CHOOSING THE PROPER ADV BOOT
Guest:  Brian Price, owner of Atomic Moto (https://www.atomic-moto.com)Episode Summary:Join me as I chat with the owner of Atomic-Moto.com, Brian Price, to discuss everything you need to know about proper footwear for adventure riding. Brian shares his extensive knowledge about motorcycle boots, from their complex construction to size variations. We cover why a good boot is essential and how it can enhance control, reduce fatigue and even prevent accidents when riding off-road. You'll also hear Bret's personal experience with boots, including his initial purchase of an inexpensive boot, and why he eventually traded it in for a more suitable one.As we continue our chat, Brian tackles the challenge of choosing the right adventure boot, suggesting research into construction, different brands, and stretching your comfort level to get comfortable with the right boot for your riding. Whether you're a novice rider or a seasoned adventurer, tune in for an in-depth look at why investing in the right boots is an absolute must.
Full Transcript:0:00:15 - Bret TkacsWelcome to Around the Wheel with Bret Tkacs, and today I have a very special guest and I'm going to let you introduce yourself.0:00:23 - Brian PriceMy name is Brian Price and I am the founder and owner of Atomic-Moto.com.0:00:30 - Bret TkacsAnd today we're going to talk about a topic I don't think we can cover too often, and that is proper footwear, and really just dig through what's a good adventure boot when are we overdressed, when are we underdressed? How are these things built? I mean, you're kind of the boot guy, aren't you?0:00:51 - Brian PriceI try to be. I like to think of myself as that. I put more time and effort into studying them and understanding them and making good recommendations to people, so that's my goal.0:01:02 - Bret TkacsFor me, I know, when I'm teaching, one of my greatest concerns… when I'm talking about gear recommendations, people are always asking me well, how should I set up my bike, what tire should I have, what helmet should I wear, what gear should I wear? And the only thing I really get insistent on is footwear. I'm like if you come out to train with me, I want you to have the best protective footwear you can, because when we're learning, we're far more likely to put our feet on the ground, to get caught under the bike and to end up with those feet injuries. And to me, it's one of those places where you really do get what you pay for. You can buy a cheap Snell helmet and you can buy some pretty good entry-level riding suits, but when it comes to boots, at least in my opinion, you seem to get what you pay for.0:01:48 - Brian PriceThat is true for a lot of reasons. One of them is that a motorcycle boot is a relatively complex piece of gear compared to a helmet. A helmet is typically about 50 pieces total and the key pieces of a helmet - the shell and EPS liner are manufactured by machine, and a motorcycle boot is a minimum of 150 pieces and in the case of a some like the [Sidi] Crossfires, a pretty technical boot, that's probably well over 200. And there's a lot more machine… actually there's less machine labor, there's just a lot more human labor in them and more steps. It's a more complex process, there's more going into it, and I think that that's one reason why an inexpensive helmet works fairly well. But that sort of comparison doesn't work quite as well with boots.0:02:40 - Bret TkacsNow I know that as we go through life, often the lessons that we share to others, our greatest experiences, are the mistakes that we've made, and I am 100% guilty of this. When I first got into adventure riding - actually motorcycle, off-road motorcycle riding, I was actually my mid-30s. I started off like many riders: I went out, I bought an inexpensive off-road boot, realized that wasn't a really good decision, and then my wife had gone out and bought me a set of Alpinestars Tech 10s and of course that's their top of the line, top shelf boot. I was naive at the time and thought to myself this boot costs more than my helmet. This is ridiculous. I don't need to do that.I returned the boot and I didn't go all the way back down to the bottom, but I traded that Tech 10 in and ended up getting a Tech 7. And I do like Tech 7s. But I was naive at the time, not understanding why that boot was so expensive, and I think even now anybody listening to this podcast is probably wondering why are they so expensive? I mean, I can buy a suit or a jacket, sometimes for what I can pay for a pair of boots, and then to see boots out there that cost as much or more than my helmet. It's really hard to sometimes wrap your head around this. Why are we spending so much?0:04:03 - Brian PriceThere's many answers to that question. I can only hit upon a few of them. One of them is that the country of manufacture, the area where they're manufactured, is not a very low wage area, especially for some of the raw materials that are