You see all sorts of takes on the right outfit for cycling in the city. They range from lycra everything through various casual kit options, and ending up somewhere with normal street clothes. This covers everything from spending nothing on special equipment up to outfits worth hundreds of pounds.
One place where there’s a definite split in trends is on your face. I’m not talking sunglasses, which tend to fit with the overall outfit, but to face masks. Face masks seem to appear on people in any outfit, but somewhat weirdly more often on the faces of people in normal street clothes than anything specialist.
From time to time you see people who have decided that spending half an hour on the roads of the city requires an anti pollution mask. They’d probably never consider it if they were walking, but once on a bike they feel suddenly more at risk from exhaust and need to try and look like some sort of low-budget superhero.
Ok, so sitting behind a bus while you wait for the lights to change isn’t all that nice as the diesel pumps out at you, but you’d get the same as you wait for the green man at a crossing, surely? I was reminded of this phenomenon as I rode past a gentleman in what can only be described as something like a WWII gas mask. It was even in a combat-ready khaki green.
I suppose that if the worst happens and there’s some sort of terrorist gas attack in the city then there will be a sector of cyclists riding around, dodging the fallen bodies, as if nothing happened, but until then, I feel that it’s a bit over the top. Take the advice I read somewhere once and breathe out if it tastes really bad, get fit enough that you don’t need to breathe any heavier than usual and just get on with riding past all the cars with drivers sitting still, lower down in the pollution. Once you’ve done that, use the money you were going to spend on the mask and get a decent pair of padded shorts to enjoy riding for longer in more comfort.
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