On goggles

[aedifica]

I did get some goggles for winter biking, and I've been liking them a lot! I got a pair of Smith Monashee OTG (over the glasses) goggles. They fit nicely with or without my glasses, they don't fog up (though my glasses do fog up inside them sometimes), and my eyes have been comfortably NOT watering when I wear them. I've even started wearing them on days when I'm taking the bus instead of biking.

I hadn't realized what a versatile accessory goggles can be, though! When I wear them with my rounded, white bike helmet and my black facemask, I look somewhat like a stormtrooper (albeit a stormtrooper who's missing their breathmask). Without the helmet, but with the thin black hat I use as a helmet liner, I look more like a scuba diver (though again without the breathing gear). And with the knit cap I wear sometimes when I'm not biking, I look vaguely like I ought to be going out driving in an open car. :-)

(edited to fix the date)

Comments

[giglet]

Oh hey, that sounds promising!

I've just begun having problems with my eyes watering, but wow, is it a pain. How is your peripheral vision with those on?

[aedifica]

It's neither as good as I'd like nor as bad as I feared. I do have to twist a little farther to look behind me when I'm changing lanes and so forth. I'm thinking I might get a handlebar mirror*, or I might just deal with it.

*I had one on the bike-that-got-stolen and liked it.

[jld]

I can second the recommendation of ski goggles. For some reason I didn't have trouble with my eyes watering from the cold, but I did have trouble when snow was actually falling, and sometimes with flying road salt when it got windy.

I also recommend against tinted goggles. I wound up with a pair of those because they didn't look particularly dark, and I'd failed to find the clear goggles at the store I went to so I didn't have a good basis for comparison. And then the first time I tried to use them was during a snowstorm, at night, and then my headlight's casing cracked so that the battery kept falling out. They are, in fact, rather dark.

[aedifica]

That's good to know! I got these with clear lenses, because at this time of year a lot of my commutes will be dark.

[daedala]

Nifty!

The goggles say they "fit large faces" -- do they mean that they fit large faces as well as small faces, or only large faces?

I keep saying I'm not going to bike in the snow, but I'm itchy to go out. The part where biking doesn't take any longer than bussing, and bussing means a half-mile walk on a busy street with no sidewalks, makes biking extra-attractive. That and it's so much warmer.

[aedifica]

I don't know! But I don't know if they think I have a medium or a large face. When I tried on a bunch of goggles at REI, I found that *on me* most of the other OTG models fit OK over my glasses until it was time to take off the goggles, at which point they tried to take my glasses with them. These don't do that, at least as long as I tug the straps sideways when I'm taking off the goggles.