On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 22:36:32 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:

Skywise wrote:

I've always worn a helmet.

Same here. For a few years, I had an old helmet in the garage with a bare spot
in the front where the paint had been rubbed off. Guess how that happened?

In fact, I'm now considering moving to a full face helmet to cut down
on wind noise.

I'm blind without my glasses and, until recently, wore ones with wrap-around ear
pieces. I was never able to get a full face helmet on without removing my
glasses and was never able to get my glasses on once the helmet was on. On the
other hand, the wind around my glasses would concentrate on my eyes and blind
me. Standard helmet with face shield was the only way to go for me. Recently,
I've seen a full face model with a hinged chin guard. That might be the way to go.

I'm not sure my full-face Shoei cuts down on wind noise enough.

In the days before headsets, I used to fly with earplugs, which were a
great fatigue-reducer. The logic was that if anything I wanted to
hear was X dB louder than the engine noise without the plugs, it was X
dB louder with them in, and if it wasn't louder than the ambient
noise to start with, I wasn't going to hear it anyway.

So I figure it's the same way on a motorcycle, and I use earplugs
inside the helmet on long noisy rides.

Or I do now. When I had the '74 BMW with the full Vetta fairing, I
didn't have to worry about noise.

Don