PRODUCT REVIEW
ROAD ARMOR AIR RIDER MESH ARMORED SHIRT By Scott High
W
hen it comes to shorter rides, I like to ride in a tshirt and a half helmet or even no helmet if I’m in the right state, but a few years ago a friend of mine gave me a tip, he said on long trips, like multi day long hour big mile trips, if you cover your skin and keep the sun off of you it will change your riding life. Eventually I bought a mesh jacket because I got tired of being sunburned and getting up to start the next riding day sunburned just to get sunburned again. I bought a modular helmet with a smoke shield to keep the sun off my face and vented gloves to cover my hands and I have to admit I like it. I found another benefit of wearing mesh, it keeps you much cooler. You know some of us think about how we look when we’re riding, we try to wear the right shirt, jeans, sunglasses, you know the drill. I love a mesh jacket when I’m riding 8-12 hours a day but they just look… well not my style and mine also feels heavy.
fortable and the fit was good but I removed the armor from mine and it looks just like a flannel shirt from more than 2 feet away. I headed west on I-40 with the shirt on over a t-shirt and it was a little chilly at 75mph in the morning. It’s light and not stiff at all with an outer layer of Tuff Mesh, over a middle layer of Kevlar, with a soft mesh inner lining so it’s very comfortable to wear and you can actually forget it’s on. The sleeves are a little longer than a normal shirt so they stay over my gloves with my hands on the bars. As the day warmed up and we got into Arkansas and Oklahoma I was still comfortable so I checked the weather on my phone and it was in the low to mid 90s. The next few days we rode across New Mexico and Arizona with temps of 95-100, I was warm, but I never got hot or uncomfortable. It does get warmer when you stop and I sweated some but as soon as you start moving the evaporation almost feels like an air conditioner blowing on you. I quickly got in the habit of stripping down at gas stops, gloves, helmet, and Air Rider shirt, but it’s easy to put on and take off with both a zipper and snaps.
When the guys at Skull Riderz contacted us about their Road Armor Air Rider armored mesh shirt I really wanted to try it out. As luck would have it the shirt arrived about a week before a trip out west that included riding across the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. The shirt came with very nice CE Level 1 back, shoulder, and elbow armor, thick flexible padded rubber, I tried it on, it was com-
Bottom line, I love this mesh shirt, we rode over 5000 miles in 14 days from Tennessee to the Grand Canyon up to the 4 corners and through the Colorado Rockies to the Black Hills of South Dakota and back through Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky and I never got hot or sunburned. The Air Rider shirt looks great and kept me cool when it was very hot. If you’ve ever thought about wearing mesh in the heat to stay cooler, give Skull Riderz Road Armor Air Rider shirt a try, if you’ve never thought about it, maybe you should. Check them out at skullriderz.com.
OCTOBER 2021 ThunderRoadsTennessee.com
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