Anyone not wear glasses?
Comments
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Carbonator wrote:lostboysaint wrote:Paul 8v wrote:
The soft bits on the back of your gloves in itCookeeeMonster wrote:bobmcstuff wrote:Cap under the helmet - peak keeps the rain off the lenses quite effectively.
I find that while definitely better with a cap, enough rain will eventually land on the lenses to make visibility worse than without...amplify a 100 times if they start steaming up too.
In the daytime it's not so bad but at night in the rain, they come off. Dangerous to keep them on with head and tail lights exploding in your eyes...why no windscreen wipers for glasses?
You mean just wipe the snot from them all over your glasses?
You have two hands. Wipe on, wipe off
You're so wise Mr Miyagi!Trail fun - Transition Bandit
Road - Wilier Izoard Centaur/Cube Agree C62 Disc
Allround - Cotic Solaris0 -
Carbonator wrote:You guys that joke about things going into your eyes and accuse people of only wearing cycling glasses to show off are funny lol. Forgive me if I feel a lot of you have issues that you need to seek therapy for.
No, really, at least in my case you're wrong. It's just a non-issue and this thread has been an eye opener.
Put it like this... Me and my mates grew up riding our bikes everywhere. They were simply our number one possessions, we never wore sunglasses. My riding evolved into 'Road riding' at the age of 16 and I still didn't wear glasses and nor did many people that I ever knew or saw. At no point did anybody say 'here son, you need a pair of these', and at no point did I think, 'god I need something to cover my eyes'.
I have raced, commuted, ridden MTB's, been on family rides and generally just enjoyed bikes for nearly all of my 43 years on this planet. At no point have I experienced a need for glasses. From a sunglasses perspective I may one day question this approach with hindsight, but at absolutely no point have I ever considered them a safety feature, it simply never crossed my mind. I have a bigger worry about swallowing bugs than getting them in my eye. I've had as many eyelashes in my eye as bugs.
Cycling today is not what it once was (and this is a good thing in nearly all respects) but I've always assumed the need for a £200 pair of glasses on an overcast day is either a prescription need or vanity. Please, don't try to argue the latter doesn't occur.
No chips on shoulder, just blissfully unaware. The most interesting thing in this thread is the point about runny noses being linked to no glasses. That has made me wonder about whether I should try some. You see, I'm open minded like that.
I am absolutely gob-smacked at people saying tried it once without and never again. What on earth happened?0 -
I had got into the habit of wearing glasses as my eyes stream a lot then on Tuesday morning took they off in a light drizzle and it greatly improved vision and have not put them on since. This morning an insect homed in on my right eye as if guided by a laser. It was uncomfortable for about half an hour then my streamy eyes must have washed it out.0
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Its such an automatic thing for me to put the glasses on that I hardly think about it.
I do like my Oakleys so yeah its a bit of vanity - but its safety too. When I rode MTB's you'd really not want a branch in the eye. On the road we still have bugs and chippings.
I'm not bothered what other people do - thats up to them.0 -
I never ride without them, mine go from cheap safety glasses right up to Oakleys and all do a good job of protecting my eyes from getting a nasty in them or teary from the winds.
As above not really bothered what others do, it's up to them.0 -
I hate the look of cycling glasses so wear sunglasses in summer and only switch to clear or light reactive cycling glasses in winter.
Contact lenses dry out...or eyes stream...plus one of the few times I rode without them I got some grit in my eye (painful) and had to take my lense out and ride 12 miles home with only one in (luckily almost all on cycle paths)
I'm happy to ride without in the rain though as I've said. If I didnt wear lenses then I probably wouldn't wear them at all (unless sunny) but it depends where you ride. My commute doesn't have too many insects which fly into your eye.
Live and let live, if helmets/glasses/high viz aint your thing, dont wear it!! 0 -
When I got my proper road bike after riding 2 miles the first thing I bought was some glasses. Can't imagine how people cycle without them. Flies, grit, dry eyes, rogue branches...0
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Just back from a damp 54 miler sans glasses.
First 10 mins I have to admit I could think about nothing but glasses but fortunately that soon passed.
I did make some interesting observations though.
Lots of crap on the road and legs are testament to how much crap was flying about but nothing on face or in eyes. It did strike me that I do have a few rogue long hairs in my eyebrows which maybe give me added protection. You see, it all comes back to vanity again, don't trim your eyebrows and maybe less crap goes in your eyes.
