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Chance encounters between people have had a real influence on what has happened historically in the past, and it’s one thing that is guaranteed to continue to happen. I had a chance encounter recently. I was riding my ‘classic’ Cannondale Prophet recently along a trail of the South Mountain range, which overlooks Phoenix in Arizona, USA, when another rider comes alongside and greets me. We ride on together for a while in the warm sun, chatting easily and finding several interests that we both apparently shared. At some point, we stop, and my new friend, Tom Parker, who clearly never misses a marketing opportunity, comments on my riding gloves. He then shows me what he is wearing and explains the benefits of his gloves. The gloves, as his riding shirt, have the TAKK logo emblazoned upon them. I ask Tom about the brand and its story, and it turns out that he is the founder, and that each letter of the brand is the first letter of his and his three kids names. You can read the full story of the brand and the products on the TAKK website using the link at the end of this post.
We have such a good connection after our brief encounter that we ask someone on the trail to take a photo of us together. Tom offers to provide me with a pair of his gloves before I return to the U.K. and I also buy 3 additional pairs for my 3 ‘Musketeers’ riding friends.
TAKK have a strong range of colours and designs for their glove range, as well as having other adventure wear. I used my new TAKK gloves on my last Arizona ride and found them really good in the heat with the special fabric that the palm panel is made of. The thumb pad also opens my phone up easier than some other big brand gloves I use, and the TAKK logo on the palm is the grip-glue that keeps hands connected to the bar grips without any slipping. Tom reckons that the fabric on the palm will wear out before the grip-logo will, such is its quality of ‘gripiness’. In addition, yes, there’s more; the gloves come in a sealable pouch, which doubles as both packaging and a waterproof pocket to keep phone and keys dry on a ride as well, so top packaging sustainability by Tom and the TAKK team.
What was doubly interesting for me is that the TAKK gloves have been tried and tested not just on a mountain bike, but on enduro and motocross motorcycles as well. This means that I can use one type and brand of glove with the same critical benefits for mountain biking, motocross and trials. What remains to be tested are the gloves’ ability to perform in UK conditions e.g. wet, cold, mud etc etc, and this brings me to the next part of this post.
I return to the UK and on my first ride out with The Musketeers, I present the three of them with their TAKK gloves. I chose the patterns and colours to match each of them, so Scottish Stew’ gets the tartan pair, even though it’s not his family one. Italian Dario gets the colour block set cos’ he never wears anything that matches, so at least the gloves will connect with any colour kit he does turn up in. Lastly, Nigel gets a pair that are the same as mine and I reckon they’ll double up as cool driving gloves in his trusty VW Passat diesel estate car.
The Musketeers are pleased with their gifts (partly because they’re free😂) and we take a pre-ride photo of us all wearing them. Our ride out together is in conditions very unlike that of my last Arizona ride with these gloves. The temperature is just above freezing and we start the ride just after the big yellow thing in the sky has popped over the horizon. Yes, it was actually sunny! Today’s ride is a ‘rolling terrain one’, and which takes in open moorland, woodland and has a finale climb on a small road which is only about 1 mile in duration, but does get to a 25% gradient.
To be clear, the TAKK gloves are not designed as UK winter gloves, and as it was cold enough to require us to wear two pairs of gloves, we all wore our new TAKK gloves underneath a thicker pair. Whilst I’m sure these gloves weren’t designed to be under gloves, they did work really well and provided perfect comfort and grip underneath the outer pair. The rest of the Musketeers shared my view of the comfort, the nice wrist cuff, as well as the thumb fabric for opening up our phones. We did actually use this thumb feature quite a lot as even though some of us had done this ride before, we did actually/bizarrely/stupidly get lost, and nobody either had phone reception or had downloaded the full map! Anyway, we found our way around with a short and very muddy detour.
It’s always important to remember to keep gloves on at the end of the ride as we load the muddy bikes into the van, as this prevents hands getting dirty, wet and cold, as well as having something to grip the frame with as the bike is lifted into the van.
We didn’t have any chance encounters on this ride, even at the bakery on the way home as we tucked into bacon rolls and capuccinos. The TAKK gloves were given the ‘thumbs up’ and Nigel said he’d use them in winter under outer gloves on his road bike as well. When the temperature gets into double figures, we’ll be able to use the gloves as they’re intended, and I’m looking forward to using them when riding motocross and trials as well.
Here’s the link to TAKK Adventurewear: https://takkadventurewear.com
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