MOTORCYCLE AIRBAG SMACKDOWN:
DAINESE SMART JACKET
VS.
ALPINESTARS TECH-AIR 5
When you buy something using the links on our site, we may earn a small commission, which does not increase your price. Gentleman Biker does not accept money for editorial reviews. Read more about our policy.
- by T.E. Whitaker
Note: This article was updated 3/26/23 to reflect additional impressions and an evolution of the Dainese Smart Jacket.
Note: This article was updated 3/26/23 to reflect additional impressions and an evolution of the Dainese Smart Jacket.
The Smackdown's Table of Contents
EL DIABLO RUN WARNING
El Diablo Run, the biennial ride from Biltwell’s HQ in Temecula, California, to the beach town of San Felipe, Mexico, may seem an odd place to begin a cage match between the leading airbag devices on the market—Alpinestars’ Tech-Air 5 vs Dainese’s Smart Jacket—but given this was to be my first long(-ish) ride with the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 airbag “system” after riding with the Dainese Smart Jacket in all conditions for over a year, it struck me as perfect.
“I’m not sure El Diablo Run is your kind of ride,” Euclid said a few months before the ride, on a glorious February afternoon while we sat outside a Malibu taco stand. “I want you to come, but I need to tell you a few things.”
“That’s ominous.”
He shrugged. “First, it’s a beautiful ride. The scenery is fantastic.”
“Awesome.”
“Can you just let me talk without the interjections? This is sort of a speech.”
“All right,” I said, and dragged the bowl containing the rest of the chips to me, along with the salsa.
Euclid shook his head. “Anyway, the roads are not fantastic. Mexico does a slightly worse job at upkeep on their roads than California. The ride across the border is a shit show. You have to be aggressive to be safe. You’ll be splitting lanes while avoiding people selling crap from carts in between lanes. We might be able to circumvent some of it, but you might want to start taking Valium now.”
“I don’t—”
“Eat your chips now, while you have a chance, because the food down there is not good. It takes my stomach about a week to recover. It’ll absolutely ruin your diet.”
“I’m not really on a diet.”
He laughed in my face. “Who do you think you’re talking to? You’re always on a diet. You’re like a chick.”
I muttered something obscene and made a show of shoving a handful of chips into my mouth.
“Classy,” Euclid said. “This trip will put hair on your balls. Bad news if you manscape. The motel in San Felipe is like a prison cell. Similar to Burning Eagle, but in Mexico.”
“Jesus.” I recalled the creaky, roach-inhabited motel rooms we’d rented in Death Valley. “Do you even want me to go?”
“Just going for full disclosure. Most people sleep in a palapa or on the beach in a tent. The party there rages all night. It’s a bunch of drunk twenty-five-year-olds. Girls and boys. We’ll be close, but far enough away to sleep through the night.”
Doubt set up a palapa in my mind.
“And there’s very little planned. Often there’s nothing to do.”
“Gee whiz, this sounds amazing.”
“No, you’re wrong,” he said. “I love it. Like you, relaxing isn’t easy for me.”
“I can relax.”
“Really? When was the last time you relaxed? Been to the beach lately? Taken a nap?”
“Whatever. Fuck off.”
ORBITING CHAD
Euclid grinned like an idiot. “There is nothing elitist or fancy about San Felipe. And Ensenada is a cesspool. I love the ride to get there, and I love riding home along the coast. It’s paradise connected by little pieces of dog shit.”
“Why don’t we ever go on paradisiacal rides connected by glowing, lavender-scented unicorn droppings?”
“Because that ain’t the way of the biker, bro.”
“You sound way too much like Chad sometimes.”
“Chad’s coming with us.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I groaned. “I can’t say ‘no’ now.”
“Oh, and he’s going to Saddleman tomorrow.”
“Of course he is. I’m sure they’ll welcome him with open arms. ‘We’ve got lots of seats you can try out!’”
Euclid laughed with so much glee it hurt my feelings.
A little background. Days earlier—two days, to be exact—I’d called Saddleman to ask if I could ride to their facility in Rancho Dominguez and test a few solo seats on my Road King Special before buying one. I like the solo seat and naked fender look. They’d told me their factory was working at capacity to fulfill orders and they didn’t have any I could test—every seat was already spoken for by a customer.
“What about your showroom?” I’d asked.
“We don’t really have a showroom,” the sales rep told me, unhelpful, dismissive.
Euclid grinned. “They told Chad they’d make him a custom seat while he waits. And it’s free if he likes it.”
“I fucking bet they did. He’s more famous than I am.”
“You’re famous?” Euclid said, puzzled. “At all?”
“I get fan letters.”
“Sure, from nerds who read books. Who does that anymore? Chad has groupies.”
“I do have a motorcycle lifestyle website, and I’m about to shoot up a shining fireworks review of LePera.”
“Maybe talk to Chad and see if he’ll let you sit on his Saddleman for comparison.”
I stared at him.
“They gave it to him for free,” Euclid said.
“I thought you were kidding.”
“Only about the ‘while he waits’ part. He gets annoyed when companies ask him to pay. His fame and passive aggressive annoyance force their hands.”
“Chad lives on a different planet.”
