While it may take me longer to think about what I might put into a video on "buying leather on a budget," let me address the question in a blog post. I'll get around to doing a video sometime later.
First very important point: do not buy cheap leather from on-line retailers that sell gear made in Pakistan or China. You'll be very disappointed. The leather is all shiny and smells great when you get it, but soon enough, the garment starts to fall apart at the seams. The leather discolors. Hardware rusts. Leather stretches. Blemishes become obvious. So by all means, before you buy leather (especially from on-line vendors), ask about the origin of the leather and where the product is made. If the leather is from Pakistan or China, then forget about it.
The good stuff uses leather made in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Germany, Mexico, or South America (to name most, but not all countries that produce quality leather).
You can usually tell quality leather origin in two ways: vendors of the good stuff will tell you on their website and on a label in the garment what the source of the leather was. You can also make a good guess by the price. If a price seems too good to be true, such as a pair of chaps or leather jeans for about US$100, then run! Something's wrong -- usually with the leather, but also with the construction.
Usually, leather garments sized in off-the-shelf sizes will fit "okay" but usually will hang funny on regular people who are not built like buff models used in photos on websites. The gear may sag or pucker in the wrong places -- such as off-the-shelf chaps may pucker around the crotch. The gear may be cut to fit men of different heights, and close with snaps along the bottom (many off-the-shelf chaps come that way.) The trouble is, chaps that are not hemmed, but rather are cut, eventually fray at the bottom and don't look right. Or the snap closures are bulky and they eventually oxidize, too, so they will not close correctly in a year or two.
The difference in cost between quality off-the-shelf, sized-for-the-masses leather and custom leather gear really isn't that much. But the fit is astronomically different. A good pair of quality chaps from any of the vendors listed on my website links page can make you great stuff for market prices. Yes, some of those market prices may seem very high. Shop around. Wait for sales. Usually leather vendors offer sales in advance of the holidays.
Oh, one other thing: don't buy a license. Huh? What I mean is, don't buy leather that has a Harley-Davidson logo on it and think you have a high-quality product because you were charged an arm and a leg for it. Check the label in the garment -- you may see a label indicating country of origin as being China, Indonesia, or Pakistan. You see, when a company that has a well-recognized brand name allows its name to be used in a line of related products (such as H-D branded leathers), the Motor Company is licensing the use of its name for that purpose. So what you're doing is buying a license rather than getting even better quality gear for the price. That's why you see me -- a Harley-riding guy -- with "non-label" gear and no H-D brand on it. I have the brand on my bike, and that's where it should be. Not on my lapel.
Back to the subject -- interested in leather gear on a budget? Save your money. Shop around. Use the vendors listed on the links page on my website. Wait for sales.
It is better to wait and buy the good stuff than go for the cheap and have it fall apart soon and look like a sack of potatoes when wearing it.
I wish I could offer some better news on how to buy leather, but the moral of the story is to buy the good stuff, and wait if you have to so you can afford to get quality gear that will last a long time.
Life is short: wear quality gear!
Woo-hoo! Sunday (yesterday), I spent the day on my Harley having fun!
The day began early with some motor officer buddies who are practicing for a major competition next week. I watched their practice and judged their riding like I would judge it in the actual event (which I will do next week.) It was great to observe such graceful handling of heavyweight motorcycles. I will post photos of the actual competition when I participate in judging it.
Then later in the morning yesterday, I led a motorcycle ride for my club through the Maryland byways and back roads. It was perfect "leather-weather!" Nine brave souls had the courage to follow me on a ride. (I say "courage" because my reputation for getting lost is legendary.)
We swooped through curves, rode up and down gentle sloping hills, and beheld vistas of the late-summer farm fields, barns, horses, and dairy cattle. It seemed like every turn brought another view of my lovely home state that was better that the one before it. I tell ya, it was stunning.
What did I wear? With mild but coolish temperatures, I chose to wear my retro leather chaps over a pair of lightweight leather jeans. I had the leather jeans tucked into Wesco Motor Patrol boots, which are very comfy. On top, I wore my gray short-sleeve leather shirt (with black accents) and my motocross jacket, which has my club colors on the back. I was perfectly warm, but not too hot.
