Once and for all, let's figure this out.

FACT: I wear glasses. When it rains, the glasses get smeary and streaked with water. It's hard to see. It sucks, in fact.

SOLUTIONS:
1. Wear a hat. Only a baseball hat under the helmet works for me. The groovy cyclist cap has a bill that doesn't offer enough coverage.

2. Carry a bandanna to clean lenses. I have to pull over probably two or three times on a rainy commute. The problem with this is that once the bandanna gets soaked, it only smears the lenses. Is there a lens cloth that will still clean the lenses when wet?

3. Use Rain-X. I think I applied Rain-X once but it didn't rain for weeks after. So I'm not sure if I haven't wiped the stuff off in the meantime. In any event, if it was on my lenses last night, it sure didn't work. I'm willing to try again, but from my experience driving (where Rain-X is indispensible), don't you need to be going, like, 40 mph for the beaded water to run off?

Other solutions?

• Cycling glasses. Does the shape and lack of frame maybe help with the rain runoff?

• Contact lenses. I'd hate to endure all the wincing and aggravation I see contact users suffer. But maybe that's the only way to ride in the rain.

We can solve this problem!

A hat helps, contacts freak me out, and I haven't tried Rain-X. I just wipe my glasses off until the point I give up, and stash them in my handlebar bag. I'm lucky that my vision isn't horrible, I can function without them.

--A

Cycling cap works for me. Fog is a bigger problem than actual rain on the glasses.

Dish soap is recommended in this thread:

https://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/236352-these-glasses-commuter.html

(also includes Rain-X cautions)

One thing I have noticed with Rain-X on the car, it that the beading action makes the view pretty clear whether the beads actually shed off the windshield or not.

Contact lenses come in a variety of options. I fee ooky about touching my eye, but somehow if there's a contact lens involved, I don't mind. O2 Optix purport to allow more oxygen to get through your eyes than other kinds. You're not supposed to wear a pair longer than two weeks, and I have noticed they irritate more when I try to stretch that to three plus.

www.aclens.com -- cheapest place online I've found contacts

But hearing stories of debris flying into eyes (thank you, BF), I'm compelled to wear some kind of eyewear even when I have contacts in. So, yes, a streak-free solution would be nice.


And ...

Other Solution:
Lasik surgery

+1 fog drive me crazy. It's the only real thing I hate about summer in the south; going outside after being in air-conditioning. Poof, I'm blind because my glasses fog up worse than someone leaving the door open in the freezer isle.

--A

Today it was snow for me. Those big fat flakes of mid-fall. They kept sticking to my glasses and forming an opaque barrier. Plus my breath kept coming up my face mask and fogging the lenses.

I'm thinking about getting some ski goggles that I can wear over my glasses. They will still get coated with drops, but I think I might get less fogging and less droplets / sleet that miss the lenses altogether and nail me in the eyeballs.

I had my first experience with commuting through heavy rain today and man did my glasses drive me nuts! They don't have nose pads so they were sliding down my nose plus wiping them only smeared the rain around. I made it through but I'm gonna have to look into this Rain-X stuff or something. Riding down a hill at 30+mph with a car next to me and not being able to see is somewhat disconcerting.

I posted some questions about this, and got a lot of good feedback on the water + dishsoap solution preventing fog, and I would assume beading water.

Another thought. Some ski gloves have little rubber wiper blade on them like these. Those or an add on like that would be better than a cloth.

Contacts freak me out too. How the heck do people intentionally stick some object in their eyes? I'll never understand. Don't even bother trying to explain.

I just wear my glasses and if they're completely distorted due to rain drops, I just finish the commute by dead reckoning. Arh! We be turning right at the third stoplight.

I just live with rain on glasses. What I do is alternate between looking above glasses (to see general shapes etc. - my vision is good enough to see large objects such as cars and peds quite clearly) and looking through glasses (once I know what things are on the road in general, it's easier for me to see details of, say, road surface when I'm looking at them through rained-on glasses). But I'm lucky in that I could really ride fine without glasses - I'd just ride over glass or small but nasty potholes more often.

Yeah, that was me before the eye doctor told me I have "dry eyes". I need to keep my eyes shielded fromthe wind when I ride.

I have a visor on my helmet and it keeps about 75% of the rain from my glasses. The other 25%, I wipe off with a wad of bounty realtively lint free towels in my back jersey pocket (which is under my messenger bag). Don't try wiping it on your jersey or clothes, they don't absorb as well when wet and will only streak the glasses. The wad of tissues gets them clear every time.

I kinda concluded I had to just wear my glasses (although I'm going to try this rainx/dish soap idea...) I've dealt with contacts in the rain before and its just not worth it.