Euclid nodded. “All we can do is orbit.”
THE CAGEMATCH: DAINESE SMART JACKET VS. ALPINESTARS TECH-AIR 5
The El Diablo Run plan was to ride with our usual weekend “gang”—The Posers—to San Felipe, stay a couple of nights, then cross the desert to Ensenada and stay another night, before riding in the early morning up the coast from Ensenada to Tijuana and across the border.
Those in the know predicted three-digit temperatures all weekend, which would test my primary concern regarding the Tech-Air 5—ventilation. Dainese’s Smart Jacket isn’t great in hot weather, either. Whether it’s tolerable depends upon how much you want to wear an airbag. I understood and accepted the tradeoff between safety and comfort, and therefore tolerated it.
I should mention I own two Smart Jackets—one for me and one for adventurous women who prefer a bit more protection than their Forever 21 moto jackets provide—and had owned a third that malfunctioned but was replaced quickly by my Dainese dealer.
I purchased my Smart Jacket in early 2020, and the smaller women’s version in spring of 2021. Whereas my Smart Jacket’s exterior is the same glossy black material all-around, the women’s Smart Jacket bought in 2021 has a corduroy-looking material in the front panel that provides better ventilation than I’ll describe. I’ve since purchased Dainese’s new generation for myself – in 2022 – and can vouch that, yes, the ventilation is much better.
The Dainese is a vest, albeit a thick vest, but still relatively low-profile. Air circulates through the Smart Jacket’s arm holes, parts of the material not covering the airbag, and underneath the vest, cooling the sweat it inspires. The Alpinestars system is an airbag that wears like a t-shirt, with a cockroach-bulge inflation apparatus (housing the CO2 cartridges) between one’s shoulder blades. The “shirt” part of the Tech-Air 5 is thinner than Dainese’s vest, but the cartridge housing makes it feel more obtrusive initially. Both fade into the background while I’m riding.
I’ve worn an XL in shirts and jackets since high school. I wear a 2XL for the Tech-Air 5 and an XL for the Smart Jacket, which required me to purchase a size up on what I wear over both systems—a Belstaff leather jacket when it’s cool or warm and Icon’s Upstate Riding Shirt when it’s hot—to provide the necessary blast radius for the airbags.
Both the Dainese Smart Jacket and the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 work essentially the same—sensors, gyroscopes, accelerometers, algorithms, GPS, all of it processed a thousand times per second to call in the airbag cavalry if you highside, lowside, collide, slide, or some idiot rear-ends you at a traffic light—without the necessity of tethering the device to your bike. Pretty slick. Both are battle-tested in MotoGP and real-world conditions. Both consistently update their algorithms. Both cost about the same.
The differences?
Dainese claims their Smart Jacket is the equivalent of seven back protectors, with “microfilaments to ensure even distribution.” Alpinestars claims their Tech-Air 5 protects you like eighteen (18!) back protectors. The Smart Jacket covers your chest, back, and trapezius/collarbone area.
The Tech-Air 5 protects your chest, back, shoulders, and ribs. Alpinestars claims the Tech-Air 5 “provides the most comprehensive coverage of any airbag currently available” and “the impact absorption while wearing the airbag results in a decrease of the impact force by up to 95% compared to a passive protector.” If you want full coverage, the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 provides it. The Dainese system does not—shoulder armor such as D30 or Knox Micro-Lock is necessary.
Both companies have opted for less-than-ideal charging methods.
The Smart Jacket’s charging port is more difficult than it needs to be, courtesy of poor alignment between the bit of rubber that covers the port when not charging and the opening in the material that reveals the port, which is the case for all three Smart Jackets I’ve purchased, as well as the one I had to replace after a malfunction, indicating the misalignment is a design issue, and not unique to my Smart Jacket. Note: When I ride my Streetfighter V4 S, I wear either of two Dainese D-Air sportbike-style jackets, the heavier of which—a Racing 3 D-Air leather jacket—features a vastly superior charging port. Why oh why can’t they all be like that?
The Tech-Air 5’s charge cord is too short and should be two-to-three times as long as it is. While plugging in the Tech-Air 5 is easy, the tip of the charge cord is in two parts—a longer plastic part (like most charge cords) plus a tiny metal removable tip, held to each other magnetically—forcing the decision as to whether to leave the metal tip in the jacket (which must be pried free every time with a tool or your fingernail if you want to remove it from the Tech-Air 5’s charging port), or left in the port (which is what I’ve chosen to do), thereby risking (maybe, maybe not) that it will vibrate out during the ride, preventing future charges. Loc-Tite seems a bad call, given the port’s function. Why the metal tip is not permanently connected to the cord or the charging port is baffling.
You zip up the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 and connect a magnetic and Velcro flap at the top, on the outside of the shirt. At the bottom of the zipper, a brief series of red-yellow-green LEDs results in a single steady green light. It’s now armed, independent of the motorcycle’s vibration or movement.
