Here’s the problem. You ride to a rally, or work, by bike and it rains. Even if you own the smartest bike jacket in the world, it’s wet and smelly so you don’t want to wear it to the office or the pub.
 
On my 19-country Twin Town Courier tour to Ukraine by 1968 Lambretta I had an extreme version of the same problem. I needed a smart jacket for meeting mayors once I got off the scooter, but I didn’t have space to carry much stuff. Night-mayors!
 
Enter the Knox ‘mid-layer’ Winter Jacket: a sartorial Swiss-Army knife for scooterists. The softshell fabric has a soft fleece inner and contains a membrane to be fully windproof but still breathable.
 
In warm conditions it’s less bulky to pack away than a hoodie, but the material is amazingly crease-resistant so you can pull it out of a bag, sling it on and have something dapper to wear off the bike.
 
In cooler seasons the Wind Buddy can either be worn as a replacement for the liner of your motorcycle jacket or even as an additional layer when it’s colder than penguin goolies.
 

My only criticism of the jacket is that the cut under the arms is low enough that when worn under a bike jacket the sleeves tend to ride up your arms a little, but that wouldn’t stop me using it as a mid layer when it gets chilly. Alternatively, some people buy a larger size and use this as a top wind-proof layer over leathers.
 
Nicely made, comfy and technical. A top bit of kit.
 
The Winter Jacket – also known as the Core V15 (why have one name for a product when ten will do) – retails at £79.99, but you can find it for less then £60 if you hunt around online.

​For more information see the Planet Knox web site.

Sometimes you need a mission.

It’s all very well doing a massive tour and writing about it. At the end of the day, most travel stories are essentially ‘what I did on my holidays’ but to capture a reader you need to go little deeper.

Thankfully Stephen E. Holmes – a former punk and scooterboy who started riding on a Lambretta SX200 – and his former punk band oppo Pete Sandford had a mission. Pete had been inspired by The Motorcycle Diaries – the film about Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado’s trip to the top of South America.

Back in 1952 Che and Alberto set out to cross the continent to reach Venezuela on a 500cc Norton. Their bike broke down on the way so they hitched to complete the trip. Pete’s concept was to do the same trip, on the same capacity of vintage Norton, but this time to complete the journey by bike.

In the end both Stephen and Pete buy ancient, leaky Nortons for the journey and set out from Argentina to follow a route through pampas, mountains, deserts and rainforests which defeated the two revolutionaries even when their Norton was nearly new.

Stephen writes the tale from the perspective of the mechanical numpty of the duo, but ever the willing party-boy despite being 50 years young at the time. You can’t hold an old scooterboy down. Pete though is a savvy mechanic and performs enough bodges to get them through, not least of all holding his pre-unit gearbox in place with hammered-in wooden wedges.

Without spoiling the story, there are at least two occasions where they rode the fine line between carefree and reckless and between life and death.

Stephen’s writing has pace and is full of liberal use of similes to describe the intoxicating and varied sights, smells and sounds of Latin America. He is refreshingly honest about his fears and emotions without ‘bigging-up’ their problems. All this makes for a rollicking Boy’s Own adventure, at least for older boys who haven’t entirely grown up.

Well worth a read, recommended.

Sticky


You can buy it here and visit Steve's FB page for the book here.

FORM FACTOR AND MOUNTING SYSTEM

 The Prism has, in my opinion, the correct form factor for two-wheeled use. It is small 63x44x23mm and light at 125g including battery. For helmet use a long device with a small frontal area (Prism or Drift) obviously suffers less wind drag than wide and boxy (GoPro et al).

 Perhaps more fundamentally, with the Prism’s superbly engineered side-mount, ball joint, clip-in helmet bracket, you don’t have to look like a Teletubby with a stupid protrusion sticking out of the top of your head. For me, that’s a big factor. I’m tall enough to struggle fitting below door fames as it is, so adding another 10cm of action camera to the top of the helmet is a disaster. Included within the Prism kit are adhesive mounts if you insist on helmet top nonsense, but these can also be used to side mount on the few helmets that do not accept the clamp bracket.

 Admittedly, you can also mount a GoPro onto the side of a helmet, but this is a massive ungainly carbuncle on a big arm rather than a slim solution like the Prism or Drift.

 The flipside of this argument is that the horizontal box (e.g. GoPro) format is actually better for chest-mount shooting. This angle can be more immersive and revealing than helmet mount for extreme riding, but you are stuck with forward-only shooting.