Lasik's starting to get cheap enough for me to consider it. At 500 an eye, that's 5 years worth of glasses (I usually pay at least $200 by the time I get an exam, contacts and polycarb lensed glasses) for supposedly at least 10 years of vision with no contacts or glasses to consider)

I got a pair of prescription sunglasses for cycling. Their shape does seem to help shed water, to a point. I did a metric century ride last weekend in a pretty good rain. 60 some odd miles and I never took them off. I did wipe them periodically with the back of my gloves, but other than that, I could see.

-D

A cycling cap works for me. I've tried a visor, but it just doesn't do the job completely.

Fog is horrible. Last year there was one day where I had to stop every mile and wipe off my lenses.

contacts actually aren't bad, if you get a good fit. I used to wear them and I'd forget I had them in for hours at a time.
Just this week I just got some ESS ICE wrap-around safety glasses, with a prescription insert. They make full contact with my brow line so the crap doesn't get onto the backside too much, and the front is easy to wipe down. I rode home today in a wet snowstorm and had to wipe it off several times; it was no problem even with winter gloves on.
I'm not going to even consider LASIK until the new wavefront-guided method is fully tested and down to a reasonable price. Non-wavefront-guided (all they had up until about a year ago) still has some percentage of irreversible failure which can lead to pretty bad results including essentially night blindness due to excessive flare around bright lights. As both an amateur astronomer and a night-riding lover, there's no way I'll take even a 1/10th percent chance of that outcome.

My Nike sunglasses are awesome at beading water, with nothing put on them. Works the same with the orange lenses as the tinted ones, so rain or shine I have a clear view. I bailed on traditional glasses a few years ago, and now I wear the Focus Night & Day continuous wear contacts.

i get my contacts at lensesforless.com and they're cheaper than any other place i've seen. they're $20.49 there, or $39 at my vision clinic! crazy.

i don't like having ****y-contact eyes (which i always do) but i like wearing glasses even less. sunglasses are fine but regular glasses drive me crazy. they're like an accessory you can never take off. except the accessory costs 300 bucks is extremely breakable and always has grease stuck to it and fogs up when you eat noodles. hate glasses. plus: crooked. ALWAYS CROOKED!

when i used to go swimming a lot the trick to keeping goggles fog-free was to wipe slobber on them. i'm going to try the dish soap thing next time i ride. i usually wear clear goggles at night or in low light, but they've started fogging up since the weather changed, so i haven't worn them recently. but this morning i got truck crap in my eye and i had to stop and take off my gloves and dig in my eye which sucked. so we'll try goggles again!

I'm surprised to see people mentioning contacts as the solution for water on the glasses. I for one don't ride without eye protection. I've been smacked too many times in the face with stuff so even when I wear contacts, I still wear my cycling glasses. To keep the water beading, I use Rain-X. Rain-X is safe but only if you use the Marine/Aviation formula which can be found at local boating/marine supply shops and FBOs.

I found a pair of safty goggles (cheapo ones sold at Home Depot etc) work well & fit over my glasses, rain X would help too but all I ever did was an occaisional wipe with my leather gloves. Works just like a squeegee. They are much easier to clean rain off than the glasses themselves(just a quick wipe) & also keep the cold air out of my eyes so not so much tearing. Don

I have excellent vision, and I don't need to wear glasses or contacts, but I still have a few suggestions.

I wear glasses most often during the winter because the cold and wind hurts my eyes. Last winter I used a pair of cycling sunglasses (Rudy Project Kerosene) that did a fairly good job with fog and rain. When I stopped is when they fogged up mostly. I noticed that it helped prevent fogging when I adjusted the nosepieces to put the glasses a little further away from my face though. If you have adjustable nosepieces on your glasses, then you should try adjusting the position of the glasses. I never had a problem with water fogging up the lenses. It just beads on them. Good cycling glasses are a good investment. Many Rudy Project glasses (and some other brands) can be fit with a prescription insert too.

I ordered a pair of RP Ekynox SGV for this winter, but I haven't received them yet. They come with a pair of double layer anti-fog lenses.



If you don't mind the larger ski goggles, then I've heard that eyeglasses can usually be worn underneath them, but that might not help in the rain.

I've also heard that cat crap is amazing.

i have three cats and i have to disagree with you.

Baseball Cap.

I am on week two after Laser Surgery on my eyes - I had it done for all the reasons discussed above. It is amazing. I did buy some larger lensed sunglasses with interchangable lenses for protection, but if I need to pull them down due to fog or whatever - I can still see!!! I love it, and highly recommend it.

PeterMac