The weather has taken a turn for the worse and has headed back into winter.
The storm that landed earlier this week dropped about a foot of new snow on top of what had been a relatively dry, snowless landscape. And I’m really pissed about it. Short of driving to Cape Cod there are no places within a reasonable distance that have rideable dirt.
Prior to that it had been cold with temperatures hovering at or below freezing. I can stay warm on road rides above 32 if it’s not too windy, but as soon as it gets even a little cooler it feels like the wind just slices through me. The weather across most of the North East and continental Europe has also been rough with races either strongly impacted by snow (Milan-San Remo) or outright canceled (Kuurne-Brussels- Kuurne). While pouring over photos of the races that DID run I found this one of Lars Boom in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (courtesy of Cyclingnews).
Let me just say for the record that the Giro Air Attack helmet is fugly. Really fugly, actually, but that’s not the point. Lars has the vents taped off. Some manufacturers have a weather shield (like Lazer and Kask) but Giro doesn’t so he got creative.
My preferred Rudy Project Sterling also does not have a cover, so Lars’ mod gave me an idea. If I could block some of the wind hitting my head I would stay warmer and theoretically more comfortable.
Here’s what I started with- my well-used, two season old Sterling.
The first step was to remove the existing pads and put the bug net back in. It doesn’t add a ton of warmth, but in this case I need all the help I can get. It’s also fresher than the pads that were in it.
Regular electrical tape isn’t wide enough to fully cover the vents so I sourced some 2″ wide white electrical tape on eBay. I applied the tape over the center vent making sure to pull it tight across the whole surface; I worked out the bubbles and left enough extra so I’d be able to safely trim down the tape.
Lars didn’t trim his tape, but since I’m looking for things to do I figured I’d go for a cleaner look. You could use my printer paper template approach:
1- Cut a sheet of printer or notebook printer a couple inches larger than the tracing area
2- Hold it in place with masking tape and then rub the paper with your fingers to get the paper to conform to the contours of the object
3- Cut out the printer paper along the pressed contours and then cut along the fold lines to make the template.
4- Use the template to trace out the shape onto the material. If it has a removable adhesive backing them I recommend tracing it on the back so that you don’t have to worry about getting marker or pencil on the face. I like to use a thick sharpie marker so that I can trace over the outer edge and have smooth line instead of trying to trace outside it and risk making it too large. Then it almost looks like it was spray painted since the template outline is sharp but the outer edge is fuzzy.
Taking all of those steps to get the exact size then apply the tape to a smooth surface and cut it to match- that would protect the helmet from light cuts from the razor. Since this helmet has seen some wear I wasn’t afraid to apply the tape right to the helmet and lightly trim it right there, but if you’re attempting this with a new helmet I would suggest the former method although cutting the tape cleanly off the roll then reapplying it might be a little complicated.
Here’s what the main center vent looks like once covered and trimmed.
Close up shot. You can see I used the graphic lines to get the upper contour and the shell to get the lower one. It’s all arbitrary really, I just picked what I thought looked the best.
I also covered the smaller side vents. Since I’ve never ridden with something like this I decided to start with just a couple of the main front vents before going crazy and covering the whole thing. I’m just not sure how much impact it’s going to have so I thought I’d play around with it a little to get a feel for it.
If you do decide to get aggro I would still suggest leaving some of the rear vents open so that some excess heat can escape.
A few short minutes after I completed the tape install I realized how cool it would be in carbon…but since I’m after a stealth look I figured I’d leave it alone for now. Of course on a black helmet carbon would be the obvious choice.
The next few days are likely to be a wet, salty mess. I’m hoping that it will be dry enough to ride this weekend and if it is I’ll give this thing a shot.