 Whichever type of video camera you choose be aware that if you mount on your body or your helmet then you are compromising your safety in an accident. Most race organisations ban the use of rider-mounted cameras for that reason. Still, if you wanted to live in a cotton-wool-enclosed protective bubble you probably wouldn’t be reading an adventure motorcycle magazine. A little risk is part of the game and as long as you can quantify it in advance then it’s your choice whether or not to wear a camera.

ADAPTABILITY

 The clamp-mounted Prism sticks out a little way from your helmet, but not so much that it unbalances things or gets caught on your shoulder when looking behind. In wide-view setting the right side of my full-face Shoei helmet was just visible in shot, but I prefer that effect to a totally unhindered view because it gives the viewer an obvious rider perspective.

 One aspect of the Prism I liked was being able to leave one of the QRM (Quick Release Mount) wedges screwed to the underside of the camera, even when it was clipped into the helmet mount. While riding I could reach around, unclip the camera from the helmet and slot it into a QRM-equipped ball mount fixed to the scooter; which I set up to record alternative angles. This flexibility puts all rival mount systems in the shade.

 Once you’ve watched helmet-cam footage for more than five minutes you’ll realise the importance of changing shooting angles. You must do this to maintain interest without the viewer feeling that they are part of some Clockwork Orange torture experiment. The key here is to remember that long sections of uncut Point-Of-View (POV) filming are best reserved for moments of extremely high drama, or pornography.

 The full Prism kit comes with a massive and superbly well-designed selection of mounts, many of which I left at home simply because being able to swap from helmet to alternative, adjustable mounts front and rear of the scooter was enough. Take my word for it; whatever you need, from clamps to suction mounts, will probably be in the kit. 

WEATHER RESISTANCE

 The Prism has another advantage over most rivals in that you don’t need to use a waterproof case for slight inclemency. Sena claim it can handle 1-metre submersion without its clear plastic case, but that depends how securely you fitted its push-in rubber rear USB cover. On the few occasions it did rain when I had the camera fitted I suffered no water ingress problems. Having said that, I’ve read other reviews where enough moisture managed to get inside the Prism while raining to fog the lens. The tip to remove any fogging is to leave the camera in a bag of uncooked rice overnight to let Uncle Ben suck the badness out. For my part it simply made more sense to put the camera away when it was peeing down because rain riding footage is about as sexy as watching fat, old men in the shower. Maybe that works for you though. Weirdo.

 My test Prism did come with a waterproof plastic case but since I didn’t plan to go under the sea, I left it at home. Also, the waterproof case does not clip into the clamp-on helmet bracket like the bare camera does; which restricts its usefulness.

 For most adventure situations I reckon you could ride using the camera without its waterproof case, except perhaps falling off in a river. In which case you’ve got other things to worry about anyway…

BLUETOOTH AUDIO

 Here we come to the Prism’s killer feature. While straight helmet camera footage with a built-in microphone will almost always require some sort of over-dubbing in post-production (due to wind noise and engine drone) the Prism can take audio from Sena (or rival) Bluetooth headsets.

 The massive advantage of Bluetooth audio is that it allows you to narrate directly onto the video as you ride. I constantly used the Prism as a method of taking video notes about things I saw, or thought, while I was riding.

 A Bluetooth connection also allows you to commentate live during moments of action. I absolutely loved this feature because it creates footage that is far more interesting and immersive without any need for post-editing. Or rather, that would be the case if I could train myself not to be such a potty-mouth. Certainly few of my blue-tinged clips would gain a PG rating in the cinema.

 Kudos here must go to the absolute mastery that Sena have over the noise-cancelling effects of their intercom system. My Prism was paired to their 20S helmet to helmet intercom which builds on the many of the clever features offered by high-end rivals such as phone, FM radio and MP3 player integration.

 I was shocked at the 20S microphone’s aptitude at cutting out wind and engine noise compared to voice frequencies. During my trip I had a perfectly clear phone conversation with my wife while she was driving at 70mph in England (on Bluetooth car hands-free) and I was riding a noisy scooter at the same speed in Spain. The call quality was completely unimpeded by distance or mode of transport. Remarkable.

 When this Bluetooth audio is used as a track on the video clips, the voice clarity is almost spooky, with other traffic and even the scooter engine note being a faint buzz in the background. The only down-side of this microphone efficiency is that if you let the boom move far from your lips then even the narration volume can drop to a whisper, however there are multiple options to adjust sensitivity and even mix microphone inputs. Only once home did I read in the manual that you can feed the microphone output in your earphones; which would really help to set a voice volume. Studying manuals is not very ‘bloke’ but the fact I could soon work most functions without thorough instruction proved that the Prism operating system is quite logical.