To wear the Dainese Smart Jacket, you put it on, zip it up, and click into place a magnetic fastener at the top, inside the vest. A series of lights flash and it settles on blue, assuming it’s fully charged. This is the system’s “ready” indicator. You throw a leg over the bike, and your motorcycle’s vibration triggers the Smart Jacket to arm, resulting in a satisfying vibration of the vest that tells you it’s protecting you. If it turns off, runs out of battery, or malfunctions, a continuous vibration series indicates it’s not working.
I prefer the Smart Jacket’s vibration to the Tech-Air 5’s green light because, if the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 stops working or depletes its charge while I’m riding, I’m not going to see the indicator lights change to red.
MOTORCYCLE AIRBAG MISHAP IN TEMECULA
I packed for the weekend, using the Biltwell EXFIL 80 sissy bar bag I’d purchased for the occasion, housing the necessary stuff and documents for a trip across the border and back. On Friday morning I donned my Tech-Air 5 and leather jacket for the ride to Temecula—I’d switch to my mesh shirt later in the morning, because wearing a leather jacket across the Anza-Borrego desert and Baja struck me as caliente come el infierno y no bueno. For an instant I considered packing the back protector included with my mesh shirt (in case the Tech-Air 5 malfunctioned) into a saddlebag but decided against it. My decision to leave the back protector behind would prove unfortunate foreshadowing.
Soon I streaked along the Ortega Highway, its sweeps and curves interrupted this morning by periodic construction zones, to meet up with the gang at a Temecula Starbucks. The air felt crisp, the sun hung low—annoying and glorious simultaneously—and all seemed right with the world.
After stopping for gas, I met everyone at the Starbucks. I hadn’t seen some of the guys in quite some time, and some were new to the group. Introductions were made, pleasantries exchanged.
The familiar thunder of Chad’s tourer cut through the conversation and the crowd. He knew how to make an entrance. He rolled up, parked it, removed the full-face helmet he begrudgingly wore as part of his long-term record deal, shook out his ridiculous hair—I say this bitterly because I shave my head out of necessity—and cut across the parking lot to where I stood with Euclid. Chad and his band had started their first tour since 2019, and we hadn’t hung out in months.
“Goddamn good to see you guys!” he bellowed, animated, smiling. He bro-hugged and clapped Euclid on the back and, before I had an instant to consider, did the same to me.
A deafening pop shot across the lot. Heads snapped toward us. Bikers and coffee cravers ducked. I flinched, thinking it was small arms fire, my first thought being live shooter.
Silence. Chad and I stared at each other, stunned, confused. I felt tight and compressed. Chad cocked his head. Awareness crept in. Euclid burst with laughter, so joyful and unfettered it forced me to grin, as I grasped that my Tech-Air 5 had fired when Chad slapped me on the back.
Euclid’s laughter and an understanding of the loud pop’s source spread across the lot and the gang. I stood sort of stupid, trying to figure out what the fuck I was going to do with a worthless airbag system and nowhere to put it during a three-day, hot-as-hell, weekend ride through the Mexican desert.
“Bro, what—” Chad was mystified. “What’s goin’ on? What is that?”
“It’s an airbag vest. A shirt, really.”
“You look like the goddamn Michelin man,” Chad said. “Don’t let my label see that thing exists. They already got me in a full-face.”
Someone snapped a photo as a few of the guys gathered around, poking the airbag, laughing, asking questions about how it worked.
“CO2 canisters, like a car airbag. It fires in less than forty milliseconds when it detects impact.”
“Felt like about twenty-five,” Chad said.
“I’d say twenty-two,” Euclid said. “Like a bang-bang play at first base.”
“You guys are funny this morning,” I said, as tension set in and I considered my options for the weekend. Was I still going? Should I go back home and get the Dainese Smart Jacket?
Chad read my face and said, “If you can keep your head when all about you—” He hesitated. “I don’t think the rest of it works.”
“Probably not.”
“But you know what I’m sayin’. Goddamn Kipling, bro.”
I twisted a little at the waist, my arms at a wider angle than usual from my torso. “I must say, I feel invincible. With my helmet on, I think I could take a direct drone strike.”
Euclid frowned. “Reapers will take down any man.”
“I’m more concerned about the Feilong, China’s stealth drone.”
“Feilong two,” Euclid corrected.
Chad shrugged and looked to the sky. “You’d never goddamn see that comin’.”
“What are you going to do?” Euclid asked me. “Can you stuff it back in?”
“No. They have to repack it at the factory.”
Chad made a face. “I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s no big deal. It’s good to see you.”
“You too, bro.”
“Are you going to look like that all the way to Mexico?” Euclid asked.
“It feels like it’s deflating.”
“It looks the same.”
Chad poked it. “It’s goin’ down.”
Euclid grinned. “It would have been hilarious if you looked like this all weekend.”
“Tell me again,” I said, “why are we friends?”
ALL THE GEAR ALL THE TIME
Riding across the Anza-Borrego desert with the heat rising into the nineties, I was a holiday turkey basting in the mostly deflated Tech-Air 5 oven. Normally, I’d just shrug it off as the price you pay for MotoGP-level protection, but given it was now an inert extra layer I had no room in my saddlebags or pillion backpack to put away without completely repacking—and we expected a steady 100+ degrees later that afternoon in Mexico—I struggled to find my usual motorcycling Zen.
