Any women riders?

Hi Ladies,

I've been looking for a non-PU coated, 3/4-length, female-cut textile jacket that vents well for Summer, and thought I'd let you know what I found.

A BMW Santiago, which they stopped making years ago, but Max BMW's Amazon store still has some. I believe these were originally $575, and mine was $300 on Amazon. That's for the jacket shell only, though BMW does make an optional $260 Goretex liner. I did see a few closed sales on eBay for way less than $300.



The Santiago has really long sleeve vents, 2 chest, and 2 back vents. You can supposedly wear it in 100* temps and be reasonably comfortable. On the flip side, I hear it sucks as a winter jacket unless you really layer up. I decided I wanted to use a jacket made of PrimaLoft One for a liner. Primaloft is naturally water & wind resistant, is equivalent in warmth to about a 550-fill down but with less bulk, and it retains its warmth when wet, unlike down. Cabela's has their ladies' Mackenzie Range PrimaLoft jacket on sale for $60. It has 100g of PrimaLoft One insulation.




Fit notes for both items: I'm a size 8 with fairly wide shoulders. 36A or sometimes B if I've been eating good or it's that time of the month. Santiago: I tried sizes 38 (8) and 40 (10) in it. I liked the shoulder room the best with the 40, but the rest of the jacket was just too big. I won't be able to use as many layers with the 38, but it fit a lot better from the bust downward, so I went with that one. The 40 was going to be really big on me in the Summer without a liner. If you are busty or have even slightly fleshy upper arms, I'd recommend going up a size over your normal dress size. If you're not busty, have narrower shoulders, etc., I'd say it fits true to size. Cabela's Mackenzie Range PrimaLoft jacket: I ordered a Medium and Large and of course am exactly in between the two sizes. I'd say these run a little bit small. I went with the Large so I could wear a fleece vest underneath. The "smoke" color above is actually lighter than how it appears in the photo, and it's a beautiful jacket. It does not nip in at the waist, though, as it appears in the photo. I wish it did, and may try to put some elastic on the inside to make it do that, as I plan on wearing it a good bit as a regular jacket.

If anyone is interested, I'll come back with an update after riding with this combo. With the crazy weather we're having, our highs might be in the 40's one day and the 70's the next. I'll have to wait a bit for highs in the 100's, though.

Sorry to have killed this thread; I seem to be good at that. I just got excited and wanted to share, after ordering and returning 4 jackets and 2 liners, to have found something that might work for me as a 4-season jacket.

I appreciate your taking the time to let us know about it - you didn't kill any thread! (I'm much more of a lurker than a poster.)

You didn't kill the thread..
I peek in ...
But I have so many thread that I play in on ..
Sometimes I don't post in this one a lot...
But I have updated my thread

Whew, thanks for the responses!

I've got an all-day ride planned tomorrow and will get to test my new jacket/liner combo.

Cool I hope your new jacket works out for ya...

OK!

A friend and I rode about 200 miles today on county dirt roads, dirt & gravel National Forest roads, and some 2-lane blacktop in the central to Western parts of SC. I was on my DR650SE and he was on a DR-Z400. It was a beautiful sunny day, with temps ranging from the high 40's to the low 60's Farenheit.

I really liked the Santiago jacket. The armor was not noticeable and the jacket was very comfy. The two-way main zipper is a neat feature. The yellow & khaki color looked pretty good with my dark gray (which are actually dark green and black) Klim Dakar pants. I can tell that it will be an awesome summer jacket due to the amount of air it flows. The PrimaLoft jacket as a liner was fine, though next time if it will be below 50 or 55 degrees, I'll add a thin windblock liner from another jacket over the PrimaLoft. I wasn't painfully cold below those temps today, but felt the need for a little more wind blocking. I don't like dealing with two liners, but will either do that with this one or else just wear my Teknic Sequoia, which has a coated shell and is quite toasty. I took the liner out of the Santiago today when the temps got above 60. My next experiment with it will be a long ride when the temps range from the high 30's to the mid 50's, adding a windblock layer over the PrimaLoft as mentioned above. (I don't have any heated gear). So the verdict right now is Spring/Summer/Fall jacket? - "yes!"; Winter jacket? - "we'll see".

The first four photos are the only ones I took today, when we stopped to dislodge some gummy clay from the bikes. :eek1 We both had knobbies under there, I promise! I was just going too slow through that muck. Thankfully we had some 60 mph dirt roads earlier in the day to balance out the 30 minutes or so it took to deal with that clay. The other photos are from previous rides on some of these same roads.

Awesome!

where are the pix of your new coat?

On the cute, young, little BMW model a few posts back.

OK, here are a few:

color is good!

my guys are always giving me shit for my hi viz jacket and helmet..but the whiney little twunts admit that it's easy to follow me thru the woods!

I likes color!

Thanks for sharing your trip, and the jacket review. I'm always looking for the next thing "I need"

Looks like a nice jacket

Thanks for sharing your trip! That is some amazing clay gunk. Back when I would drive my little baja through Texas mud I had a special screwdriver dedicated to prying out the clay from the tires, wheel wells, etc.

Nice looking jacket too - that 4th season in a jacket is hard to get just right.

I put together a little video of some ride highlights between Oct. 2011 and Oct. 2012. It was a big year for moto travel covering three countries, eight states, 18K+ miles, and more wonderful friends, adventures, and SMiles than I can count. It's a bit on the long side but has some great music behind it... so get yourself a beverage, kick back, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together... some of the images evoked lots of other memories on various trips which may not show up in the video but they are forever etched upon my heart and mind... hope you enjoy it!

https://vimeo.com/57096350

I enjoyed your video; that was an awesome 12 months of riding!

I rode about 6 hours this past weekend with the Santiago, with temps in low- to mid-40's F. This time I added a wind/water layer in addition to the Primaloft. Not gonna try that again! The only way this jacket would work for me for winter, sans an electric liner, would be for me to have bought the bigger size in order to have room for thick-enough layers. Then I would've needed to wear it over a pressure suit in summer to take up some of the room. So I'm going to stick with my Teknic Sequoia for winter and save the Santiago for warm weather riding.

Hi Ladies - have been lurking whilst shopping, thought I belonged on the Versys Owners Forum - but *just* drove home yesterday with a new trailer, and a purty blue 2007 BMW F650GS to fill it. So I guess I'm not a Versys Owner at this time. But I AM a chick, so I guess this thread is where I belong! Um, one question - clicking the 'insert image' icon brings up box, asks for URL of pic - do I have to join Flickr or one of those? Is there a way to paste or bring up a photo from my Photo Library? Info or directions to info much appreciated.

Welcome samk ....

Hi all! I've lurked enough and finally joined. One more female rider here (even if I do only have one ride and it's a scooter). Don't worry, as soon as I can I plan to be adding another bike...just not sure what it will be yet. Glad to meet everyone!