Ladies,
It took a bit longer than I would have liked but here is what came out of our very own meeting at STAR, held on Monday June 20th in Cape Girardeau:
Attendance was up from 2021, at 19 ladies (vs 9 last year).
We discussed some of the items I had included in the gift bags I made, especially the cooling towels, and signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and - God forbid - heat stroke.
Much enthusiasm and good ideas rolled around, the most important being that everyone approved of creating a Ladies' Gear exchange, to encourage and facilitate the wearing of safety gear by female riders and passengers in our club.
Ladies' gear is very much hit-and-miss, oftentimes it is less safe and of lesser quality than the men's equivalent;
Oftentimes things like shoes and gloves are not well suited to the female anatomy, but only "down-sized" male-fit items;
In the current state of the supply chain, gear suitable to ladies is often in short supply;
Those of us ATTGATT types have tried many garments and items of PPE before we were able to find what we liked and fitted us well, so we have a lot of gear in our closets that is perfectly good, hardly ever worn and good observations that could be of use to someone else who is faced with making a massive, from the ground-up purchase of everything at once;
There is also the case of our changing in size and/or in riding style forcing us to "park" some gear;
Long story short, we could start by simply listing what we have on this forum, help one another with our experience of these garments/PPE items, and contact one another directly when interested.
Three simple rules I would like for us to follow are:
1. for each downside we may list of a particular piece of gear, we have to list an advantage or benefit (other than "nice") so no gratuitous fawning or flaming
2. start the post with LADIES' GEAR - (specifics) in the subject line and do not post anything unrelated to gear exchange under this header
3. this exchange open to MSTA lady members/members of household only, and no price to be posted on the forum
This is all I can think of for the moment, please feel free to add, modify, comment and generally have at it!
Cheers, Tigger
PS if anyone is interested in the topic on passengering, send me a line
