New "Olympia" High Viz Yellow Winter Jacket

[Jerrod Maguire]

I recently picked up the new high visibility yellow winter jacket from the motorcycle gear manufacturer "Olympia". This thing sticks out like a sore thumb in a really good way. Costs about $300 and has a ton of features. I highly recommend it. The yellow color looks like it's plugged in when you see it in person. The jacket's quality is top notch - just follow the link below to learn more about the materials used. It comes in men's sizes too.

Here's the link:

http://www.olympiamotosports.com/ast_ladies/ast_ladies.htm

[TandemCyclist]

Yea, A lot of these guys talk about being seen with extra lights and all, but then you see a picture of them wearing dark cloths. Vicki and I went with the hi visibility yellow (hazmat, fire fighter color) several years ago when Aerostitch first came out with it.

I guess we are more worried about our ass than how we look.

[meese]

A buddy of mine finally got tired of being cut off by brain-dead cagers, so when rebuilding his bike yet again he painted it day-glo orange. It was ugly as sin, but he said it got people's attention.

Maybe not orange for a full-dress tourer, but how about bright yellow? Nah, that'd never fly. ;)

[simongs]

I commuted for 5 yrs on a mountain bike (a decade ago) had about 15k miles on it..usually hit a car or two every year. Seldom wore clothes, much less bright ones :)

After the last crash I had (gettin my face sewed up for a couple hours), I decided to keep my speed under 25 MPH to avoid these things.

And..I decided to try colors. I looked at colors on the road to see what showed up the best in-between all the diff color cars, red lights, signs, etc. I never road on the road unless i needed to get around something just for reference, used sidewalks and paths (MI sux for pedalbikes).

Picked up a hi vis green coolmax t-shirt from a bike shop and never seemed to have a problem with people seeing me on the road again. I never really road in the road unless I had to bypass a nasty field or something.

Ya, they do work if you can hack the colors...they reflect off my glasses too much for motorbike riding...thats my excuse at least :)

adios...geo

[Toolman]

For what it's worth...if you don't have an Olympia distributor nearby, you can buy directly from Olympia. I was looking into getting this jacket and matching pants, but don't have anything local to me. I then called BMW of Grand Rapids, MI (they are an Olympia dealer), but they don't have this new jacket yet, and won't until April. They also said that the price for these items in their store would be the same as the MSRP on Olympia website. So I emailed Olympia directly to see how I can get this jacket. Here is their reply;

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Karilea Rhea" <karilea@olympiamotosports.com>
Subject: Re: Can I buy Olympia jacket/pants online aywhere?
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:40:55 -0500

Hello John,
Unfortunately we do not have a dealer near you. It will be best if you give us a call. We can size you up and ship you from here.
Karilea