Ahoy Matees,
After a long and arduously soppy spring up here in Canada, summer has at long last descended on us with it's iron fist of sweaty retribution.
That means it's bicycle season!
Yesterday, in my enthusiasm, I hopped on the duo-ped and rode to work, all the way down-town after work, then home again to hop into bed happily pooped out and completely exhausted. Counting it up I spent at least 3 hours on the bike.
Great! Right?
I'm not so sure...
I like to ride quickly, partly to get the heart rate up, but also to keep up with traffic and thereby reduce my chances of getting run down by someone trying to pass me in their giganticar. This means that I have a whole lot of WIND flubble-dubbing it's way past my ears, up to three hours worth.
Now, I haven't done any measurements yet, but I'm going to hazard a guess that the SPL of that WIND has to be up around 85-90 dB. That means that yesterday I exposed my ears for three hours to a sound level that is nominally damaging after 15-30 minutes.
I tried using my musician's earplugs, but if anything they made it worse. And I'm pretty sure that using the big orange foamy ones would be an even dumber idea than riding with headphones on, like soooo many people seem to do. Being able to hear what's coming up behind me has saved my ass more than a handful of times, and those things are like rolling off the entire world with an LPF at 300 Hz.
I was thinking of building some kind of tichy baffle system to deflect the air around my ears, but I'm pretty sure I'd look a real moron with cardboard taped to the side of my head.
Do you guys have any tricks for lowering the wind rumble and keeping the hearing while on the cycle?
UPDATE:
Panasonic RP-HT21 Headphones http://images.panasonic.com/static/models/rp-ht21.jpg
I bought a pair of these Panasonic RP-HT21 headphones and cut the cables off. They don't get rid of the wind, but the get the flubbley low end off your eardrums. Works well enough for the time being.
Added bonus: nobody ever seems to notice that the cables have been cut off, so if you don't want anyone to bother you you can just throw them on and have a great excuse for you not noticing that they're alive.