We stopped in Calexico for lunch and gas.
“Are you going to just pack it?” Euclid asked after we’d all ordered.
“It’ll take an entire re-thinking of how I’ve already packed things. And it does have a built-in back protector. So it’s doing something for me,” I said, my reasoning solid but thin.
“There won’t be any traffic at all in the desert,” he said. “You don’t need it.”
“ATGATT, buddy, ATGATT.”
Chad finished signing an autograph for the waitress. “Sorry to take Uke’s side after it bein’ my fault and all your bag popped, but you’re gonna roast your ass off.”
“I’ll figure it out in San Felipe,” I said. “It’s the perfect opportunity to test its ventilation in an extreme environment.”
Euclid nodded for far too long before saying, “That’s a pretty good point, but it’s more likely we’ll be peeling your dehydrated husk off the bike.”
Chad pushed his glass of water over to me. “Hydrate, bro.”
“But assuming you don’t spontaneously combust,” Euclid went on, “you’re reviewing the airbag for your site?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think you did him a favor,” he said to Chad. “Now you know what it feels like when it explodes, without the inconvenience of an accident.”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way,” Chad said. “I should get some kind of royalties for providin’ the experience.”
“You should,” Euclid said as the tacos arrived. “Maybe work out a sub-affiliate arrangement.”
“Set ’er up, bro!” Chad shouted. The rest of the table ignored him, not as starstruck as the wait staff.
“Sorry,” I said. “It was an accident of friendship. You’ll have to struggle by on your record sales and groupies.”
Chad sulked. “Harsh.”
The border crossing between Calexico and Mexicali made me ache for my spent airbag like unrequited teenage love—danger, oblivious drivers, wrong turns, lanes as suggestions, prayer-based sprints across oncoming traffic. Once through the city, we stopped at a roadside refreshment shack—out of refreshments but stocked to the rafters with unfamiliar chip-like tortilla derivatives—and waited for a few stragglers to catch up.
“No traffic the rest of the way.” Euclid eyed my mesh shirt and airbag combo. “Can’t you just toss it?”
“It was seven hundred and fifty dollars.” He shrugged and I said, “Go buy me some water. I need to stay in the shade.”
ACROSS THE DESERT
Exterior. Mexican desert, a billion degrees, sweating like a hog on a hog, reconsidering my life choices, namely the one to not fully embrace the renegade biker lifestyle and go like Euclid—politically incorrect wifebeater with a pair of blue Dickies, steel-toed work boots, work gloves, and a backward Indians ball cap. His sparkling orange three-quarters helmet rode strapped to the sissy bar’s tip, a bungie-corded ghostrider. The mere fantasy of not wearing sleeves in the unrelenting sun lowered my body temperature a few ticks.
The air above the highway trembled with heat. The miles streaked past, the desert’s arid, empty beauty giving way to a derelict vehicle, a gas station from the past, bursts of brush and cactus. My earplugs cut the wind, revealing the engine’s rapid heartbeat beneath, heavy, steady, eternal, from horses to motorcycles to whatever the hell some future human would ride in the near-absolute zero void of space—which at this point sounded lemonade-and-lawn-chairs refreshing.
When we made San Felipe, I stripped down in the hotel room and stood beneath a spectacular rainforest showerhead, cold water streaming over me, waves of goosebumps drowning my fears of heat stroke.
After my shower ended abruptly—courtesy of the Mexican government shutting down cold water service to my room, contending I’d drained the country’s Golfo de California desalination plant of cold water during my six-hour recovery shower—I laid out everything I’d packed onto the bed and strategized where to stick my dead Tech-Air 5 for the rest of the trip.
We rode through San Felipe to the beach where—to use pornography legalese—not-Biltwell had set up their not-event. AC-DC pounded from the speakers, a drunk woman danced on a table, tents lined the beach three-deep. Every surface glimmered—concrete, bartops, tables, chairs—wet and grimy. Liquor and beer poured forth unto the crowd. Intoxicating aroma clouds of grilled fish, beef, and chicken floated through a hard rock and heavy metal sky. Somewhere in the Mexican desert we’d ridden through a wormhole and traveled back to the early 90s, a rose-tinted and wild time of late nights and coyote dates.
“What do you think about vanity plates?” I asked Euclid. “Philosophically.”
“I don’t like them. I prefer to travel incognito. There are too many psycho people. If you’re dating a girl and it goes south, she could stalk you by your license plate because it’s easy to remember.”
“So live in fear? That’s not like you.’”
“It’s not fear,” he said. “I live under the radar. Look at me. I don’t dress like a million dollars and I don’t drive an ostentatious car. Nor do I wear expensive sneakers and enough jewelry to walk on stage at the NFL Draft.”
I frowned. “I don’t drive an ostentatious car.”
“I think you should change your wardrobe,” he said, way too certain.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Start wearing suits.”
“What? Why? You’re messing with me.”
“Not at all. You’re getting on in years and—”
“Fuck off. I mean, I’m sure I’d slay the ladies, but suits everyday seems expensive and uncomfortable.”
“What is comfort to the gentleman biker?” Euclid said in his best Shakespearean stage voice.