machined over there, like the buckles and things like that.0:04:23 - Bret TkacsMost of these boots are made in Italy, now, right? The good, high quality stuff?0:04:26 - Brian PriceYeah, I actually lived over there and I worked for Alpinestars actually when the Tech 10 was being developed and at the time several of the manufacturers were working on moving their factories just the production across the border into either Romania or Croatia because it was… not strictly because it was cheaper, but it was easier to get space. There were less governmental regulations for things like gluing soles on, it was easier to get workers. It was actually a little harder logistically, but at the time they were getting all the materials in Italy, from Italy, and then driving them across the border and dropping them off and picking up a load of boots and bringing them back. It's a fairly good system that actually works fairly well. The level of quality isn't really any different from.. despite what some people say, the level of quality isn’t really any different from manufacturing in Italy. But that's one area, one reason, excuse me. Another is…0:05:24 - Bret TkacsI think you mentioned just the complexity, the number of pieces. I had no idea that a Sidi Crossfire was upwards of potentially 200 different pieces. That's one of my favorite boots. If I'm going to get stupid, the Sidi Crossfire is my go-to boot. That's crazy. That's a lot of pieces.0:05:46 - Brian PriceIt is and that reflects their design philosophy, at least the one that they had when that boot came out. It's evolved a little bit but they're very focused on making the best possible boot that they can and ignoring any influences, financial or technical or otherwise, that would get in the way of them producing the best boot that they can. And other brands, other companies, have a slightly different design and product development philosophy. Gaerne, for one, I can see when they're producing a boot… you know they probably draw it out on paper and then they… typically you draw something out on paper and then the designer hands it off to the product team and then the product team tries to walk some of the stuff back to make it either easier to manufacture or less expensive to manufacture or sometimes better. But Gaerne and Sidi's philosophy is a little bit different. Sidi has moved with some of their later stuff a little closer to that, where there's fewer pieces and, for example, they're new Atojo or the X-Power, and that's just a kind of a reality and probably down into some arcane stuff that people don't really care about. But that's just one of the realities of developing a product.0:06:58 - Bret TkacsWe are talking about really high-end stuff and most of this that we're discussing right now is really motocross boots or professional level riding and enduro type stuff. Obviously, my audience is primarily adventure riders.I know, for me, one of the… we've kind of coined as a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing lately about wearing adventure slippers to class and a lot of riders show up in these boots and even though I send out an information sheet on how to select boots and what my recommendations are versus what the minimum requirement is, a lot of the riders show up with that minimum requirement, which really is that adventure boot, which to me, I consider a nice street touring boot that looks like a dirt boot and that's what a lot of those are.But this is something that I deal with all the time that they think that they're uncomfortable, that they can't manipulate the controls, they feel like they're wearing a snow boot and they just say, well, but I got this other boot and it feels so comfortable and I can walk around it and it looks really protective. I think compared to their street boot, it is and it certainly looks and feels a lot sturdier than the street boot. What's your take on, as we so jokingly call them, adventure slippers?0:08:16 - Brian PriceYeah, I think that you have nailed a very important part of riding gear. I don't know how to describe the category… and you did a really good job. Just before this, I watched your video on 5 Adventure Boots and you are talking to this ‘adventure slippers’ topic, which can be said in different ways. I say ‘wear as much boot as you want to tolerate’, and really what it is - first of all, is that the industry has done a terrible job of explaining to people how gear functions and what they really need, and what they do instead is they take the easy path of least resistance when selling footwear, which is driven by the way we buy our casual footwear.If you're going to buy a set of athletic shoes or hiking boots or anything that's not a technical piece of equipment, you choose that footwear based on how comfortable it feels, and what that does is it forsakes the design of the footwear, the boot, and you know, for example, if it's an off-road motorcycle boot, how much plastic does it have,
