Riding in a fog

[bajakirch]

Or, I should say, in THE fog.

Oftentimes I am riding my bike home from one of my night jobs in the wee hours of the morning. Now that we're getting to the time of year when we can have warm, humid days and cooler nights, I find that I'm running into heavy fog a little more often. The is compounded by the fact that I live in a river valley. So sometimes the final 10-15 miles of my 25+ mile ride are at near crawling speeds. It's happened 3 times in the last month.

Obviously there's the safety issue of riding in fog -- reduced visibility means reduced speed, but there's also the concern about being overtaken by a cage who may not see me until it's too late. But the biggest problem I've been having is fogging of my helmet.

I find that, as I enter the fog, both the exterior and interior of my face-shield start to get cloudy pretty fast. Cracking the visor is no help, as it just gets the interior fogged up faster. Once the face-shield is covered, I'll raise the visor out of the way. This just transfers the problem to my glasses. After just a few miles, those will be opaque.

So my solution thus far is to lower my visor to just above my line of sight, slide my glasses down my nose so I can see over them, and ride while viewing through the slit between the 2. This makes me very nervous for 2 reasons. First, I'm constantly in fear of a bug or some road debris flying into my unprotected eye. Second, I'm further reducing my visibility in an already bad visual environment.

Has anyone come up with any tricks, fancy coatings or gew-gaws that might help alleviate this problem? I suspect that I could get a fancy whiz-bang $600 helmet with a heated shield, but that's not going to happen.

[Laminar]

My $90 HJC helmet came with an anti-fog dealie for the visor that is supposed to work pretty well.

[Harrison]

You can buy anti-fog sheet type things for your helmet visor but those can be kind of stupidly expensive. I hate trying to remedy problems by throwing money at them but in this case your best bet might be just buying a helmet with fog protection.

[Option13]

Came with the helmet. Works great.

[mattrowe19]

Option, is that the pinlock insert?

[bajakirch]

Came with the helmet. Works great.

Please explain...

[Option13]

It's an anti-fog pinlock insert. Last summer I put that in the fridge for 10 minutes, then pulled it back out and took it outside. Ever been in Virginia during the summer? It's incredibly humid. Even with all of that, the pinlock itself never fogged. The fog you see is on the outside of the screen, not the inside. The inside with the pinlock clearly had no condensation on it.


On a midsummer rainy day, other people on a ride complained of condensation on the inside of the screen. I had no such problems.

[bajakirch]

Interesting...what helmet do you have?

[Option13]

HJC brand, model CL-16



This image doesn't seem to have the pinlock.

[Soupskin]

Think I'll invest in Pinlock next winter.  This is one very mild and almost over for me.

[mattrowe19]

Think I'll invest in Pinlock next winter.  This is one very mild and almost over for me.

This thread got me thinking about doing it right now. As wet as it is here, I could really use it. I'm getting tired of having to decide between water dripping in or dealing with a fogged shield.

[fortyhourdays]

This doesn't help with the fog on the inside of the helmet, but do you have a pair of gloves that have the little windshield squeegee thing on the thumb?  It works great for wiping that fine layer of moisture off the outside of the visor when it's not wet enough for it to actually run off by itself. 

[mattrowe19]

I do have gloves with a squeegee but my biggest issue is the fog on the inside. It starts in the corners and works its way towards the center. Not much fun to crack the visor when it's raining.