From: Kearney, Thomas <Thomas.Kearney@usa.xerox.com>
> I can't help you with the painting question but I do have some info
>to pass along. I recently attended an out of region event hosted by the
>Mohawk-Hudson Region (Albany, NY area). They provide loaner helmets that
>are BLAZE ORANGE! Yes, "cone" colored. Believe me, they stood out, and
>would prove very hard to walk away with (and use in public....imagine the
>embarrassment!!). I didn't catch the brand but they were open-faced, no
>visor. If you'd like I can try and find out where they got them.
When I bought my first autocross helmet, I bought an orange one on purpose.
Everybody had a white helmet in those days. I got a Bell 500TX helmet.
They were offered in any color you wanted as long it was either white or
boat-racing orange.
Think about it. If you raced a power-boat, and had some sort of incident
wherein you were hanging from your life vest in a white-cap chop waiting for
the rescue boat to show up, would you want to be wearing a white helmet? So
the boat-racing outfits, whoever they were, required helmets to be
International Orange. Bell was happy to sell them that way.
I decided to buy the boat helmet. It was the same Snell 1968 as the white
one, and I figured it would be easier to keep track of at an autocross. My
girlfriend of the time painted a couple of white stripes down the middle,
starting with the Bell oval on the front and ending with the rectangular
Snell sticker on the back. Then she painted my name in one-inch letters on
both sides.
When I went ice-racing, I wore my Dad's deer-hunting outfit. Red was still
legal in Minnesota then, so that's what had. With a red suit and orange
helmet, I was pretty easy to see in the snow.
So to make a short story long, maybe the boat guys still require orange
helmets, and maybe that's where Mo-Hud got them.
These days I have a nice boring black HJC. Does not have SAAB roof
insulation stuck on it like the Bell, but it does have some nice scratches
in the paint from scraping the fiberglass roof of the Lotus.
Phil Ethier Saint Paul Minnesota USA
1970 Lotus Europa, 1992 Saturn SL2, 1986 Chev Suburban
LOON, MAC pethier@isd.net http://www.mnautox.com/
"If I can do it, it's not art" - Red Green
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