After that fateful trip this past summer, during which my Ninja decided it didn’t want to vacate Montana and fried its regulator rectifier at the side of the highway and led us into an adventure to get it home to Vancouver via a flatbed truck to the border, the back of my brother’s pickup truck from he border to Cranbrook, and via a U-Haul from Cranbrook to Vancouver for a very expensive repair…I also dumped my helmet for the first time…..
However, it was also eight years old and in need of replacement.
So……..
When Isha (the bike) was in for repairs I perused helmets and toggled the Shoei RF-1400.
My first helmet, for PeeWee, was a Scorpion modular helmet. Fine for a few months until I understood helmets and fits a bit better. When I bought the SV650 I also bought a new helmet, a Shoei RF-1100. Awesome helmet and I loved it for a good five or six years.
I flipped to a Bell and it was a good helmet, it just never really fit my head right. Some days it was fine, other days I just wanted to tear it off my head because of the odd pressure points it aggravated. So it wasn’t a terrible thing that I dropped it and broke the shield in Kalispell.
Inconvenient…definitely….but not awful. The helmet was eight years old and in need of replacement anyway.
I gravitated back to the Shoei, which always fit my head shape better, and really liked this graphic helmet. Not available until December, so I bought a new shield for the Bell and ran it out for the rest of my 2023 season. So I ordered it in August, and was promised a pretty decent price; $200 off list price. Burnaby Kawasaki didn’t exactly lose money on me this year with two services and one hell of a repair.
I got a call two weeks ago that the new helmet had arrived and today we finally made it out there to pick it up.
We walked in to a relatively quiet dealership; one salesman was talking to two redneckish guys…the other fellow nearer to the back of the shop. Both said hello, the second fellow smiled at both of us, looked at me and asked how he could help us.
See, this is why I love this place. Most motorcycle dealerships ignore women or assume they ride on the back. This fellow made eye contact with me and addressed me first. Granted, I was in front and probably looked like the one looking for assistance, but still.
I said “Hi, I’m picking up a helmet“
He said…”Are you picking up a Shoei RF-1400?”
“Perhaps an Origami graphic version?“
I said “Yes!”
He said “Is your name Paige?“
I said “Yes, yes it is!“
He said “One minute, I’ll be back.” and disappeared into the back.
When He came back he put a Shoei box reverently on the counter and said “I’m Sebastian, what do you ride?“
I said “A Ninja 1000“
He said “Ah, I love that bike!“
The he looked at Kirk and said “Do you ride also?“
And this is why I love this place!
It wasn’t assumed that I ride on the back. It wasn’t assumed that Kirk was the customer. This shop has been servicing my bike since I bought it in 2013…and I didn’t buy it from them. I bought it elsewhere because I got a good trade-in on my Suzuki SV-650, and I immediately brought it to Burnaby Kawasaki for its first service, and I’ve been loyal to them ever since. They have never treated me poorly, they have never been anything but respectful to me, and they have always treated me as a rider first, and a woman second.
He pulled out the order and told me that the price had gone up, but that they would honour the quote from five months ago.
He told me that he’d taken the helmet out a few times between the time it had come in and I’d arrived to pick it up. He asked me if he could tell me a bit about the helmet and it was apparent that he really, like I mean REALLY is loyal to Shoei helmets! He walked me though features I was familiar with, gave me a really good tutorial on the removal and replacement of the face shield (which I was grateful for because it’s not as easy as my old RF-1100 or my Bell!), and told me that if you drop/take a hit with a Shoei they will let you ship it to California, where they will disassemble it, check all the parts, check the integrity, and send it back to you with thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or not the integrity was compromised by the impact.
I did not know this.
I tarted it up a bit with a spectra blue mirrored visor and, without asking, Sebastian gave me a discount on that as well. I thought I’d wanted the flame orange visor, but the blue looked so much better against the helmet than the orange did….so blue it was.
Again, I can’t plug this place enough. Their sales team is awesome, their service department is awesome. Fabulous place that has never given me even a smidgen of gender bias.
Anyway….new lid…and now I just want to ride dammit!
Spring can’t come soon enough…..
