Retail therapy

I love it when New Enough has sales, especially on things I was thinking about buying. *whistles innocently*

I’d never really been happy with the fit of my (size S) Joe Rocket Phoenix jacket, so I snatched up a (size XS) Joe Rocket Reactor jacket for only $49. I’ve worn it once so far — it just arrived — and am happy with it already. It doesn’t let as much air through as the Phoenix, but that’s a welcome tradeoff for feeling like I have more armor and protection than, say, a Kleenex. My only complaint about the Reactor so far is that the neck and shoulders assumes you have a size L neck to go along with your size XS body — I look like a linebacker while wearing the jacket. It completely swallows up my neck. The shoulder armor hits my ears. This isn’t a problem while riding, though — it seems to fall into place correctly — so, eh. I look like a huge dork in my riding gear off the bike anyway, so what’s one more silly thing? [Incidentally, Joe Rocket does make a women’s style Reactor jacket, which probably wouldn’t have this problem, but New Enough only had them in size M and larger]

Mine’s black, but otherwise, same jacket:

The other item of clothing that I got was a pair of FirstGear HT overpants. For years now, I’ve been wearing my Helimot leather pants to work, rain or shine, winter or summer, and have changed in the ladies room upon arriving at work. This worked well for the most part, but it got a little cumbersome. Now that I have a managerial position[*] and will be wearing slightly nicer clothes to the office (translation: *clean* jeans 😉 ), I thought the overpants might be welcome. I can leave the soft luggage on the bike, pull into the parking garage, shed my jacket, boots, and overpants into the soft luggage, remove shoes from soft luggage, and walk into the building looking like a manager. Well, a manager with a helmet and a tankbag. 😉

I haven’t worn the pants on the bike yet but they fit well over my jeans. They’re a little long in the leg, but with a 27.5″ inseam, what isn’t?

[*] Yep, I’m actually expected to go back to work soon. 😉 I’ve got one week of vacation left and will then be a full-time employee at Danger once again. I’m coming back to the Project Management team, which is really exciting for me — it’s the position I was hoping to get. I may wind up with less free time for riding, and I’ll definitely have to do some schedule shuffling to get my workouts in, but it’s a 100% positive move for me. Oh, and I’ll be commuting during rush hour again (no more software engineer “maybe I’ll show up at 10am” mornings), so y’all will get stories of my wars in the trenches with cars trying to kill me. 😉