 The other advantage of Bluetooth Headset integration is that the camera speaks to you to tell you what it’s doing. A female voice tells you what mode the camera is in or if the battery is low, giving you sufficient notification to swap another battery. It’s a brilliant feature, removing all the guesswork associated with other brands on non-connected camcorder.

BATTERY LIFE

 Stated battery life for the Prism is 2 hours filming with a live Bluetooth connection, but with the camera switched off for stops I could usually get a day’s use from three batteries with recording limited to notes and interesting riding sections. If you record every part of your ride you will chew through data cards (32GB microSD is maximum accepted by the Prism) and produce so much boring footage that editing will be a nightmare.

 A top tip for the Prism is to buy a universal 12-volt to 3.7v battery charger because this will allow you to charge spare phone or camera batteries from the bike while you ride.

 What’s that, you’ve bought an action camera / posh phone with just one permanently fixed battery? Then you need your head examining. Swappable batteries are still the way to go…

VIDEO QUALITY

 The Sean Prism shoots in full HD (1080p) at 30 frames per second or 720p at 30/60 fps in MP4 format. It also offers a choice of two shooting angles: normal and 140-degree wide angle. In my view the video output from the bright F2.0 lens is very good, with realistic colours and a decent transition times from bright to dark scenes. In addition to video recording the camera can shoot 3.5 megapixel stills or bursts. It will also take time-lapse recordings either as separate Jpeg images or as Benny Hill style videos.

 If you really want the ultimate in picture quality and a plethora of visual adjustment options then I still reckon the latest GoPros are ahead. But do you really need 4K cinema quality from a helmet cam if you don’t have a 4K TV?

 I reckon the vast majority of sports-cam users will be happy to find a setting that they like and leave the camera recording at 1080p. If you are the sort that rarely wants to mess with settings, and can’t afford to waste too much time post-editing then the Prism a real contender.

 Speaking of post-editing, GoPro – with its bundled software package – still has a major advantage over the Prism (and its peers) which does not include software for video editing. 

OPERATION

 The camera itself only has two rubberised buttons (Mode and Shot) which makes it very simple to operate, even with a gloved hand. Make a selection and the lady in your ear tells you what you’ve done. You can control the camera from the buttons on the Intercom system but I found it more natural to reach for the camera every time I wanted to record. This does however mean that all of my clips tend to start with a large gloved clutch-hand briefly obscuring the lens.

 Conversely, working through the settings menu with only two buttons and a tiny screen to guide you is clunky. Thankfully Sena have thought of that, and their handy Prism Camera app allows you to make settings adjustments direct from your Smartphone screen. It’s simple and works really well. One useful setting offered is ‘upside down’ for moments when you’ve mounted the camera in an inverted position, saving the need to flip the picture in post-production.

FLIES ON THE LENS

 Naturally, nothing is perfect, and the Prism has a number of small niggles, some of which Sena could potentially fix in future firmware or hardware updates.

 Possibly the most annoying aspect of the camera is that there is no simple way to check footage or frame filming ‘in the field’ since the Prism does not feature an integrated screen. This was also a problem with the earlier small cameras such as GoPro, but newer models with Wi-Fi connectivity mean that you can now simply view clips (or live-view) direct from the camera to a Smartphone screen. If Sena could add this feature then it would be a massive boon.

 From an imaging point of view I like the fact that the camera lens is not obstructed by another lens within a waterproof case, however at the moment the camera glass is not replaceable and therefore vulnerable to scratching unless the rubber lens cover is fitted. Incidentally, the footage takes on an eerie, horror feel if you forget to remove the lens cap…

 For me, the most irritating problem was that each memory card you install resets the file numbering sequence to zero. That way you can end up with several cards all with the same file names (e.g. PRSM0001.MP4) for different clips. If you aren’t careful when you back-up your cards then you can end up overwriting one lot of files with identically-named ones and accidentally losing your original clips. The Prism desperately needs an option for the file numbering to continue sequentially from one card to the next, just like my Canon camera does. Hopefully Sena can make a small adjustment to future firmware releases to fix that.

VERDICT

 The action camera market is still in a state of rapid development, with new and improved models coming along all the time. There will never be a ‘best’ action camera, at least not for long. There comes a point where you have to make a jump and join in.

 From my perspective the Prism offers the right combination of worthwhile features and output quality for what I want to do with my videos, particularly since live voice recording is a massive time-saving feature. Pixel-peepers who demand the highest video quality may still be better off looking at other brands such as GoPro. However, I want to spend my time riding, not editing endless Gigabytes of video in a darkened room so the Prism is perfect for my needs.