I think the safety aspect does lend itself to our attitude towards risk. I consider myself a risk averse person but not prohibitively so. I partake in risk sports but they do make me very nervous e.g. climbing etc. I do wear a helmet when cycling as imho there is a real possibility of an off and I might hurt my head in the process. I think this is a slim but real danger. With stuff in eyes, I think other than bugs, the risk is truly minimal. This then makes the question for the individual, where do you draw the line with managing risk? The example of a bug getting behind an eye and causing real damage is exceptional. Do you spend your life mitigating against the exceptional? If so, how do you leave the house?
As creatures, we are built to take risks, it is why our psyches are designed to assume that crap will happen to somebody else and when something is horrible, we are able to dismiss the pain very quickly and repeat the experience e.g. childbirth or signing up to repeat an event you found horrendously demanding at the time.
I have no problem with glasses wearers and I have actually learnt two things from this thread. One positive, one negative. The link to runny noses and dry eyes and how some people are far too prescriptive in how people should dress or behave.
This thread, brought to you by the person that thinks all bikes must be carbon, triple chainsets are pointless and now you are a bit daft if you don't wear glasses. The same person that alludes to others have attitude problems during this debate.
Hmmm, think I've observed enough.0 -
I always wear them, and if I leave without them I will turn back to get them - but then I have had non-cosmetic eye surgery so I kinda get away with it. Pre-surgery, I might wear them if it was sunny, but they're a pain in the butt when it rains, can't see a thing. Personally I never minded the feeling of rain in my eyes, unless it was that icy, stinging, wind driven stuff.
I only wear gloves when mountain biking (no suspension) to ease the battering, or road biking when it's cold. Out on the mtb yesterday, forgot gloves but just kept going - what's the worst that could happen?
The whole concept of vanity is a strange one to me, when you think what the non-cycling population think of cyclist's appearance - they think we look like twats, and to be honest, sometimes they're right.0 -
Cant think why anyone would wear glasses on the bike out of vanity - they dont look particularly cool...
Every time I ride mountain bike on loose surfaces, stones and stuff flicks up from my front wheel or the bike in front and pings off my glasses on a number of occasions.
Every time I ride mountain bike and it is muddy, I have to clean the mud (and worse) off the front of the glasses as water and mud has been constantly hitting them.
When I ride road bike without glasses at any reasonable speed (not just fast downhill), my eyes water from the wind.
Most of my evening rides in the summer, I go through swarms of midges and glasses stop them getting in my eyes.
Numerous other road rides (not every one but maybe 1 in 10) something pings off my glasses, either a stone or an insect or even a bat once!
Again, I have on occasion also needed to clean muck off the glasses after a road ride, muck which would have been in or around my eyes without them.
Light rain is fine without them but heavy, driving rain and wind is a nightmare without them - ok for a short ride but fatiguing and frustrating on longer journeys.
Heavy rain with glasses, yes you get drops on them but bigger ones run down/off and because you are focussed on the road some way in front and not on the lenses, you see through the spots and they arent a problem, or at least not as much as that heavy rain in the eyes.
I always wear them, not through vanity or fear of something that would never happen but just because they make things more comfortable and because they regularly keep s**t out of my eyes.
I would argue with the poster who says that they wear a helmet because they reasonably expect to crash but not glasses because they dont expect to get anything in their eyes. In my 43 years, I have never crashed and landed on my head but I have numerous occasions where I got things in my eyes and there would be alot more if I didnt wear glasses. So actually the risks are the other way around.0 -
It's not just the frequency of the risk. It's the frequency and severity combined.Bugs in the eye is a high risk, it will happen, but of minimal consequence.
But just to re-iterate. I don't have a problem with glasses wearers beyond my misplaced assumption that most of the were doing it through vanity. I don't wear them and really never, never, never knew it was even an issue.
I do however believe there is a vanity issue for some. It's essential to have ALL the pro gear and look the part. Me and my long eyebrows may not.0 -
I find glasses pretty essential for riding really.
In wet conditions (as long as they don't fog up) they keep the rain out of my eyes so I'm not constantly blinking- a cap will help as well although they don't seem to get on with my helmet so well and I can't see anything ahead unless I make an effort to look skywards (which aches fairly quick!)
Also, on fast descents and on any cold day my eyes water up really quickly- on cold days AND fast descents I've been known to not be able to see a great deal through the tears by the time I get to the bottom.
As for general riding they do stop a fair amount of debris from getting in my eyes- on wet rides they are often peppered in muddy flecks that have been kicked up from the road (normally from a rider in front).
