Saturday, October 26, 2013

Improvising

This morning I left the house with liner gloves and bike gloves. Wearing the liners under the bike gloves has been good enough. But this morning was the coldest yet. I wished I had gone for heavier gloves or brought shell mittens.

Fortunately there were a couple of plastic bags kicking around the car.
The emergency overmitt
One of the bags was only a zippered sandwich bag. Even the other more generous bag made shifting and braking difficult. Before any tricky bits I would yank the bags off and hold them in my teeth.

I guess it's time to carry my real overmitts in the daily kit.

On Wednesday I started testing Cat Ears noise reducers. I had liked the idea when I first heard about them. As I get older I have more trouble sorting out sounds as I ride. Reducing wind noise should help me keep tabs on traffic behind me. Unfortunately, the path commute gives me little opportunity to test the Cat Ears on motor vehicle noise. I do have a better idea how noisy my tires are now.

Thursday morning the cold had really settled in,  so I switched to the ear covers from Cat Ears.  Combined with a polypro beanie and some tape over front helmet vents they kept my ears warmer than my thin earmuffs did. In colder weather I would probably use a heavier (but still thin) hat with some built-in ear coverage. In the coldest conditions I wear that and the earmuffs. The Cat Ears product,  mounted to the helmet straps, seems to provide better protection with a little less bulk. And it's called Cat Ears. 

I need to tape over more vents. My mere cool weather job isn't good enough for freezing and below. 

3 comments:

John said...

I was considering a ski helmet but it seems like the Cats Ears ear covers with optional reflective stip might be just the ticket.=)

Steve A said...

The Showers Pass helmet rain hat covers all the vents at once. I suppose you could also stuff a bit of insulation in, but I use a light balaclava.

cafiend said...

I don't want to cover all the vents, only a quantity of the front ones appropriate to the coldness of the air. My zombie-spotter helmet light covers some. If I add the helmet cam it covers a little more. The tape takes care of whatever else I want covered. The rear vents stay open to vent excess heat. I just want to stop the wind from slicing in.