  Perhaps the biggest incentive is that Sena massively reduced the price of the full Prism camera kit from a-bit-too-expensive ($399) to very competitive ($249) in June 2015. The new price translates to €269 or a shade under £200. There is also a bare Prism camera option for €199 but that seems a bit pointless since the mounting kit is really one of the camera’s main strengths.

 Bluetooth voice-over will require you to own a helmet intercom of any brand. Sena’s all-singing 20S retails for a hefty $299 but offers improved integration compared to other systems.

 Note that Sena have recently released an all-in-one camera and Bluetooth intercom unit called the 10C which I originally thought would be a better integrated solution for touring. Now, having sampled the positioning flexibility and ease of battery swapping that comes with the Prism and separate Bluetooth headset solution, the latter still seems like the ideal set-up for touring.

Sticky


http://www.sena.com/product/prism/

Random quote:  ‘these lot were higher than a giraffe’s eyebrows’

In true vintage motorcycle style you need to give this book time to warm up before you get the best out of it. You tickle the carburettor on Scott’s early passion for bikes but it takes a while to kickstart into the world of despatch riding where the stories start to race like an urgent organ transplant delivery.

I’m too young to have ridden anything in the 70s that didn’t have pedals, so the reading detailed sections on a string of mostly-quite-crap-in-retrospect motorbikes feels very much like an apprenticeship. Reading that is an initiation before you get to the good stuff, but even from the start Scott's style is witty and engaging.

The book really takes off when Chris – ever the adventurer – discovers psychedelic drugs. By the 1980s he is living in various London squats, despatch riding in the week, enduro riding at weekends and planning winter off-road sojourns to the Sahara. All this is set against a backdrop of Thatcher-era politics in the capitalistic Yuppie-Capital that is vividly described in all its rotten-core glory.

Boring bikes like Honda Benly’s aside, the second half of the book contains some beautifully spun yarns that could only be from the ‘80s: the last festivals at Stonehenge before Thatcher’s crackdown on the ‘hippy’ convoys, and Chris acting as a getaway driver for Class War anarchists.

Maybe this book means more to me because I rode those same streets at the same time, and even plied the same reckless trade at the end of the decade. Gasoline gaucho by day and space cadet at weekends.

You don’t need to have ridden for a living to enjoy this book though. Simply having an interest in two wheels and surviving the 1980s is enough connection to get a lot out of it. Hell, there’s even mention of the riots at Keswick scooter rally in 1981.

I'm not the only one who enjoyed it. Ride Magazine have already awarded it Book of the Year, which is not bad going for February…


Review by stickyfeatures.co.uk

Price £8.99
ISBN: 978-0-9930465-1-3 
http://adventuresinmotorcycling.com/

With Kingston's MobileLite app you can back-up SD cards to any USB drive

ADVENTURE TRAVEL DATA HANDLING: MY WAY

How do you store data from video and camera cards while on the road, without the use of a laptop?

For anyone touring on two wheels and looking to travel light this is a really big question. It’s all very well shooting video of your ride but that HD video chews through memory cards quicker than a fat film fan munches popcorn.

The traditional way is to back up the cards to a laptop, but that’s a slow and laborious process that itself needs external power and is at the mercy of the hard drive space and ruggedness of your laptop.

While we have mobile phones that in themselves are powerful computers, taking a laptop seems a bit, well, excessive really.

So what are your options?

• Take loads of memory cards with you. Not a bad suggestion because memory cards are, small, light, solid state and thus fairly rugged. They also cost a fortune per MB of storage. 2TB (Terabyte) of storage in high-spec 64GB SD cards will set you back over £1000.
• Buy a mobile hard drive with a built in card reader. Something like the Western Digital 2TB Wi-Fi HDD (Hard Disk Drive) has a card reader built in and allows you to back up to the hard drive from a phone using an app. But this costs over £180 and what happens if you fill it up? You’ll need another one at the same price.

 
The way I found to do the job involves a clever bit of lightweight tech called a Kingston MobileLite (now £13.97) which allows you to load any SD card (or MicroSD via an adaptor card) and dump the data to any hard drive connected to the built in USB port. You can buy portable 2TB hard drives for around £60 which makes this by far the cheapest option.

I’ve used this method on the road and if you have a secondary source of USB power (from your bike battery or an external source) then this will work anywhere.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The MobileLite was really designed as a Wi-Fi media server, allowing you to stream data from drives to several connected devices. It contains a small built-in battery allowing it to operate autonomously. However the MobileLite app also allows you to view the folders on the SD card and to dump them to the drive connected to the USB port. Best of all, you can start this process on your phone and then wander off out of range and the process will carry on until it is completed. Brilliant.

