Thursday, July 13, 2017

Cooling Cap

Just made a Walmart Run (similar to a Midnight Run, except not at Midnight) to look into (A) puncture proof bicycle tires or (B) a new tube for a bicycle tire since (C) I came up with a flat tire the other day and might could do a little real world biking in the near future. Couldn't find (A) so went for (B) in a Self-Sealing format which I'll have to see to believe. Then again, how will I know? Hmmm. Could be a major scam there.

ANYway, on my way through The Wal, I spotted this little item--




--and thought it might be worth a try. I sweat like a motherfucker when I do my stationary bike stints; so much that even wearing a headband isn't enough. I have been using a towel to mop up on the go, but it's inconvenient, and the towel gets stinky and wet pretty quickly--plus it means that I go through a lot of towels--so I want a better solution. This cap promises to "wick" moisture and sweat and keep me cool for hours, so I ventured $6.24 (+ tax) on it.




And in order to give it a Full Bore test, I left the air conditioning at 76 degrees (which is at least a degree or two too warm, no matter what those LG&E bastards say) and not only did my hardest bike workout--the 40 minute moderate effort pedal, including 30 second bursts at 5, 10 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and then a 60 second at 35--but combined it with my long ride version and kept going until 60 minutes, with the added features of two minutes of stand up elliptical pedaling at 38, 48, and 58. So it was a pretty ass-kicking workout for an old dog like me. Unfortunately I neglected to check my pre-exercise data, but my pedometer tells me that I've hit 8,354 steps and burned 528.1 calories today, and most of those would have come from this exercise session. And the cap? It was pretty okay. Maybe better than okay. I did have a little bit of leakage--had to wipe my forehead with my hand two or three times. But I was able to get through the whole thing without using a towel at all, so that's a biggie. Something I don't understand, though: the cap didn't look wet

































--nor was I able to wring any great quantity of sweat out of it. So where the hell did that sweat go? (My underwear LITerally had 6/10ths of a pound of sweat suffusing it . . . and yes, I DID weigh it, and yes, I DID wring out a bunch of water. Sorry, but there's no room for etiquette or delicacy in the world of Sports Science.) Guess I'm going to have to look into this whole "wicking" thing.

ANYway, I give this Cooling Cap a thumb and most of a second thumb up, and am anxious to give it another go.

Thank you, Mother Walmart.



2 comments:

don said...

Looking good man! How do you "...wipe my forehead with my head..." ? :-)

Brother K said...

Well, I have been doing a bit of yoga lately, and . . . .

I am so glad that you have my back, man. I fuckin' hate typos! In fact, I just finished reading Murakami's new book of short stories, and there were several typos which irritated the bejesus out of me. I was going to write to the publisher--in the hope that (a) they would care and (b) they would correct them if they did another printing--but last time I did that kind of direct action (to Ed Brubaker re: an article in the back of an issue of his comic book), I got a not-very-nice message telling me why none of the mistakes were mistakes, and I kind of lost all respect for him and couldn't even bring myself to read the comic book anymore. 'Cause . . . FUCK, man. As Chuck D. said, You can't free-style facts.