I finally remembered to try the Loop ear plugs today instead of using the "Cat Ears" on my 70-mile ride today. As expected, the ear plugs certainly muted sounds, including wind noise, quite a bit. However, there were some drawbacks. As one might expect when wearing ear plugs, they might mute the sounds
outside your head, but suddenly you are very aware of sounds
inside your head and body, such as breathing. The harder my ride got, the more I heard my own breathing. Perhaps more troubling than that was that when I had a strong crosswind, I still heard
a lot of wind noise to the point where I almost couldn't hear the beeps from my Garmin and traffic noises were much harder to detect. That's a problem. The other problem with ear plugs is that I know I often misplace them, especially since they aren't attached to my helmet.
On my next ride, I plan on transplanting some ear covers I have on my mountain bike helmet onto my road helmet (which I totally forgot I owned until today). I originally purchased the covers to keep my ears warm which will work just fine now that it's Fall. The version I have aren't wind proof like the
Wind-Blox sold on Amazon, but are pretty close.