Did anyone say anything to me about my wearing all leather? Nope, except for one guy who admired the shirt and jacket and asked me where I got them.
I had a great late summer but Fall-feeling day on the Harley with my friends.
Life is short: get out and ride!
Really?
I guess his smart phone is smarter than he is, because it directed him to two entries on this blog. The searcher spent almost 20 minutes on this blog, looking at only two posts (here and here). Hmmmm...
But these were not the posts that address the question, in my opinion. This one or this one would have been better.
Anyway, back to the question: How do gay guys wear their boots?
...on their feet like anyone else.
Sheesh. There are two ways one can look at this question:
1. A guy who is gay and on the "bubble," that is, he's not ready to come out yet, so he is wondering if how he wears boots may give away his sexual orientation. That's bullshit -- all guys wear boots the same way. Boot-wearing has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Contrary to stereotypes, gay men who wear boots do not prance around on their tip-toes.
2. The question was entered by another homophobe who in some idiotic way thinks that gay guys wear boots differently from anyone else. I shall refrain from making remarks about the origin of the query or the intelligence (or lack thereof) of the person asking such a question if it were asked with this intent. If he thinks for a moment that gay guys wear boots differently from anyone else, he has been indoctrinated too long by the culture in which he has been exposed all his life. So sad.
Life is short: give benefit of the doubt, but do not suffer fools; if they are old enough to have an Android phone and pay for it's monthly ransom, they are old enough to be better educated.
The air temperatures around where I live in the DC 'burbs of Maryland have dropped considerably. When I left for work yesterday morning, it was 44F (6.7C)! Whew! Time for a warmer jacket and my warm retro chaps! Gloves! And insulated motorcycle boots!
I love this time of year. Crisp, sunny, dry days with cool, snuggly-with-my-man nights. Perfect.
Anyway, the mornings of just hopping on the Harley and taking off for work in whatever-I-am-wearing (shirt, pants, boots) are over. While it's nice not to have to take more time to put on additional layers and then take them off and secure them upon arrival at my destination, I still love autumn and enjoy what I often refer to as, "leather weather."
Yesterday morning, I tried out my new gray leather motorcycle jacket. It felt great. Lots of room to maneuver yet tight enough to keep the wind out and keep me warm.
As any visitor to the leather jackets section of my website knows, I have a variety of jackets from which to select. The lighter-weight jackets are worn when the temperatures are in the low 70s (22C), the mid-weight jackets are worn when the temps are in the mid-50s to 60s (15C), and the heavier jackets that have zip closures on the wrists and close all the way up to the neck are worn when it's cooler than that.
I plan to ride to work this year up until the temperatures reach freezing. I will not run the risk of hitting a patch of ice, which at the time I leave for work in the morning, I may not see because it is always dark.
But meanwhile, "leather weather" is here! Woo-hoo!
I was reading a blog post by a police officer who described whether it was good or not good to talk about the job with one's spouse, girl/boyfriend, or in my case, partner.
There is one school of thought that you should keep your job at your job and not talk about it at home. The officer's line of thinking was the opposite, and is consistent with my own. That it, he said, and I feel the same way, that "holding back what happens to you at work will eat your soul and will be the demise of the greatest reward of your personal life -- your marriage" (or in my case, all I'm allowed to call it is "my relationship" because I am prohibited from marrying the man I love. But that's another story for another time....)
Further, he said, "Too many first responders equate their whole identity in being whatever it is they are professionally. All too often, we are guilty of paying more attention to our lives at work than the one at home." He concluded that paragraph by saying, "It's like cheating on your family." That statement caused me to ponder, and agree very much with his profound insight.
While I am not a first responder, I can directly relate to what he said. I had a soaring career for almost 20 years with a respected national organization. I realize now in hindsight how "married to the job" I was. I lived and breathed that job every moment of every day. One may call that behavior "dedicated." I learned later that being so dedicated was taking me away both physically and spiritually from my best half -- my partner.
