How hot is too hot to ride?

[Az Wingrider]

I have also on occasion put ice in zip lock bags and put them under my jacket and they do help a lot. You just have to get past the initial shock.

[motozeke]

The downside of that massive fairing and the ------- is that not enough air flow hits my torso for cooling when the temps get into the 80s and beyond. Honestly when I move to the Sierra foothills (next year or two, God willing) I'm going to get a naked bike for the summer heat. An evaporative cooling vest and a mesh jacket should do the trick with all that airflow.

[1951vbs]

Great concept. The veskimo is built similar to a heated vest but instead of having a heating element it has small tubing that circulates chilled water from a cooler. It comes with a 12-volt pump you hook to the battery. It works great until the ice melts....and that is the problem. I used it for my commute and froze larger chunks of ice that wouldn't melt as fast and did the same thing in the lunch room freezer at work. That worked fine but really wasn't worth the hassle for a 30 min trip. The bigger problem is on a trip if you stop to fill it up with a bag of ice it only lasts about an hour. Finding bigger blocks of ice while on the road is tough. I think all this solution needs to be a winner is a Yeti style cooler. The other thing I wish they had was a helmet liner utilizing the same concept. I would buy an extra helmet a size larger just to accommodate it.

http://www.veskimo.com/

[OlyF6B]

Lots of good suggestions (posts). I've used "neck wraps" for years. Once they are "hydrated" - they are great for cooling the blood flowing through your carotid arteries.


Neck wraps aside, as previously mentioned, some common sense techniques help reduce heat fatigue...

I just got back from a 2,200 mile ride with 5 friends -- where ambient temps reached the mid-to-high 80's by late-afternoon. We were all hydrating well. However, the guys I rode with were all about half-helmets and going sleeveless (jacket-less) when it got warm/hot. They not only got sun burnt (even with use of sunscreen - spf 40+), but severely dehydrated b/c of all the exposed skin. I wore a full face helmet and a medium weight textile jacket (with lots of vents) and was just fine. On the hottest day, I dumped some water on my tee-shirt... and when "at speed..." the air flowing through the jacket vents actually created a cooling effect that lasted for almost 90 minutes until the shirt dried.

[Law369]

It works. I wore it from Philly to Vegas last year. It really helped.

[STRaider]

When I had a bike with a tank bag, I used a mini pressurized misting bottle. Holds about 32 ounces I believe, and I would pump it up before I left, and would leave the hose accessible through a small hole in the zipper of the tank bag, sticking out just a bit. Every so often, I could grab the hose and mist myself, even my face with a full face on.
I remember it helping, but haven't used it the the f6b, as I have no tank bag.

[TerryDavid]

Coming home from the mines in the North it was 50 degrees Celcius
Thats hot
Drink water and dont ride into ther sun