I don't tend to wear them when riding about town on the hybrid as it would be another think to keep hold of, but sometimes I do get things in my eye just to remind me why I wear the glasses in the first place. That and with the low sun nowerdays actual sunglasses are pretty handy.0 -
Massively windy today. Prose through lots of mini tornadoes of whirling leaves. Glasses kept all the crap out of my eyes nicely.0
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I used only to wear them in very bright conditions, because tinted lenses caused visibility issues in the evenings. Fishing the occasional small insect from my eye was preferable to not being able to make out hazards. Then a couple of years ago, at the end of a hot summer day, I was riding without glasses, and ran into swarms of greenfly. I don't mean a few, there were literally billions. For several miles there were clouds of them rising off the fields like fog. By the time I got home there was a thick layer of the things all down my front. It was vile. The worst part, of course, was getting them constantly in my eyes. Ever since I've used photochromatics, which go almost clear in poor light.0
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Any road next to a river. There's a certain road near me where you will get sprayed with flies. Apart from that I never wear glasses (probably should, but I don't want to ride around looking like Bono).0
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CookeeeMonster wrote:why no windscreen wipers for glasses?
Get some rain-xMy winter bike is exactly the same as my summer bike,,, but dirty...0 -
Contact lenses complicate things, fly-wise.
Trying to ride along looking like Steven Seagal sucking a lemon is no fun.0 -
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Ai_1 wrote:
I couldn't care less if they were or not. Why are so many amateur and recreational cyclists so obsessed with comparing themselves to professional cyclists? It's weird and childish.joe2008 wrote:
I wonder if they were thinking 'what if I get something in my eye'?
Especially when its pro riders from the past lol.
They always go back to whatever period of pro cycling backs up their point of view too :roll:
If it was all so perfect then, I hope none of them are riding around with anything invented since.
Most people did not wear seat belts then and most of them lived to tell the tale. Does that make wearing seat belts, having head restraints and air bags in cars these days a bit pussy too?0 -
Yeah, go back a little further and they all had goggles on.0
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morstar wrote:Carbonator wrote:You guys that joke about things going into your eyes and accuse people of only wearing cycling glasses to show off are funny lol. Forgive me if I feel a lot of you have issues that you need to seek therapy for.
No, really, at least in my case you're wrong. It's just a non-issue and this thread has been an eye opener.
Put it like this... Me and my mates grew up riding our bikes everywhere. They were simply our number one possessions, we never wore sunglasses. My riding evolved into 'Road riding' at the age of 16 and I still didn't wear glasses and nor did many people that I ever knew or saw. At no point did anybody say 'here son, you need a pair of these', and at no point did I think, 'god I need something to cover my eyes'.
I have raced, commuted, ridden MTB's, been on family rides and generally just enjoyed bikes for nearly all of my 43 years on this planet. At no point have I experienced a need for glasses. From a sunglasses perspective I may one day question this approach with hindsight, but at absolutely no point have I ever considered them a safety feature, it simply never crossed my mind. I have a bigger worry about swallowing bugs than getting them in my eye. I've had as many eyelashes in my eye as bugs.
Cycling today is not what it once was (and this is a good thing in nearly all respects) but I've always assumed the need for a £200 pair of glasses on an overcast day is either a prescription need or vanity. Please, don't try to argue the latter doesn't occur.
No chips on shoulder, just blissfully unaware. The most interesting thing in this thread is the point about runny noses being linked to no glasses. That has made me wonder about whether I should try some. You see, I'm open minded like that.
I am absolutely gob-smacked at people saying tried it once without and never again. What on earth happened?
I'm 44 and like you have ridden bikes in some capacity be it kids bikes, BMX, road (I was racing when I was 16), MTB and back to road. I've had to wear glasses since I was in my late teens and in that time I have been whacked full on in the lenses by foreign objects many times. On the MTB it’s been mostly twigs and on the road it's been insects and stones - in one case very recently a stone pinged off my mates rear wheel like a bullet and left a nick on my lens. So a cavalier 'it's never happened to me' attitude is wrong. And for what it’s worth, I got myself those clip-on sunglass lenses in about 89/90 for my specs because I didn’t like being dazzled by the sun and glare on wet roads. They were a million miles away from the optics of my current Adidas and Oakley bins and made the glasses slip down my nose when sweaty, but they worked at the time.0 -
joe2008 wrote:thegreatdivide wrote:morstar wrote:Carbonator wrote:You guys that joke about things going into your eyes and accuse people of only wearing cycling glasses to show off are funny lol. Forgive me if I feel a lot of you have issues that you need to seek therapy for.
No, really, at least in my case you're wrong. It's just a non-issue and this thread has been an eye opener.