“I agree with you on that. Witness the airbags.”
“Now obviously I am not an expert on fashion—”
“Obviously.”
“—but it’s easy to spot good fashion sense.”
Chad emerged from the crowd and joined us. “What’s up, gents?”
“I’m telling him he needs to class up his act by wearing suits.”
“Right on,” Chad said. “The classics never go out of style, bro. Neither does a great suit.”
I grinned. “You ever wear a suit, Chad?”
“I got a velvet Tom Ford I wear when I wanna go against a lady’s expectations.”
I pondered this while Euclid and Chad exchanged knowing nods.
“I have two great suits,” I said after a time. “One black, one brown. But I’m not wearing them as my go-to.”
“You need navy blue and gray,” Chad said. “Black is for formal.”
“And funerals,” Euclid added. “It seems like I only wear a suit for weddings and funerals these days.”
“But jeans and a blazer?” I said. “That would work, and it’s already in the plans. I found this incredible ‘crinkled’ black leather blazer that would rock getting off the bike, and the crinkles would hide the folds necessary to transport it while riding.”
“Although,” Euclid continued, not noticing I’d said anything, “I did wear a suit to dinner the last time Trixie was in town.”
“Some role play public sex thing?” Chad said.
Euclid shook his head. “Not this time.”
DARK STREETS
We rode back to the hotel through the dark, mostly empty San Felipe streets. I last rode my motorcycle in just a t-shirt and jeans a decade prior, in Sturgis. Airbag technology and its proving grounds in MotoGP had enabled me to rationalize getting on a motorcycle again, now that my children were older.
I sat with Euclid and Chad around the glimmering hotel pool, our faces lit zombie teal.
“How did it feel riding naked through the streets of a Mexican beach town without the water wings?” Euclid asked, after a millisecond’s silence had exhausted all topics not mocking my unreasonable desire to survive motorcycling’s unpredictability.
“Probably a lot like Chad’s nightly groupie gauntlet.”
“Part of the job,” Chad said. “Hashtag blessed.”
Euclid cocked his head. “You just ruined that hashtag for all the yogi vegan gluten-free stay-at-home moms.”
Chad smirked. “Nah. They’re backstage, too.”
“I suppose it’s like driving without a seatbelt,” I said. “You know nothing’s going to happen, but—but you don’t. So you wear it every time for when it’s your turn. With the technology available, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t wear one.”
“We just look at safety differently,” Euclid said. “A helmet’s the only crucial thing. Everything else is ‘seasoned to taste.’”
Chad and I stared at Euclid.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Euclid said. “Seasoned to taste. Like a recipe.”
“I gotcha, bro. Just wasn’t the right metaphor.”
Euclid chuckled. “Have you actually read any of your own lyrics?”
“Music’s a feeling, not a novel.” Chad winked at me. “That’s our boy here’s job.”
I nodded. “And I suffer every word.”
Euclid snorted. “Anyway, helmets are like the cockpit doors after 9/11. Everything else is for the illusion of safety. But it doesn’t matter. Encase yourself in bubble wrap and packing peanuts for all I care. I’m just glad we’re all riding together.”
DIRT TRACK RACING
The next afternoon, the gang stood with a thousand or so El Diablo Runners around a dusty track suggested by old tires on the inside and the bravest crowd members on the outside. We stood atop the first of two small hills, between the dirt track and the asphalt straightaway that served as the starting straight for the races, leading to a ninety-degree left turn and a steep, chewed-up downhill dive to the track. The not-Biltwell-sponsored races—three-to-five bikes at a time in straightaway sprints to the downhill, then three laps of breakneck, rear-wheel-spinning and sliding, barely-under-control dashes to the finish—provided tests of courage for the competitors and the crowd defining the track’s outer perimeter.
“Are there any qualifications on who gets to race?” I asked as the first race started with a roar of engines, grinding and meshing of gears, and burning brakes. The four riders wrestled their bikes into the downhill, which would determine the eventual winner with near certainty.
“Not officially,” Euclid said. “But they share a few traits.”
Riders competed on choppers, baggers, and an open category, which featured a skilled rider wearing flip-flops on a Royal Enfield, who advanced easily to the finals.
“That dude’s goin’ into the crowd,” Chad said during the fifth race, half a lap before the dude went into the crowd, plowing into a handful of spectators. Injuries appeared survivable, and the racing continued.
All the while, a muscular mohawked guy rode his straight-piped white Dyna around the event, so earsplitting even this crowd of enthusiasts struggled not to roll their collective eyes. A few minutes before the final, he attempted an optimistic climb of the powdered dirt strip leading to the top of the second hill behind the straightaway. He didn’t make it and stalled out two-thirds of the way, inspiring a smattering of cheers and emphasizing the justness and ironic humor of the motorcycle gods. A few former boy scouts risked themselves to descend to where he’d stalled, and pushed and pulled him to the top—one receiving a wheelspin dirt Bukkake for his trouble—defying the gods’ will but reaffirming the motorcycle brotherhood and earning their biker merit badge.
