Cycling Eyewear - Finding The Perfect Glasses

If you ride a bike much at any speed, you quickly come to realize that some sort of glasses are necessary to keep the wind and bugs out of your eyes. In sub-zero temps, it becomes even more important, since you can really hurt your eyes with cold wind.

Just like bicycles, cycling glasses can cost just about as much as you are willing to spend.

The sunglasses shown above have some pretty impressive copy written for them, describing sunglass technology I didn't even know existed!

I am pretty rough on my sunglasses, so I have never had expensive ones like the ones pictured above. I bought a pair of knockoff $25 sunglasses at the drugstore about two years ago, and miraculously, I'm still wearing them as my summer glasses. The lenses are scratched and marked up, but I stay with them because of some customizations on them that I won't be able to find anywhere else.

My glasses originally had rubber nose rests that would slide a little sometimes. The earpieces and their rubber inserts never quite hugged just right either, and the glasses were a little heavy overall. Thanks to my customizer, however, my glasses have been perfect for the last month or so. Let me show you what he did:

By removing the rubber nose rests, he created micro sub-dermal insertion retaining posts. Just a gentle press, and those suckers stay put! No slip, no slide! He is a genius. Check this out:

The nano-abrasions act like tiny hooks that grab my skin and hair, and the wing ends have been reshaped to properly contact my asymmetrical and cauliflowered ears, minimizing slip and vibration! You can't get attention to detail like that off the shelf for any price. The removal of the soft rubber inserts allows the nano-abrasions to grasp on both the outer and inner surfaces of the ring, and shaves precious grams from the whole package. I am a very lucky fellow to have found my velo-optics customizer. Take a bow, super genius with the master craftsman's touch!

And to think you accomplished such fine high-end work using only your teeth! You are amazing, you sweet little bugger!

Hey, sorry I yanked your chain. Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

P.S. - I really do still wear those glasses.

9 Bridges On A New Morning Ride

As some of you may know, I have recently tried out leaving the city and riding for longer trips through the country. Although I've only been out three times that way, I've really enjoyed it. My longest trip thus far has been 88km (54.7 miles) long. I know that for some cyclists that isn't all that far, but for me it is. I initially reported feeling fine after the rides - I was mainly concerned about muscle pain and general soreness, and in that sense it really wasn't too bad. What I have come to realize, however, is that at my current fitness level, I have been biting off a little more than I can chew. I have been too tired for too long after those rides, and I think a combination of too much weight (being somewhat fat) and not enough practice at shorter distances are the reasons why.

Riding only about 15km a day commuting isn't going to get me into the shape I would like, and piling all my exercise into a single weekend ride isn't the best way to proceed either. So, I've been getting up earlier and lengthening my morning commute ride to about 22km (13.7 miles). I figure a few of weeks of commuting 30km instead of 15 is a good start on getting into better shape. If I can just watch what I eat a little better, I might even lose some weight!

I'm not usually one for stopping and taking pictures, but lately I've been thinking about how much I like bridges and the views they offer a cyclist, whether in or out of the city. I also like the way some of the narrow walking bridges look on video from my handlebars. My "new" morning ride offers some of both, including some really nice views of the Thames River. Since I had bridges on the brain, I took video on every single bridge I crossed last Thursday morning, whether it was big or small, and stopped to take photos from many of them.

When I started preparing this video, I searched a little harder for good music I could use that wouldn't infringe copyright, and holy man did I get some great stuff. Listen well! Credits for the tunes are in the video.

Ride that Bike! Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

Yeehaw! It's a CAPTCHA Contest!

Has anybody else found the security "word verification" words funny or strangely well suited to your comment or the post's content sometimes? I certainly have, and it has inspired me to try something...

Some of my more regular commenters may have noticed that I have turned CAPTCHAs back on. It's not for security reasons, it's so that I can run a CAPTCHA contest! I don't know if somebody else has done this before, so I am going to assume this is my very own invention until proven otherwise. Unless it sucks. Then somebody else thought it up.

Please comment on this post, but before hitting the "Publish" button, type the CAPTCHA you have been presented with in the comment box, enclosed in square brackets (eg: [monkey]) and then the appropriate word verification space. The brackets are just to clearly identify your captcha for me, since people somtimes just type weird things for no reason at all.

I will collect comment CAPTCHAs (on this post only) until midnight (Pacific Time) on Wednesday, July 15. Then, I will assemble the entries into an online poll that will go up on Monday, July 20, and we can all vote for the one we think is funniest. The poll will remain open for ten days, and the winner will be formally announced soon after the poll has closed.

Obviously, this whole thing will have to be based on the honour system. Every visitor to the poll, entrant or not, is permitted one vote only. Every entrant is permitted only one [CAPTCHA] comment on this post. Don't make up fake captchas; you have to live with the captcha you were dealt. If you are lame enough to cheat on a potentially very boring contest that has no prize other than something stupid and of no monetary value that I will dream up later, I and every other participant thinks you just plain suck. Go away; you're not welcome on RANTWICK.

Blog Authors are not presented with comment captchas on their own blogs, so I won't be one of the entrants.

If I have just confused the hell out of you, please ask for clarifications with a comment that does not contain a [square bracketed] contest entry...

Good luck to us all, this may be fun but may also be an utter failure! Yeehaw! I can't wait to see which!

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

PS - Wait! I just thought of the prize! If you win, I will send you $5 in assorted Canadian Tire money! How cool is that?