Put it like this... Me and my mates grew up riding our bikes everywhere. They were simply our number one possessions, we never wore sunglasses. My riding evolved into 'Road riding' at the age of 16 and I still didn't wear glasses and nor did many people that I ever knew or saw. At no point did anybody say 'here son, you need a pair of these', and at no point did I think, 'god I need something to cover my eyes'.
I have raced, commuted, ridden MTB's, been on family rides and generally just enjoyed bikes for nearly all of my 43 years on this planet. At no point have I experienced a need for glasses. From a sunglasses perspective I may one day question this approach with hindsight, but at absolutely no point have I ever considered them a safety feature, it simply never crossed my mind. I have a bigger worry about swallowing bugs than getting them in my eye. I've had as many eyelashes in my eye as bugs.
Cycling today is not what it once was (and this is a good thing in nearly all respects) but I've always assumed the need for a £200 pair of glasses on an overcast day is either a prescription need or vanity. Please, don't try to argue the latter doesn't occur.
No chips on shoulder, just blissfully unaware. The most interesting thing in this thread is the point about runny noses being linked to no glasses. That has made me wonder about whether I should try some. You see, I'm open minded like that.
I am absolutely gob-smacked at people saying tried it once without and never again. What on earth happened?
I'm 44 and like you have ridden bikes in some capacity be it kids bikes, BMX, road (I was racing when I was 16), MTB and back to road. I've had to wear glasses since I was in my late teens and in that time I have been whacked full on in the lenses by foreign objects many times. On the MTB it’s been mostly twigs and on the road it's been insects and stones - in one case very recently a stone pinged off my mates rear wheel like a bullet and left a nick on my lens. So a cavalier 'it's never happened to me' attitude is wrong. And for what it’s worth, I got myself those clip-on sunglass lenses in about 89/90 for my specs because I didn’t like being dazzled by the sun and glare on wet roads. They were a million miles away from the optics of my current Adidas and Oakley bins and made the glasses slip down my nose when sweaty, but they worked at the time.
Your eyes have a unique protection system, it's called your eyelid and it works well, you blink in a fraction of a second. Glasses have large lenses, so will get a lot more stuff on them than would ever get near your eye.
Total nonsense.0 -
thegreatdivide wrote:Total nonsense.
Not 'total nonsense' but somewhat simplistic and optimistic at the very least...0 -
They must have been the dullest 50 years cycling ever. Never in a group, where you're constantly covered in detritus from the tyres of those ahead, never off road either in company and got dust, dirt, stones etc. up in your face, or been whipped by an overhanging branch, never passed by a car or other vehicle that's managed to send something your way from the road surface.Trail fun - Transition Bandit
Road - Wilier Izoard Centaur/Cube Agree C62 Disc
Allround - Cotic Solaris0 -
joe2008 wrote:lostboysaint wrote:They must have been the dullest 50 years cycling ever. Never in a group, where you're constantly covered in detritus from the tyres of those ahead, never off road either in company and got dust, dirt, stones etc. up in your face, or been whipped by an overhanging branch, never passed by a car or other vehicle that's managed to send something your way from the road surface.
I've probably done a lot more of all of the above than you sunshine, but I've never had the fear that something awful might happen to my eyes.
Nor have we, but perhaps with better reason...0 -
joe2008 wrote:lostboysaint wrote:They must have been the dullest 50 years cycling ever. Never in a group, where you're constantly covered in detritus from the tyres of those ahead, never off road either in company and got dust, dirt, stones etc. up in your face, or been whipped by an overhanging branch, never passed by a car or other vehicle that's managed to send something your way from the road surface.
I've probably done a lot more of all of the above than you sunshine, but I've never had the fear that something awful might happen to my eyes.
I take it you don't wear a helmet either?0 -
joe2008 wrote:lostboysaint wrote:They must have been the dullest 50 years cycling ever. Never in a group, where you're constantly covered in detritus from the tyres of those ahead, never off road either in company and got dust, dirt, stones etc. up in your face, or been whipped by an overhanging branch, never passed by a car or other vehicle that's managed to send something your way from the road surface.
I've probably done a lot more of all of the above than you sunshine, but I've never had the fear that something awful might happen to my eyes.
In pure mileage maybe, in the type of riding I doubt it. Hence why our completely different outlook.Trail fun - Transition Bandit
Road - Wilier Izoard Centaur/Cube Agree C62 Disc
Allround - Cotic Solaris0 -
cyd190468 wrote:I have one question though. Does anyone on here know anyone who has ever had permanent eye damage because they weren't wearing glasses on a bicycle. I have never even heard a story about someone being permanently injured, let alone seen an actual report.
What happened to Marcel Wust ? I dont know if he had glasses on for his accident but I know his eye was damaged.0
