New Glubs

Every once in a while, you make the tiniest of mistakes that has rather large consequences. On New Year's Eve Jason and I went for a nice little ride in the cold. Upon my return to Jason's truck, I took off my helmet, gloves and balaclava and placed them on the bumper while I loaded the bike on the rack. I loaded the bike, hopped inside the ruck and didn't even realize my goodies were missing until I had arrived at home. All my goodies were gone and never to be found again. I went back and drove the route... no goodies. I bike the route the next day... no goodies. We had parked in a cafe parking lot. So I'm guessing that someone else scored some new used goodies for themselves. What was once on my good friend's rear bumper was gone forever.

What's that mean? Well, when you add up the cost of new gloves, 'clava and helmet, it's rather discouraging. Helmet came first. I scoured the internets and shops to find a good deal. But, alas, I just bought something that worked and made financial sense. It doesn't even deserve a blog post, though.

The balaclava was a deal on Nashbar. You could buy any Nashbar brand product and receive free shipping. So it was a nice little on-sale $9 investment that will serve it's purpose well.

And, now, I have finally replaced the gloves.

I bought these Outdoor Research Arete Gloves from The Clymb. These gloves were $89 at REI. But I got them for a steal of a deal on The Clymb. They had them drastically discounted and I even had a little bit of credit. So when they sent me another $10 of credit as a gift, I jumped on the opportunity. (I'd recommend signing up for The Clymb's site. They have killer deals on outdoor stuff and send a ton of random credits. The catch? They send you a daily email that tempts you with stellar deals everyday. I've fallen victim to purchasing a couple unnecessary pieces of gear because the deal from The Clymb was so good.)

Back to these gloves...

I've always used two pairs of gloves. One is a pair of cheapish mittens that work fantastically for anything under 25 degrees. The other pair (the lost pair) were a pair of Gore Bike Wear gloves. They did the job well at about 25-45 degrees. So I've been hurting for the last few weeks with only mittens. It's just too dang hot for anything north of 30 degrees.

These OR gloves, I believe, will be perfect. They've got liners, too. So essentially, you have three pairs of gloves with you on every ride (gloves+liners, liners solo and gloves solo). Good stuff. Insulation seems great. And they've been carefully considered, not just to keep you warm, but to be useful. They've got wide open ends to slide your hands in when they're nearly numb. They've got carabiner hooks if you need to lash them to your coat or rack. Long wrist cords which I will use when I'm on the go and take them off and hang them on the bars.

I'm thinking I'll be a big fan of these glubs.

Get out there.