Issue #241 If the Glove Fits... | Gloves, It’s, People, Hands, Them

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Issue #241 If the Glove Fits...

Written by Nancy Irwin
Thursday, 08 May 2008
Today a friend handed me a box of disposable rubber gloves, size small. For some reason he thought they’d work for him. But, they only half-covered his hand and they hurt putting them on. The box says 100. Guess I got 99. I was happy to get them though; I’d run out you see, and all I have left in the house are latex types, which have their place, but it’s not in the garage. Oil breaks down latex, and the chores I want gloves for all involve oil. Or gas. Latex gloves in contact with gasoline last about three minutes before they rip apart, leaving your hands exposed to toxic substances. Vinyl gloves work but they always seem a bit loose and sloppy, while nitrile brands have a different feel and seem to stretch better. Of course they are hard to find in Canada and, in Toronto, are available only at specific medical supply stores for more than twice the price of a box of their latex or vinyl counterparts. So why the gloves? There was a time—and not so long ago—when no mechanic would consider wearing rubber gloves; they were strictly for surgeons. There was also a time when people worked without respirators and in bare hands with flaky asbestos, adding water before forming it around pipes for its fabulous insulating and fire retardant properties. Then we learned more about asbestosis. Workers also once painted with heavy oil and lead paints without respirators or gloves, then cleaned their hands with solvent. Heard of lead poisoning? These days when you go to any quality garage you’ll find the mechanics, the young ones at least, wearing gloves; they’ve all learned more about the poisons they play with. But there’s another reason to wear gloves, and in particular to carry them. They keep your hands clean. These days many people buy new bikes every year and so never find themselves working on them, at home or at the side of the road. But we’re not all “in that tax bracket” as a friend of mine says. And even with a brand new bike things can go wrong. It could be as simple as rider error—a polite way of saying someone ran out of gas. Even if syphoning isn’t your thing—and gas in the mouth is even more toxic than on your hands—there’s still the very real possibility of getting fuel on your hands when you pull off a line to fill a container to splash into the other person’s tank. (Clearly it was they, not you, who ran out of gas!) While a little bit of gas isn’t exactly lethal, traces on your hands are then transferred to your gloves leaving you with a whiff of gas every time your glove goes to your nose ... I began carrying rubber gloves in my tool kit a few years ago. Then I started putting a few pairs in a small Ziplock baggie and duct taping that to my saddlebags inside lid so that they were out of the way but easy to access without even pulling my tools out. The end benefit of carrying gloves is that you can peel them off to reveal nice clean hands. They might carry the odour of the glove material for a while, but that generally disappears quickly. It’s so much nicer to put a clean hand inside your favourite riding gloves than ones that are greasy, muddy or stinky. After all, when and how are you going to clean the inside of your leather gloves? SPRING IS NOT ONLY A GOOD TIME FOR RIDERS TO HONE THEIR SKILLS, it’s also the opportunity to plan summer rides and think about events on the calendar such as the New Liskeard Bikers Reunion, June 27-30. The weekend-long event boasts an incredible number of activities and performances, all for $10 per person. The event website (bikersreunion.ca) promises high wire acts that would seem to be enough to make my stomach turn, a great big bonfire, “Motocross Olympics,” a big tent with tribute bands, and Harley demo rides. Sounds like an all-round great biker event. New Liskeard is located on the shores of Lake Temiskaming, about six hours north of Toronto, which would make for a lovely ride, especially if one meanders. It’s beyond North Bay on Highway 11, near the Quebec border, and will likely attract all sorts of people from La Belle Province. The Reunion is staged at the New Liskeard Fair Grounds, right in town, and is a cancer fundraiser. THIS YEAR, PORT DOVER, ONTARIO’S CELEBRATED FRIDAY THE 13TH rally(www.pd13.com) takes place in June. Nothing like a gathering of 150,000 bikers to kick off the season! It’s a big (free) event and these days many people arrive early on Thursday night to enjoy a sense of what this grassroots homemade get-together felt like when it first surfaced as a local thing in the 1980s. It’s really nice to go on Thursday night and stay over. There’s plenty of camping—or so it seemed when I was there last. Some keeners arrive as early as 6:30 a.m. on Friday—which to me is a bit extreme. Last year I stayed over on Thursday and got to sit at the top of Main Street with a cup of tea in hand watching the bikes ride by. Some people have complained it’s too crowded but it’s really amazing to see so many bikes in one place, all of them ride-ins. Port Dover’s Main Street provides the largest and most diverse bike show in Canada, with an assortment of club patches decorating jackets, covering outlaw to in-law and everyone in between. It’s educational to see how people attach their gear, and to check out their saddlebags and related riding equipment. Seeing squeaky clean product lines in magazines or at motorcycle shows is all well and good, but being able to take a look at them well-worn or custom made is just so much more interesting. Also at Port Dover will be vendors, live music, beer gardens, and plenty of restaurants serving local fish, staffed by people happy to see all the bikers, which I very much appreciate. There’s also a nice warm sandy beach so, if you feel stressed by sensory input overload, you can take a walk along the pier (Port Dover has a lengthy history as a fishing port), stroll across the sandy beach or drop your leathers and take a dip. If you plan right, Friday the 13th can be an enjoyable, relaxing small-town day. THE CANADIAN VINTAGE MOTORCYCLE GROUP’S BIG annual bike rally in Paris, Ontario (cvmgparisrally.ca) will also run on that June 13th weekend, which means there should be plenty of vintage eye candy on hand as the Paris Fairground is just up the road from Port Dover. I expect we’ll pop in either Friday or Saturday. So far June in Ontario is looking like excellent. Bring on 2008! Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment You must be logged in to a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.