No sweat

Summer is definitely here, with average high temperatures in the 90s (that's degrees Fahrenheit for you frainers; something in the 30s Celcius) with humidity to match. Ah, the Code Orange days. And that, Beloved reader, is when your humble blogger goes into perspiration overdrive. And let me tell you, it is not a pretty sight.

Paul Newman can make sweating sexy. Bartlebones cannot.

Cycling in the South in the summer entails having a constant rivulet of man moisture streaming down one's back, through the Cleft of Doom, and a steady stream of burning salt and sunscreen coursing across one's pupils and down the inside of one's Rudy Projects. Contrary to what you might think, that sucks. I can handle the incessant sphincter rinse, but the loss of sight is disconcerting when trying to navigate the mean streets of Bethesda on a bicycle.

Thus it was, in the afterglow of a recent foray into the steamy fields of rural Montgomery County, I punched the term "headband" into the search box of a certain online retailer to see what I could get my hands on in short order. I had used Halo headbands before and generally had a positive impression of them. They are pretty standard technical fabric headbands with a rubber gasket around the forehead area meant to channel the sweat back toward the temples where the stream, while annoying, will do no harm. And they work pretty well, for the most part. Certainly better than the forehead padding in any helmet I've ever known.

But as most super-sweaty cyclists must, having been enticed by the ads in the back of Bicycling magazine, (which, by the way shows up in your mailbox automatically about 15 minutes after you buy a bike and never goes away - I swear I've had a subscription for fifteen years and never paid a dime) I have been curious to try the Sweat GUTR® The Sweatband That Never Saturates™. Ooo, an actual sweat sluice. This I've got to try. So I ordered me up a GUTR® and a couple of Halo's, one of which is a new "Slim" model so as to have me a proper head-to-head competition.  

Don't sweat the small stuff.

The competition ended less than a half mile from the stately Bartlecave. See, the Sweat GUTR® is a good idea and all, but in practice, the lack of absorbent material actually makes a considerable difference. The first time I tilted my head forward (mind you, I am riding a road bike so that took about 500 feet), the sweat came coursing over the gutter's rim, splashing all over the inside of my glasses. Fail. Halo wins.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the Halo becomes saturated eventually and the dripping is pretty much the same when it does. But the cloth buys time and on days when it's not too humid (we have about 5 of those a year here in the Mid-Atlantic states) it suffices to keep all sweat out of the eyes. And after some experimentation, I would say that the slim version with its 1' width is less effective than the 1 ¾ inch Halo 1 or the wider 2" wide Halo II or it's "pullover" cousin. 

So I'm sticking with Halo. Sure you've got to wash them like garments rather than just dunking and rinsing the silicone GUTR®. And like the GUTR®, the Halo bands impress a line across my forehead that takes all afternoon to go away. But they keep the sweat out of my eyes longer and in the end, that's what matters.