getting music while on my motorcycle

I'm getting ready to go on a six day motorcycle ride through Northern California, Oregon and maybe parts of Washington, to boot.

For my birthday a couple weeks back, Left Coast Mom and the kids gave me a great gift: Iasus Noise Terminator in-helmet speakers for my Shoei RF-1000 helmet. Since I'd chosen not to get the optional radio/CD unit for my BMW R1150RT, my long rides have been rather quiet affairs.

Now, I've been riding motorcycles for 19 years, and one of the things I've always pined for is the ability to take music with me on the road on the bike. No good road trip is complete without a soundtrack, right?

However, I've only ever tried using my daily ear buds inside my helmet(s), and it's quite the painful experiment since the ear buds are so thick and my helmet is so tight. I've even drawn blood from scratching my ears trying to get the frickin' helmet off once I realize there's no way I can stand the pressure of the ear buds pressing against my drums. Now that I'm using Shure e4c ear buds with my iPod, I know there's no way I can get the helmet over those without really tearing my ears up, literally. So I don't try. I ride in silence instead.

Enter: these IASUS 3D Bass Helmet Speakers. They're less than 1/2 inch thick, and they mount directly to the helmet. To boot it's as if they're made specifically for my RF-1000 helmet, as right behind where my ears sit inside the helmet, there's a patch of vinyl that the IASUS speakers fix onto perfectly. They have a ring of velcro that glues into this spot, so I can take the speakers out when I'm doing short (music-free) rides, or don't want to be bothered with the wires hanging out.

The speakers come with a cord extender that has its own volume adjuster, so even with my thick motorcycle gloves on, I can turn the volume up and down while the iPod stays snug inside my jacket's inside pocket, safe from the elements.

Installation took all of 2 minutes to peel off the tape covering the velcro glue backing and press it into the helment. When I test-drove the speakers wearing just the helmet out the back deck, the sound inside the helmet was nice, but I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to hear the music once I got out into traffic. On top of that, I wear foam ear plugs whenever I ride, so wouldn't that block out even more of the sound?

I just had to give it a whirl, so I suited up, put in my ear plugs, donned the helmet, fired up the iPod and took off.

Much to my delight, the IASUS speakers are the perfect pitch for helmeted riding. The foam ear plugs block out enough of the ambient sound that the music comes streaming through clearly at neighborhood speeds (up to 35 mph) even with my helmet visor open.

The real test came when I accelerated to get onto I-280 near our house, and the IASUS speakers passed the freeway riding test with flying colors. Even when I was doing 80 mph (I mean 65 mph!) with a decent cross-wind, I could hear the music clearly over the motor, the street noise and the breeze. Not in a WHAT-I-CAN'T-HEAR-YOU!!?!? way, but in a nice, mellow, this will be entertaining background noise on that first 12-hour day in the saddle kind of way. I've got over 40 Gb of music to run through on the ride to and from Oregon, so I'm not worried about running out of tunes.

The real test for the IASUS will be if I can listen to podcasts in my helmet without missing any content. If I can, then I'll be able to catch up on my outstanding books-on-tape on the way to ride the twisties of the Pacific Northwest.

Next post: my experience installing throttlemeisters on my motorcycle (think: cruise control for motorcycles).

Only 10 days till the road trip!