I live in the Pacific Northwest and we have very thick vegetation here. Branches and blackberries can seemingly grow or settle across a trail in a matter of hours. After being hit in the eye a couple times by leaves, sticks and low hanging branches I decided it was probably a good idea to wear some eye protection on my trail rides. The simple and cheap solution seemed to be safety glasses. I picked up one of the fancier pairs at Harbor Freight for $3.99. On my regular half hour after work trail ride they seemed to work alright. There was a little bit of distortion to the lower end of my peripheral vision, but it didn’t seem to affect my riding much.
Today I went out on an hour plus ride on some longer trails in the middle of the day and the glasses did great…for about 1/2 hour. Then sweat started to roll down them in multiple locations and I took them off and cleaned them with my shirt, but visibility was still quite bad. At this point the distortion was affecting my riding.
So for those of you that wear eye protection on your rides, what have you found works and what doesn’t? I’m kind of thinking that these things don’t weigh or cost much and that I could carry around a second pair. I’m also thinking though that there should be some way to channel any sweat accumulating in the padding of my helmet to the sides of my head, thus avoiding the sweat getting on the glasses in the first place.
