It’s not hard to imagine that it would be difficult to communicate with others when you’re riding your motorcycle. The only time you can talk to someone else in your group is when you come to a stop somewhere. And who likes to stop when you’re riding a bike? Other forms of communication like hand signals and such really don’t convey such messages as “your turn signal is still on.” And looking for signals takes away from concentrating on the road.

So last month I bought two FireFox throat mics to go with my motorola walkie talkies. Throat mics work by transmitting the vibrations of speech straight from the throat, instead of capturing them after they leave the mouth. This cancels out any background noise (like loud motorcycle engines).

The mic comes with a remote PTT (push to talk) button and the mic itself. So when I’m wearing it I have my walkie talkie in my jacket pocket with the remote cord going up my sleeve and the button on the side of my index finger on my left hand. This makes it easy to push with my thumb when I want to say something.

So yesterday I went for a ride with my brother down the coast starting at ocean beach. We made it down to half moon bay before turning back. As you can imagine I was excited to use these mics for the first time. But of course as it turns out one was broken. *sigh* So after the ride I went back to REI and exchanged it for a working one. Can’t wait for my next ride.