As far as brands go, just avoid Icon (all style, no substance) and the cheaper Joe Rocket stuff. I am a fan of Alpinestars and Firstgear. Oxtar and Sidi make good boots. Boots become rather important when you get your foot stuck under the exhaust pipe on a crash (as a friend of mine found out) - get decent boots.
+1 on the Icon stuff. I dont normally like to diss a brand on styling issues, but CDN is corrent. The styling comes at the expense of actual quality of the gear. The sad part is that I purchased a pair of *very* sedate pair of all black Icon gloves and even though they were very cheap they were of unexpectedly bad quality (stiching seperation under normal riding conditions). Even their non-bling equipment is poorly made. I wont be buying anything with the Icon name at any price in the forseeable future.
Also, you might want to check out the "set-up" brand of boots. They are available from newenough as well as
http://www.motonation.com/ , which is a Sidi distributer. They appear to be an economy boot produced by the Sidi factory, they seem to have the same quality with fewer "extra" features (mostly comfort and appearance related), newenough has a pretty good write up on them.
I also wear sunglasses under my helmet. I work midshifts and its sunny when I go to work and dark when i go home, so its impracticle to wear a smoked shield. Just make sure to bring your helmet with you when you try on frames, you dont want the ear pieces to get pressed into any sensitive parts of your head or your going to end up with headaches while you ride. It is certainly do-able, although some people simply hate it, so try it out first.
Here is neat little helmet fitment guide from the scorpian website,
http://www.scorpionusa.com/fitment.html . DO NOT buy a helmet online, even with a sizing chart because peoples heads vary in more than one dimension and just because you fit somewhere on the chart doesnt mean that a particular helmet will fit you properly. This is the one-piece of gear that I always buy in person. If you are really cheap and feel like being a bit of a jerk, you can find a fitting helmet in a shop and then order it online, in the name of decency I advise you not to do this because I think its pretty low.
I dont personally think that jeans offer much of any protection. When I was a kid I blew the stiching on a multiple pairs during low-speed bicycle crashes, there is no way they are going to hold up in any kind of motorcycle crash. With that said I do still wear the sometimes, just with the knowledge that I am gonna get hurt if I crash, its a perfectly valid choice just be aware of the repurcussions (sp).
One last bit of advice... be pickey with who you ride with. I'm serious There are TONS of squids out there and they all think they are Wayne Rainey...oddly enough most ride, like they want to be Wayne of today,not the Wayne in 1993 prior to Milano.Italy.
I have seen several good riders be taken out by a squid that lost control of their steed while riding in a group.
VERY good advice. Its not just the out-of-control squids that you need to worry about. You also need to be wary of riding with very skilled riders who dont take your lack of experience into account. Rider-ability is the determining factor in the performance of any paring of man and machine. A rider who is even sitting in an identical machine to your own can enter a corner at a speed that you may not be able to handle, so be carefull of who you ride with and always "ride your own ride" rather than the group's if you feel like your getting in over your head. A good tip for finding a good group is this: a novice should *always* ride near the front of a group, you should be placed in the number two position if there are more than two riders, if you are with one other person you should be in front. If the group places you in the back it means they either dont know what they are doing, or plan on riding beyond the abilities of a novice, either way your not going to want to ride with them. Personally, I would strongly recomend against riding with a group for awhile because it does add a level of complexity to an already steep learning curve. The right riding partner *can* help you to improve more quickly, but the wrong partner can get you killed, and there is little means of telling the two apart untill one or the other event happens.
One of the best pieces of safety equipment you can get is Proficient Motorcycling by David Hough. The best way to survive a crash is not to have it. After you have completed the MSF course and have a machine to practice on this book can take a lot of mystery out of riding and provide some techniques to help you deal with the unexpected. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is the assumption that riding is a factor of "instinct" and this is simply not true. Yes, your instincts will allow you to sedatly move a bike from point A to point B, and if nothing unexpected happens and you make no poor choices you will *probably* be OK. The skills that help you to deal with everything else are learned behavior and without them your an accident waiting for a place to happen.
On a side note: The ABATE class should be fully compatable with the MSF class. I do have some problems with ABATE regarding their stance on helmets. I *DO* agree with them about helmet laws, legislating intelligence is pointless. However, they do take some tips from the anti-gun lobby and like to make up information about the "dangers" of wearing a helmet (yeah you heard that right), so if you get any of that, you might want to verify it from an independant source before accepting it as gospel. I have heard various nonsense from oxygen starvation to broken necks to lack of visibility, all of which is complete B.S. to anyone that knows what they are talking about, and it pisses me off that they are actually lying to people who dont know any better. So keep that in mind.