Bad things would happen on the job, and I would try to suck it up and say to myself, "I'm not going to burden him with that bullshit." But I would dwell on that crap in my mind, and it would affect my whole demeanor in how I related to my best half, my family, and my friends.
I kept rationalizing, "I have a life outside of work. I deal with work at work and can leave it there, and have a life with my partner, family, and friends outside of working hours." I was fooling myself. That was the biggest lie I ever told -- and worse, I told it to myself so much that I believed it for 20 years.
Things came to a head with a major conflict at that job in late 2004. I was so angry and frustrated with daily garbage that when I came home, I unloaded my emotions in unhealthy ways. If my partner didn't love me as much as he does, I'm sure he would have left me. But instead of fighting with me about my personal issues, he became the listener that he is and asked me questions in a gentle way to probe what exactly was going on. So I let it all out. What I had bottled up came flowing out in a torrent of yelling, screaming, and a lot of tears.
Sure, I made some mistakes and that led to this conflict at work. But my partner, being the loving, caring, man that he is, never once said that I did anything wrong. He defended me with absolute certainty that I was right and to hell with everyone else at the job who were making me so miserable. Within a week of finally opening up to him, I quit a job that was eating me alive.
My situation had gotten to the point of "my job or my life" and it was an "either-or." There was no compromise. No middle ground. My partner never threatened to leave me, but made it clear that my behavior was making me very difficult to live with. But more importantly, he pointed out what I was failing to see -- that my misery was affecting not only my mental health, but was making me that negative person that I never would want to be. He sort of held me to a mirror and said, "is this the man you want to be?"
He was so right. His intervention saved my soul, saved our relationship, and saved my sanity. Quitting a job that I thought I loved was the best thing in the world I ever could have done. And it would probably have happened sooner had I talked with him about it years earlier.
I am a fairly resilient man. I also know that my ability to bounce back to the man I want to be is absolutely dependent on communicating with the best reward of my personal life -- my partner.
I communicate a lot with many people, but there's nothing on the level of communication with your partner that is the same. Sure, my twin brother can read my mind and my senior pals are sensitive to share their wisdom. My siblings are close, listen well, and love me, "regardless." It's wonderful to be surrounded by people who "have my back." But there's nothing quite the same as your spousal-equivalent being there to listen, support, and ... as I always say,
... show those you love that you love them.
I definitely agree with Motorcop: "Communication is key." Keeping the dialogue going maintains a healthy relationship with your best half and maintains the integrity of your soul. Thanks, MC, for such a terrific and insightful blog post.
I am a masculine gay man. Here are my "signs" --
Life is short: know your signs.
Yep, it's that time of year again -- in the last four weeks, I have attended 23 birthday parties within my family. Yikes! And there are four more parties this coming weekend! Double-yikes!
No, I do not have 23 siblings. 14 of them are enough, thank-you. Some of these parties were for nieces, nephews, and "The Greats."
I tell 'ya, I am all "caked out." LOL!
It's nice to see all the members of my family who live within driving distance of my home (not all of them do -- I have family scattered around the country and the globe!) One might think it is a bit too much. For me, no... but it does keep me busy riding from place to place. However, I love it.
With such a large family, we do not exchange presents. I give a card, a warm hug, smiles and good cheer. I think I may be among the few who knows everyone's names and their ages... but I have a little secret. I am the keeper of our Family Tree, and I reference it before I go to one of the parties.
While I have attended 23 such festivities over the last four weeks, I have not attended all of them. Some were far away, some were at very inconvenient times, and some conflicted with others.
That's okay... we love each other and do our best to keep in touch, even though this Uncle Martian Dinosaur still refuses to get a data plan on his cell phone and exchange text messages. The younger ones do not use email or the phone, so I communicate with them via Facebook. One way or another, we remain closely connected.
Life is short: show those you love that you love them!
In an uncharacteristic departure from my usual happy, peppy self, this is a "rant warning." Here goes....
My "bootedman" website went down when there was a server issue at Hurricane Electric on September 4. They were unable to resolve it quickly enough for my preferences -- eventually, it took them 60 hours to fix it.
