Geargals

I thought it reasonable to follow a mountain bike review with a mountain biking accessory review. Technically the Trail sunglasses are an accessory, but they’ve become one of my favorite things about biking this season. Truly a breakthough in sunglass technology (like I’m a world class evaluator of sunglass technology, I’m so sure), these frames are light and they STAY PUT. This might have something to do with the complicated arrangement of bandannas, ponytails, helmet straps, and sunglass positioning that I have down to a science, but even when I wear the Trails for other pursuits such as running, they grip like geckos and don’t slide, shift, or create pressure points. I used geckos for that simile because geckos are light and small, but also a little edgy (because, after all, they are reptiles), just like the Trail sunglasses. The Trails don’t leave the dreaded nose marks that other types of frames leave. I’ve gotten sweat burns -lovely, eh? – from other sunglasses because of the way they dig into the bridge of my nose, but the Trails have yet to mar my countenance with such unsightly marks.

So the frames themselves are great because of comfort and fit, but the extra genius of the Trails is their photochromatic lenses that darken and lighten according to the type of light you’re in. Remember that kid in your sixth grade glass who had photochromatic lenses that were sunglasses while he was outside but supposed to be regular glasses inside, but they never quite got all the way clear in the classroom so he always looked like he wore slightly tinted sunglasses? Well, photochromatic technology has come a long way these days (again, me = expert). The Trails start with kind of a yellow tint, but darken to amber in the direct sunlight. The lenses adjust so well that I never notice the change – all I notice is that there is no glare and that I feel like I’m not even wearing sunglasses. And that’s no exaggeration – the first few times I wore the Trails, I forgot I had them on and tried to take my helmet off at the end of the ride, only to get it hopelessly tangled in the aforementioned complicated bandanna-sunglass-helmet strap arrangement. Nothing looks cooler than struggling to get your helmet off because your sunglasses are holding it in place, let me tell you.

What’s even better is that at their darkest, the Trails still allow the wearer to see true colors. Everything looks normal, just with zero glare. I have the most sensitive eyes in the world (the WORLD!), complete with swelling and burning if I get too much sun, and so far the Trails have never let me down.

One caveat – these are not exactly high fashion frames for anything but biking. They are designed to fit when one is wearing a helmet, so they don’t look exactly right if you don’t have a helmet on. I wear them for hiking and running, too, but wearing them with a baseball cap seems a little off, because they push the baseball cap up too high on my forehead. Baseball caps come down lower on the forehead than helmets, so it makes sense, but it’s sad because I’d love to have these lenses in frames that fit with my favorite baseball cap as well as they fit with my helmet.

The lenses are also “soft” and flexible – just how flexible, I’m not sure, because it felt so unnatural to bend my sunglass lenses that I stopped messing with them in case they might break. I’m pretty sure they can still break, but they seem pretty tough. I think the flexibility of the lenses is also to reduce the carnage in a crash, however I think that firm plastic can still cut you pretty effectively in a high-velocity impact, so don’t expect the Trails to perform miracles on that count. Pretty much everything else about them is a miracle, so if you’re a biker and you don’t have these, what are you waiting for?

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