microcord
Maximum Pace
- Aug 28, 2012
- 1,650
- 1,193
Briefly, what should one look for in protective glasses? And what about protective+prescription? (And yes I have looked through the threads "Prescription riding glasses" and "Sunglasses for nearsighted?".)
Thanks to my superduper new wheels (thank you Tim and Eric) I spent some of the time this morning happily trundling along at what for me is a high speed. But when the wind blew, something nasty landed in one eye, which I had to close. A few hundred metres later I could open it, but a couple of kilometres further along, another hit. Ouch.
I wear very average-looking prescription glasses. I suppose they're on the smallish side, but certainly not to an extreme. I'd guess that if the lenses were bigger, or fit my head differently, I'd have more protection.
Putting aside for a moment the small matters of myopia and astigmatism, what's good? I googled and found "Cycling eyewear: frames". Two options are illustrated. They're pretty curvy and I suppose that this reduces the risk of stuff being blown in from the side. However, I wonder how much of the curviness is functional and how much is for looks. When I look at this page of (horribly high-priced) "SP-extremes" glasses, I see that some don't have side protection, some look (aside from color) just like businessmen's glasses, and a lot have what seems mere design gimmickry, notably frames designed so that only two thirds of each lens fits the frame while the remaining third sticks out in front of it. When I see "SP-extremes", I really wonder how much of this enterprise is to make people think they look kewl, and how much to protect the eyes. It's the latter that I'm after, and IFF I'm disinterestedly and knowledgably informed that the best solution has lenses protruding from a frame that looks like part of a Lady Gaga outfit, okay, but....
Once I know what I should be looking for in a frame, I'll think about where to get them. Right now I'm wearing a dirt-cheap but (for their purpose) perfectly good pair of reading glasses from "Zoff". This is now hawking "Athlete" glasses, with mumbo-jumbo such as "Asian holistic smart curve" (really), for its usual silly low price. But I'm open to other suggestions (particularly if youse experts think that the Zoff option wouldn't actually be much good for protection against airborne crud when cycling). Googling a bit, most of what I see (e.g. at Optilabs) have horribly high prices and little or no explanation of how frames differ (aside from style). But I do also see Firmoo.com, whose website is in charmingly Chinese-inflected English but which seems to be in the US and is dirt cheap. Tips and warnings welcome!
Thanks to my superduper new wheels (thank you Tim and Eric) I spent some of the time this morning happily trundling along at what for me is a high speed. But when the wind blew, something nasty landed in one eye, which I had to close. A few hundred metres later I could open it, but a couple of kilometres further along, another hit. Ouch.
I wear very average-looking prescription glasses. I suppose they're on the smallish side, but certainly not to an extreme. I'd guess that if the lenses were bigger, or fit my head differently, I'd have more protection.
Putting aside for a moment the small matters of myopia and astigmatism, what's good? I googled and found "Cycling eyewear: frames". Two options are illustrated. They're pretty curvy and I suppose that this reduces the risk of stuff being blown in from the side. However, I wonder how much of the curviness is functional and how much is for looks. When I look at this page of (horribly high-priced) "SP-extremes" glasses, I see that some don't have side protection, some look (aside from color) just like businessmen's glasses, and a lot have what seems mere design gimmickry, notably frames designed so that only two thirds of each lens fits the frame while the remaining third sticks out in front of it. When I see "SP-extremes", I really wonder how much of this enterprise is to make people think they look kewl, and how much to protect the eyes. It's the latter that I'm after, and IFF I'm disinterestedly and knowledgably informed that the best solution has lenses protruding from a frame that looks like part of a Lady Gaga outfit, okay, but....
Once I know what I should be looking for in a frame, I'll think about where to get them. Right now I'm wearing a dirt-cheap but (for their purpose) perfectly good pair of reading glasses from "Zoff". This is now hawking "Athlete" glasses, with mumbo-jumbo such as "Asian holistic smart curve" (really), for its usual silly low price. But I'm open to other suggestions (particularly if youse experts think that the Zoff option wouldn't actually be much good for protection against airborne crud when cycling). Googling a bit, most of what I see (e.g. at Optilabs) have horribly high prices and little or no explanation of how frames differ (aside from style). But I do also see Firmoo.com, whose website is in charmingly Chinese-inflected English but which seems to be in the US and is dirt cheap. Tips and warnings welcome!