Our last night in San Felipe we all walked to an Italian restaurant a block from the hotel. Euclid, Chad, and I sat toward one end of a long table with Nate, a big, jovial, successful photographer who pursued his three loves—photography, motorcycles, and women—with equal abandon, and Tristan, a clothing designer whose side hustle—a “trending on Google” graphic t-shirt shop—ranked as the world’s forty-seventh largest economy.
“Hello,” Nate said to the cute waitress, “I’m Nathaniel.”
“Drink?” she asked.
“How are you this evening?” he asked, drawing out his words. “Como estas esta noche?”
Evidently experienced with charming American men in town for the weekend kind enough to translate simple English phrases into her native Spanish, she said, “Very busy, sir. Qué quiere beber?” She smirked. “Would you like a drink?”
We laughed, ordered our drinks, and mocked Nate a bit after she’d left our table.
“It’s a numbers game,” he said, unfazed, Yodic.
What followed was a meal of varying quality, depending on what was ordered. My pizza was great on its own, and spectacular for what I expected from an Italian restaurant in a Mexican beach town, defying Euclid’s warnings.
VULTURES CIRCLING THE THROTTLE BODY
We rode out from San Felipe in the morning—me with my packed and inert motorcycle airbag—taking highway 3 across Baja California. The day was clear and sunny, the ride easy, the desert and rocks and brush flying by along the curving two-lane highway. Just perfect—right up to the point when Steve’s throttle grip failed.
The second group of us—including the hard-tail chopper, two lower-displacement bikes, and, thankfully, Alex, one of two custom bike builders in our group—pulled to the side to see what could be done.
“I had to shut it down,” Steve said as we gathered around his bike. “The throttle was stuck.”
Steve’s throttle tube’s catch had broken, leaving the throttle cable’s slip barrel with nowhere to call home and our group with a problem. Steve couldn’t ride—at least not safely—without a working throttle. We couldn’t leave his bike in the middle of the desert. We had no cell phone reception. And no one in our group had an open passenger pillion. The trick was to somehow reattach the throttle cable to the tube without anywhere to do so.
Vultures circled.
Alex stared at the problem, fiddled with the throttle, and ignored our ambitious suggestions—Could we fashion some sort of rudimentary lathe?—before asking the obvious question, “Does anyone have zip ties?”
Euclid did.
Alex removed the throttle tube, and we all took turns cutting a narrow channel into the tube’s flange with a multi-tool knife. The throttle tube—evidently made of an advanced polymer used by aliens to build intergalactic starships—proved incredibly difficult to cut, but twenty minutes later we’d managed to file a micron-wide, eighth-of-an-inch-deep channel into the flange and slipped the throttle cable into it, using the slip barrel as a grappling hook, and zip tied it to the throttle tube. Alex slipped the grip over the MacGyver’d throttle assembly and Steve fired up his bike, revving it to prove to the surrounding desert that homo sapiens hadn’t commandeered the planet by accident or luck.
UNEXPECTED SHEEP AND STOP SIGNS: THE CASE FOR MOTORCYCLE AIRBAGS – PART UNO
As with most motorcycling adventures in large groups, if your map app says your trip’s an easy three hours, it’s going to take at least twice that. As we approached the hills separating Ensenada from the desert, the late afternoon skies grew dark. We pulled to the roadside and geared up for the gloom and threatening weather. I swapped the mesh shirt for my leather jacket, Euclid put away his ballcap in favor of his helmet and leather jacket, and Chad threw on a fantastic waxed denim jacket.
“I like your jacket.”
“Thanks, bro. Belstaff. Kill ’em with class.”
“Chad, what the fuck’s that mean?”
He grinned. “Nothin’. Just throwin’ words together, seein’ what sticks.”
Mist, then sprinkles, then rain fell as we curved through the hills, and I lamented the loss of my Tech-Air 5. It struck me that riding on an unfamiliar rain-slicked mountain road might be an ideal situation to wear airbag technology, about fifteen minutes before Nate hit the sheep.
Five hundred feet ahead, red lights stabbed the rain and gloom. I slowed, stopping next to Euclid, Chad, and Tristan. Alex and Steve joined us. On the road’s shoulder, Nate slapped at his jeans, his bike on its side. A rain-drenched gray sheep weaved away, unsteady, rejoining its herd, where no doubt the other sheep informed it—in no uncertain baas—what an idiot it was to wander onto the road.
“It just ran into the road,” Nate said, shaken but okay.
“I hear they’re quick,” Tristan said.
“Cheetah speed,” Euclid grinned. “Like a velociraptor.”
UNEXPECTED SHEEP AND STOP SIGNS: THE CASE FOR MOTORCYCLE AIRBAGS – PART DOS
We helped Nate raise his bike—a Harley Road Glide, no mean feat with slippery bars and grips—and soon we were through the rain and onto the mean streets of Ensenada.
Lest you conclude I’m referring to Ensenada’s streets as “mean” because of crime or anti-Mexican sentiment, let me clear that up. The city’s streets are mean—nay, cruel and dangerous—to motorcycles. The potholes are huge and deep, the roads dusty, the stop signs covered by trees. And again—this was a motorcycle airbag’s sweet spot. Where was mine? In the pillion backpack, dead.