How do you know that the transfer is complete? If your portable hard drive has a data LED it should stop flashing once the transfer is complete.

Once you reconnect your phone to the MobileLite’s own Wi-Fi network (which you can ‘piggy back’ to another Wi-Fi network so you can maintain internet connection where available) you can view images or movies on either the card or USB device and stream or copy to your phone.

FAILINGS

The first issue is that the inbuilt battery in the MobileLite is pretty small and spinning the drive inside a portable HDD soon sucks up the juice. The good news is that you can separately power the MobileLite (via a microUSB recharge port) while it is working, and/or you can use an HDD cable with a split cable allowing the hard drive to be powered externally. Both together will allow you to keep everything powered long enough for the biggest file transfer.

The second issue is a failing of the Kingston app and the slow pace of Wi-Fi connections in that it is difficult to tell which incomplete SD card folders have been backed up. For instance within my Canon SD card I’ll get folders called Canon_100, Canon_101 etc.

If you’ve already backed up a half-full folder to HDD then when you next connect the app you might have Canon_101 showing in both SD and USB folders on your phone, however there may be new data on the camera card if you’ve shot more photos. The app makes it difficult to select only the new photos to transfer to HDD for back-up. The solution is simply to copy the whole of the Canon_101 to the HDD again, which is easy enough to do. This overwrites the old data on the HDD - so be careful if you've edited anything and not renamed it.

DOES IT WORK?

Yes, like a charm. I used this system in while riding a vintage scooter around Eastern Europe and Turkey (see my Frankenstein Scooters... book) to back up both camera (SD) and helmet cam (microSD) cards to a 1TB portable HDD. These drives are still mechanical so need to be treated with some care, but they are reasonably rugged too.

Kingston has recently updated their device to the new Kingston G2 MobileLite Wireless Reader (available for £25) which I have not tested but I presume will do the same trick. Alternatively the older and smaller MobileLite for £14 is a bargain.

Review by StickyFeatures.co.uk

Excellent book about Michael Marriott and his wife riding overland from England to Oz on an NSU Prima scooter in the mid-50s. A fascinating insight into how far the world has moved since the immediate post-war decade, and yet in many ways has changed so little. You don't see many of these come up for sale, so it'll be worth grabbing a copy. Link is here.

I love story openings that slap you round the face with a leather glove, wake you from your routine and challenge you to continue.

The opening chapter of Into Africa is just that. It describes a harrowing incident in a remote part the continent where things go badly wrong, but Sam somehow manages to prevent them getting much, much worse.

I won’t spoil it for you, suffice to say that the first section invites you to ponder how would you cope with the same situation, and what you might do differently?

The charm of this book derives from the fact that Sam is very much a novice at the outset of the tale. Not to travel, but to motorcycling. The early chapters include taking his test, buying a bike and learning how to ride it before scuttling rapidly across Europe and a boat to Egypt in the 1990s.

None of these things are to be taken lightly, but Sam learns as he goes; by experience, by failure and often by asking the right questions of the right people at the right time.

I admire Sam’s journeys because they are honest. He isn’t sat alone in the bush barbecuing road-kill with a 40-person film crew stood quietly out of shot. This adventure was not primarily a charity-fundraiser, nor intended as a potential revenue stream. In fact, it took many years to become a book. Sam simply went because he was inquisitive. These are real tales of self-financed derring-do carried out either alone or with friends met along the way.

Africa has a permanently changing political landscape, and the book captures a period shortly before the fall of Apartheid in South Africa and end of the Eritrean conflict, when motorcycling through Sudan was very touch and go. Subsequently, for every famine, war or disease that is resolved in the cradle of man, others come to add more trauma to the Dark Continent.

What I found reassuring is that Sam proves that any obstacle can be overcome if you have persistence, patience and luck; though it would be wrong to say he comes away unscathed. Never mind, chicks dig scars!

Sam’s writing style is vividly detailed; offering descriptions that easily conjure images in your mind’s eye of the full African experience from unbridled natural beauty to pitiful squalor. Hidden within the imagery are valuable insights about life, happiness and the pros and cons of different societies.

I have no hesitation in recommending this book. If you are ready for the pleasures and pitfalls of starting a massive trip taken from absolute zero then Into Africa is a gripping rodeo ride.

Be warned, Sam’s journey didn’t stop at the Cape and you won’t want to either. There are three more books explaining what happens next…


You can find his books here