Tour Master Venture Textile Overpants

Tour Master’s Venture pants offer the features you need for street riding or touring at an amazingly low price. The overall design is an “overpant” which means these pants have features that make it easy and convenient to wear them over your street clothes (although if you prefer to wear them just as they are they’ll work fine too). Down the outside of each leg there is a long side zipper. Sort of like chaps, this allows you to take these pants off without having to find a place to change clothes. With the zippers raised, you can step right out of them… even over boots. The shell is an abrasion resistant nylon material and beneath that is a waterproof/breathable liner to make them waterproof (although with the zippers, pockets and such I doubt they’d be completely waterproof). The breathability of the liner will help somewhat to keep them from feeling clammy (like plastic pants might). But even with a “breathable” liner, a pant like this will be hot to wear in hot weather, so consider this style for mild to cold weather. And the hearty commuter that goes out in very cold temperatures can take advantage of the removable quilted thermal liner. The quilted liner doesn’t have the side zipper feature so when you use the liner, you’ll loose the ability to step into/out of the pants easily. Too bad. Anyway, switching to armor… the armor in the pants is very good. You get CE armor in the knees and a foam pad in the hips. One neat feature is that the position of the knee armor can be adjusted up or down an inch or so in the pant to suit each rider’s leg length. Take the “View Larger Pictures” link above to see a good group of close-up pictures of this pant. For connection to jackets, there is a short rear zipper that connects to Tour Master and Cortech textile jackets. But if you don’t have that brand of jacket, you can use the mating half of the zipper (included with the pants) and visit a tailor to install the zipper in the jacket you own.