On the outskirts of Ensenada, we rejoined the front group and rode through the city together—twenty of us—using the bikes’ rumbling as echolocation to ferret out the tree-obscured stop signs. I lost track of where everyone rode, focusing on taillights piercing the swirling dust while avoiding potholes so big and deep you could only perceive their event horizons.
Ahead, brake lights burst within a massive cloud of dust. Euclid’s sparkling orange helmet skipped along the pavement like a singalong’s bouncing ball—for a brief, terrifying moment appearing separate from him, decapitated—until it rose in the dust to head height, turning, moving in jolts, uneven. The dust cleared as I pulled to the side and stopped with everyone else. Euclid stood on the sidewalk, brushing himself off, his beloved blue Dickey’s torn, his helmet scraped to hell.
His Road King lay in the street. Its engine guard was bent, a casualty of doing its job. His rear brake master cylinder would need replacing. Euclid had glanced away while avoiding a pothole, the bike in front of him had stopped suddenly at an intersection with a camouflaged stop sign, and they’d collided.
“I thought that was your head bouncing across the pavement,” I said, more shaken than he appeared.
Euclid didn’t respond. He removed his helmet and walked at light speed to his bike. With some help he got it on its kickstand while we spread out as a group, directing traffic around the incident and searching for missing metal parts.
“Let’s go,” he said to everyone and no one, which we met with silence. “I’m fine.”
“You aren’t,” I said. “You’re almost certainly in a little shock.”
“Your eyes don’t look right, bro. Let’s wait some.”
We pushed the bikes to the curb and waited an unscientific amount of time—our collective concern and attention annoying Euclid more with every passing second—before continuing through Ensenada. His rear brake didn’t work, but he rode without issue, and I imagine everyone shared my relief once we reached the hotel without another incident.
Through the evening Euclid seemed “off” but mostly fine, and, given our internet-educated, nonexistent medical backgrounds, Chad and I arrived at the same obvious diagnosis.
“I don’t think you’d pass the NFL’s concussion protocol,” I said.
Euclid glanced at Dr. Chad for a second opinion.
Chad nodded sagely. “Sleep it off, bro.”
DEMONSTRATED TRUTH VS. MR. DIPLOMATIC
We hit a local bar that night, but Euclid wanted to stay in and eat crepes. We checked on him before leaving and via text a few times. He seemed coherent and more his normal self as time passed. The plan was to decide at five the next morning on whether we’d hit the road at six. I left the bar early and walked to the hotel through the empty tourist section of Ensenada, my stuff—including the Tech-Air 5 I now really wished was still working—packed for the early morning ride.
I’ve always enjoyed walking back to my hotel after a night out in an unfamiliar city—without the sunlight and noise you can feel a city’s pulse—but Ensenada’s cleaned-up, well-lit tourist bubble disguised the city’s nature, offering a disarming mask. A group of friends had a last drink at a street-side mobile bar. A snuggling couple walked along restaurant row. The music thumping from the darker side streets reached me as inviting whispers.
At the hotel, Alex, Steve, and Tristan lounged around the pool, recounting the desert resurrection of Steve’s throttle body, and calculating that they’d collectively saved enough for a new CVO Street Glide by performing their own motorcycle maintenance over the past two decades.
“Forty thousand dollars!”
I expressed the appropriate wonder at their savings and shared their cynicism with Harley’s hourly labor rate. “Maybe we should pool everyone’s savings, get a Sporty donor instead, and Alex can build us all a show-winning chopper. We can take turns riding it to shows.”
Alex grinned. “That’s a great idea.”
I continued to my room, leaving them to hash out the details.
Early the next morning I exchanged text messages with Euclid and Chad, confirming six as the time to meet. I downed an energy shot to make up for the two sleep cycles I’d skipped and met them in the parking garage.
“Stop evaluating me,” was all Euclid said as we strapped our gear to the bikes.
We set off for the Tijuana border crossing a few minutes later. Ensenada’s streets still sucked, the auto parts store Google said opened at six in the morning didn’t, and the three of us zipped through the city and onto the coastal toll road.
The ride alternated between overcast and partly cloudy, cool and crisp to warm and enveloping, the highway curving along the ocean, the Pacific to our left, traffic light. Magical sun shafts spotlighted the cliffs and water. A glorious ride. Modern residential developments with ocean views populated the coast. More than once, I pondered dismissing practicality and getting a place in one of the small beach towns, riding on Fridays through TJ and down along this marvelous highway for seaside, taco-drenched weekends.
The border crossing—accurately and eloquently summarized in previous conversations by Euclid as a “shitshow”—tempered my Mexican getaway fantasy. A small pickup nearly sideswiped Chad, then took an oblivious shot at me but went wide, we missed our exit, found ourselves on the wrong side for Global Entry, exploited a break in the cement barriers to erase our mistake, split lanes to the front, and passed into the U.S.—at least Chad and I did. Border guards routed Euclid to secondary inspection based on his sketchy appearance and damaged motorcycle.
“That was bullshit,” Euclid said when we met at the first exit inside America.
“Did they snap on the plastic gloves and go full body cavity on you?” Chad said.
Euclid grimaced and I added, “You’ve got to look like someone they want to let in.”