Because I had encountered numerous times of service outages (but none as long as the last one), I decided to migrate my website to a different web host, "DWHS Hosting". It took about eight hours to migrate my site on September 4 - 5, and it got up and running nicely and seems to run quickly. So far, so good.
However, I learned on September 5 (which was a U.S. national holiday) when I had a technical problem that their customer service is unacceptably slow. You cannot call them on the phone -- you only get a recording saying how important your call is, and promises that someone will call back. They never did.
Then on September 11, I encountered another serious problem, and submitted several "support tickets" to explain what was going on -- only to get a reply via email many hours later with no solution and blameshifting the problem to my ISP.
On September 12, I submitted more updates about the problem, and I finally got a response asking if I had Skype. Sheesh... I don't want to Skype with anyone -- I just want the problem fixed. Arrrggghhh! Okay, don't use DWHS web hosting. Their service works fine when it works, and as long as you do not need technical assistance. If you do, forget about it. They have poor customer service. While DWHS is U.S.-based, I think their "customer service" is only one person. I have had to migrate my site again to another web host.... uggghhh. I hate this. What a mess.
I would go back to Hurricane Electric in a heartbeat if they could give me a better promise of up-time. But they are honest, and cannot make such promises.
Before finding another web host, I called the potential new company's support line to test it, as well sent them an email. In both instances, I received a prompt and courteous reply by a U.S.-based, English-speaking human being. How refreshing!
By the way, if you sent me an email or tried to use my "write to me" page on my website yesterday, the email may not have been received or the mail form may not have worked. Please try again. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Life is short: keep going until you get it right and get some form of response in a timely manner.
My partner and I had a great time visiting the Maryland Renaissance Festival on Saturday. We saw some interesting shows, a jousting competition, and strolled around the grounds. There were a lot of vendors (mostly for food). A couple vendors carried leather products, but of the nature of which I was not interested.
A few people dressed in period costume, but most attendees were the typical family with kids in tow... wearing shorts and sneakers... and a few of those awful flip-flops and crocs. I saw only one other guy (who was not a performer) wearing boots.
What did I wear? A pair of brown leather jeans tucked into tall brown Wesco harness boots. I chose not to wear a leather shirt or vest, because it was very humid and rather warm. I am not one of those who "gets into Ren Faire" by dressing in some form of costume, but it was fun to see those who did.
All-in-all, it was a nice way to spend a warm (and finally sunny) late summer day.
Today, September 11, 2011, I am under a rock. Or at least I want to be.
It is very hard to describe why I want to check out today, ten years after the heinous attacks that occurred in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and who-knows-the-intended-location for the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The local and national media have been droning on and on about the ten year anniversary of these events (it is not one thing -- not "9/11"!) I tell 'ya, I just don't want any more reminders of that tragic day in America's history. I truly regret that so many people were killed by senseless acts of terrorism and am sorry for the families and loved-ones of those who died, including the brave rescuers who were trying to save lives but lost their own.
I did not lose anyone in those attacks, yet I was personally affected -- permanently. I spent months in New York after the attack there from mid-September, 2001, through the following March providing direct long-term assistance. The personal stories, the sights, and even recollection of the smell (of burnt electrical insulation from the buildings that were destroyed)... all of that haunts me to this day. That is why I plan never to go back to New York City... too many bad memories.
Why do I want to be under a rock today? Mostly to deal with my own memories and observe my own way of recognizing those who died and their families in a respectful way. But that's it. I do NOT want to see images again of the attacks, the destruction, the buildings on fire or collapsing, or of the people and families affected. It just hurts too much -- plus, the media hypes stuff up so much to get ratings that they lose all meaning of what a respectful recognition should be.
I'm done. September 11, 2001, is a date which will live in infamy, even if the rest of the world still calls it 9/11 and forgets about it on 9/12.
Further, another reason that I want to check out today is that my Mom died on September 11, 1998. This date has many bad memories for various reasons, and I would rather remember my Mom's warm smile, her touch, and her lessons than any darn stuff that the media may be doing.
Life is short: remember those you love, and show them that you love them.
