I had to get some work done on both the jacket and the gloves and ultimately they replaced them both for shipping costs only.

The bad part though is down to the 10 degree mark (or so), my finger tips still get pretty cold. Numb as I reach the single digits.

Item 2: Rita's not really a cold weather rider (at least not so far) but we're heading north tomorrow and expect it to be a tad chilly, especially since we're heading up into the Bighorn National Forest to visit The Medicine Wheel and then down by the Grand Tetons.

Item 3: I was down at Performance Cycle in Denver to get a new front tire last Saturday and have both tires mounted (I'd pulled the rear one off before June's trip to make sure I had 100% rubber for the 10,000 mile ride).

(Some bonehead turned on to Hampden from Santa Fe and changed his mind, made a u-turn on the ramp and went back up the wrong way on the ramp to get back on Santa Fe )

Anyway, I picked up a pair of Symtec Motorcycle Hand Warmers at Performance Cycle.



I spent a couple of hours yesterday and today getting them installed. At Rita's request, I cut one of her grips off so we headed up to the bike dealer and picked up some replacements. (When we got off the bike we were next to about three parking spaces of used bikes. Rita immediately hopped on the first 600 and was tippy toeing "can this bike be lowered?" Then she was on the 06 SV650, then over to the Katana 600 which looked quite long for her but was nice and low. She'll be on a new bike next summer ) Anyway, we got the red handgrip gel grips. Rita had wrapped some foam around her old grips to dampen some of the vibration. I also picked up a pair mainly for the gel grips part since I got mine off without a problem (they were about $10 per set).

I positioned the sheets where I thought they would do the most good with the wire under the switches and the sheet edge towards the outside of the handlebar. I figure having about a half-inch or so of wire under the grip would somewhat prevent an early breakage.

I used some epoxy per the instructions and glued the grips to the sheets (you'll have to cut them off next time for sure ). I also did the sheets and grips on my bike but left it sitting there while I worked on Rita's bike. I ran a power wire down to the battery and grounded them to the frame. I put the switch on Rita's dash and connected the wires.

The instructions showed the blue wire as being the low heat and the white wire being the high heat but the instructions wanted the low wire plugged into the high position side of the switch and the high wire plugged into the lower position. I thought it was a typo and put high to high and low to low. Afterwards I realized the instructions were right and swapped the two wires on both bikes.

Once hers was done, we powered up the grips and they gradually got warm. Flipping to high (after I put the wires back where they belonged) the grips heated up even more.

Since the wind was blowing, I put her bike back together and closed down the garage.

Sunday I finished up my bike, running a ground and power down to the BlueSea fuse box and making all the necessary connections to the switch now on my dash.

I hopped on my bike, started her up and watched the voltage when I flipped on the grips. Not too bad. It dropped down about .3 at idle and reving it up brought the voltmeter up to over 14. I left it in low heat and headed up for a short ride around the neighborhood. It heated up pretty well. As I got a couple of miles away, I flipped it to high. Man that was pretty hot (I'm wearing my deerskin gloves). At the next corner I flipped it back to low and stopped to get gas. I rode it on low the rest of the way home and then had Rita pop out and check out the grips.

I expect they'll be nice and toasty for Rita on tomorrows ride.

Carl