Excuse me posting off-topic (I hate it when people do that to me) but it seems to me the real subject of this thread is surviving the heat of a century ride that's infamous for killing people from the heat. And this seems like an apt opportunity to bring up something I think all hot-weather cyclists could benefit from.
The image of FLandis pouring water over his head is the ideal solution but for most of us it isn't quite practical. IIRC, he went through a hundred-ish water bottles on that day and poured 60-ish of them over his head.
As a substitute, you could soak a cotton bandana in water and tie it around your neck, but that only works for a short time before the bandana dries out, and I doubt you'd want to stop every 10 miles to "re-charge" it.
But you get almost the same effect (albeit less pronounced) wearing one of these, and they last a long, long time without "re-charging":
Notice how the bandana this guy is wearing looks sort of 'tube-shaped'? That's because it
is a tube, a tube sewn from cotton cloth and filled with a synthetic material that absorbs a HUGE amount of water.
How much water? When it's
completely dry, the "hydrophilic" material inside it shrinks to about the size of a marble. When it's fully "charged," it swells to fill the cotton tube, which is about 1.2 inches in diameter and 14 inches long. Considering how it tapers at either end, that's probably around 15 cubic inches of water.
That's how much it swells from water content.
When you put it on your neck, it works just like the wet bandana, it just doesn't evaporate as quickly or cool as much (then again, it doesn't run dry for days). As water evaporates off the side away from your body, it cools the material inside the bandana. Which draws heat from the skin on your neck, which cools the carotid arteries, which means the blood reaching your brain is cooler.
It's not a yuge difference, but the brain is very sensitive to even small temperature changes, so every little bit helps. And it's ideally suited to cycling because wind increases the rate of evaporative cooling, so the faster you ride, the better it works. I've been wearing these for probably 15 years whenever the temperature is mid-80°s F or hotter (I even wear them for yard work and the like), and I am convinced it helps stave off heat injuries. It also lets me maintain a higher level of exertion for a longer period when the heat index is >100°F. Because there's a limit to how fast your stomach and intestines can absorb water, but in extreme heat, is it quite possible to sweat it off faster than your guts can absorb it.
These are the two that I'm using now:
The red one is freshly-charged. It's so full of water, the cotton material is absolutely taught. The camouflaged one is completely dry. It looks a bit 'inflated' but that's because the cotton material develops a little 'body' when it's allowed to air-dry, so it doesn't lie flat any more. But trust me, it's almost completely empty.
I weighed them on my kitchen scale. The dry one weighs 29 grams. The wet one weighs 272. That's 243 grams of water weight, a touch more than half a pint. All absorbed in a slow-release synthetic that expands about 200-fold to hold it all.
I bought these online from a place called
Blu Bandoo, which is also where I got the first image. They're ~$9 but they're
very well made. I've been using the red one for eight or 10 seasons and I thought it would have died years ago but it's still performing as well as it did when it was new. If that's too spendy, Wally World sells
a similar item for quite a bit less, but I've never used one of theirs, so I can't speak to its quality.
If you read the reviews at Wally World, you'll find some people panning them because they stop working after a while (or so they claim). Let me explain to you what they're missing, and why they're wrong. When you walk into an air conditioned house on a hot day, initially the air feels very cool. But then you acclimatize and the air just feels 'normal.' It's the same with these. Whenever you put two materials of different temperatures together, heat energy migrates from the hotter one to the cooler one. Since the temperatures of the bandana and the skin of your neck literally are converging, it's natural that the initial cool feeling should fade.
So just because it stops feeling cool against your skin DOES NOT mean it isn't cooling. The fact of the matter is, it
can't stop cooling (if there's any water left) unless you somehow rewrite the laws of physics. It's the same principle as a swamp cooler. So long as there's water running, and so long as the fan turns, you
will get cooler air. If you want the bandana to feel cool again, untie it and roll it over so the side away from your skin becomes the inside. I guarantee it will feel cool again ...at least briefly.
All that said, humidity is its Achilles' heel. For the simple fact that there's less evaporation when the air is humid. Especially if you're riding at 20 mph, they still work
some (unless it's so humid that it's raining or foggy), but they're much more effective when the humidity is low. Great for Tucson, not so great for New Orleans.
In case you're wondering, they don't much drip, even when they're freshly-charged. The material inside clings to the water so dearly that it pretty much has to be forced (by heat) to give it up.
Anyway, I'm not tied to a brand because I don't consider this a comfort item, I consider it safety equipment. I'm sure they sell similar items at places like REI and other outdoor equipment retailers, too. I'd just like to see more cyclists wearing these because I think they somewhat mitigate the risk of a heat injury. And I can think of few places better suited to its use than the Hotter'n Hell ride.
So please excuse me, CatchMeRidin, for not coming anywhere close to addressing the question you asked, but I think one of these will do more to keep your head cool than any helmet you might buy. And if you go the Wally World route, it'll only cost a couple of bucks to test my theory.
EDIT:
Okay, this is my first time posting images on this forum, so how do I post an image and not be left with a duplicate at the bottom?