Back home, I contacted the dealer at which I’d purchased my Tech-Air 5, returned it for repair that day, and it was forwarded to Alpinestars. I received a replacement Tech-Air 5 three and a half months later, no doubt a ridiculous span of time but almost certainly down to worldwide shipping issues.
“You still don’t have the other one back?” Euclid said, noting I was, again, wearing the Dainese Smart Jacket when I arrived at his garage to perform my Harley’s ten-thousand-mile service on his hydraulic lift. “That’s a long time to wait for your airbag.”
“It’s back.”
He pushed my bike onto the lift. “But you’re still wearing the vest. I thought you liked the extra protection of the one Chad exploded.”
“I like the extra rib and shoulder protection. It feels more secure. And I don’t have to put shoulder armor in my jacket if I wear this one.”
“You don’t have to either way.” Euclid tightened the straps on the engine guard, securing the bike to the lift. “But you continuing to wear the vest kind of says it all. Now that you’ve got a choice, you wear the Dainese. Do you wear this on the Ducati, too?”
“No. I wear a Dainese leather jacket that incorporates their airbag, with similar coverage to the vest.”
Euclid placed a plastic oil pan beneath the bike and removed the oil plug. “So many airbags, so little time.”
“Both companies make great products.”
“Okay, Mr. Diplomatic. But your actions speak louder.”
I murmured, “You can interpret it however you wish.”
He snorted a laugh. “You looked like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man when Chad popped it.”
“I guess we know it works.”
While the oil drained, Euclid moved to the next item on the service checklist and selected a digital torque wrench, his newest toy. “I suppose. But maybe disarm it the next time Chad rides with us.”
SMACKDOWN LOWDOWN
“You need to grow a pair for the people who aren’t just reading your El Diablo Run novella for entertainment,” Euclid prodded as I prepped the oil filter for the desperate lunge and screw-on portion of our program. “You owe it to everyone who’s actually considering buying one to make a choice. I hate it when reviews wrap up with ‘It comes down to personal preference’ because the reviewer is afraid to offend someone.” He eyed me. “What’s with the kowtowing? Are you not a man?”
I grinned. “Kowtowing?”
“You’re not the only one who uses archaic words.”
I finished filling the oil filter, mentally preparing for the next fifteen seconds. Though a seasoned mechanic could probably explain why the Harley oil filter is, after over a hundred years, still horizontally oriented, I can’t, and Harley probably believes they nailed it the first time around. Re-orienting it vertically so all the oil you’ve just primed the filter with doesn’t pour out while you frantically screw on the slippery filter likely presents Harley-Davidson with an engineering challenge on par with a mission to Mars.
I’ve invested significant money in airbag technology and wear it whenever I ride—EDR’s accidental firing excepted. MotoGP riders go down at over a hundred miles per hour, tumble on the gravel, and jump up and run after their bikes to rejoin the race. With their availability and effectiveness, I think everyone should wear airbags. But I understand, from a style and philosophical perspective, why some in the motorcycle brotherhood might not agree. Image is important. We ride for varying reasons and we make our own choices, as we should. Airbags rub against the t-shirts-and-brain-buckets Harley image the most, though the Dainese Smart Jacket can’t be seen beneath your leather jacket. But sportbike riders have no excuse not to wear one. Their MotoGP heroes wear airbag suits from both manufacturers and so should the guys who scream down the Ortega Highway as if they’re racing in Mugello.
Though I’ve experienced only the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 doing its job, I expect the speed and explosiveness of the Dainese Smart Jacket is nearly identical, the only real difference being coverage. The Tech-Air 5 adds rib and shoulder protection. The new generation of Dainese Smart Jacket has superior ventilation compared to my Tech-Air 5, but if it’s over about eighty degrees, you’ll be warm wearing either airbag. Over ninety, and both systems are near-intolerable. Temperatures in the fifties, sixties, and seventies—ideal riding weather—are airbags’ sweet spot, and below sixty degrees airbag technology serves as an extra layer of warmth, making the ride more pleasant and safer.
So, my choice(s). I wear the Dainese Smart Jacket underneath a leather jacket when I ride my Harley or XDiavel. On the Streetfighter, I wear Dainese’s Racing 3 D-Air perforated leather jacket in cool weather and Dainese’s Smart Sport Jacket in warm weather. On track days, I wear a Dainese D-Air race suit. Evidently, I’ve become a Dainese fanboy.
I’m confident both the Tech-Air 5 and Smart Jacket will protect me, but a deep dive into the history of both airbags, plus buying into Dainese’s filament technology argument, were the deciding factors. If the Tech-Air 5 had the same filament technology, my choice might be different because of the extra rib coverage it offers. Which system should you buy? The one you’ll wear every time you get on your bike.
“And,” Euclid said, “you wear the Racing 3 because it looks ‘right’ on the Streetfighter, not because it’s any safer than the smart vest,” Euclid said.
“Smart Jacket.” I screwed in the oil filter, oil pouring over my fingers and into the pan. When it was tight, I grabbed a towel to wipe it down. “Did I ever imply that I didn’t care about looking cool?”
“No,” he said. “Which is why you should start wearing suits.”
