This is basically the way most outdoors products have been marketed since the previous century so I’m not sure how much we’re actually talking about here. What I was hoping to see in that article was something more quantitative — does “heavy and doesn't breathe as well” mean something is 20% heavier or 200%, etc.?
Durability is a big factor now though since I’m primarily bike commuting where it’s about daily use & weight is less important.
Nothing's more annoying than an expensive rain jacket or pants soaking through after a couple years of sporadic use. The crotch and knees of rain pants always wear out from the inside. Sunlight probably damages materials from the outside.
More and more I've learned to live without that gear, or to use it sparingly, by timing my trips and wearing fast-drying clothing. But sometimes it's just necessary.
Also, honesty compels me to note that if I wanted to shave weight off of my riding load out it’s a lot cheaper to start at the waistline.
This is a total tangent but I recently added an electric mid-drive motor to my mountain bike and with the motor and the battery I was already adding a lot of weight, and now I have a rear rack and panniers and I use it to toot around the city and get groceries and stuff. Its just funny I am going the opposite direction, making my bike heavier while also making it less likely I will lose weight. Sure is fun though with 1500 watts at my disposal!
It's been transformative since it basically removes most excuses for shopping, recreation, etc. — we put more miles on the e-bikes now than our car — and we often laugh at the way your mindset changes. I currently have a heavy duty chain lock which weighs more than my lightest road-bike weighed unloaded, have been known to dig into the panniers and find multiple changes of clothes and toys for the boy, etc. What's really nice is durability: they make incredibly tough tires these days as long as you don't mind them weighing twice as much.
I must say that the times I've been on a real road bike have definitely left me missing that feeling — it's basically the bike version of the jokes about someone selling their convertible and buying a minivan when they have kids — but what I really want is to rent a nice road bike on vacation since the safe & fun routes where I live really don't need any extra performance (I don't want to be the spandex bro slaloming around kids at 30+ MPH on the shared trails).
I love any form of transport that isn’t a car! Love that the e-Moto or e-Moped or HighPower_eMTB segment is taking off, I’m just anticipating that we’re going to eventually see them become their own segment with different rules, regs, and facilities from bicycles.
I’m pretty much riding it in on the streets with the flow of traffic, where less power would have cars whizzing past me and would feel unsafe. If I do take it on a bike path, I slow down and don’t use the full power. It is easy to reduce the maximum power on the control interface and move at a relaxed pace. I’ve been cycling for 20 years, and I have no interest in behaving in a way which would be upsetting to other people. I know too that inappropriate behavior reflects poorly on the ebike community and could get them banned, so again I am thoughtful with my riding.
I read that most waterproof fabrics do a good job of keeping water out. It's what happens when you sweat that makes the difference.
If there's water on the outer layer .. the sweat staying inside (soaking you from within). This is where this fabric excels .. removing the external water layer; allowing sweat to exit.
Shakedry actually delivers on this promise.
FWIW I do endurance cycling in the Seattle area, a.k.a. "The Pacific NorthWET". We tend to stress the hell out of waterproof clothing.
I have questioned the averseness northerners have towards getting wet. Living in Maryland now, so many I've interacted with will just not go outside all day if there is rain. They've been raised by parents who've trained them to wait for the rain to stop, to postpone yardwork, to waste time and space fiddling with umbrellas.
Is it just a comfort thing, or is there a real advantage to waterproof/breathable clothing?
Same with golf, most golfers in UK and Ireland will have extensive rain gear, umbrellas etc to play golf otherwise they’d be limited to like 4 weeks a year.
When I lived there I had that gear too but when i lived in Texas I just didn’t play when it rained as I knew a sunny day was around the corner, year round.
Florida rains everyday in the Orlando area but only for an hour and most of th time it’s dry and sunny.
I also don’t care about rain when going shopping, or walking through the park, or for tourism. But I’ll be extra careful if I’m trekking or biking, as there’s just no option to quickly move to a resting place if I get too wet or too cold. It’s not like I’ll hop into a Starbuck in the middle of the mountain trail.
Have you ever been out in the rain at 0°C? Or even 10°? Do you even know what it is to be cold and wet?
Visit a northern urban downtown. You will see plenty of people who pay little attention to the rain - not even rain jackets or umbrellas. They just go about their day.
I'd rather be in -20C temps than wet in rain at just-above freezing temps.
Florida rain is not comparable.
Me neither, but I live in Fiji. I suspect I'd absolutely hate the freezing rain of the Pacific Northwest.
So, "the south" refers to someplace like the Falklands? :-D
There are also people who don't like to be outdoors under those conditions, or who think that it's brave of me to ride my bike to work at -20 F, but I remind them that people work outdoors all day in places like Alaska, and survive.
Naturally, thunderstorms get a bit more attention. Those can produce hail and tornadoes, or blow down trees, with little provocation.
That's the real issue in Maryland and similar latitudes. We often alternate between sub-freezing and above-freezing temperatures. Snow falls, melts, and then accumulates in large puddles. Bonus: on a particularly cold night, the puddle freezes on top, and then you fall through.
I'm not trying to win some kind of misery Olympics. But mid-temperatures can be tricky to handle in ways that aren't obvious.
I’ve done 30 mile runs in the pouring rain w/ my ShakeDry jacket and come out “dry” at the end. The material never wets through. The only downside for me is that it does wear “warm” so I mostly wear it in under 45F degree weather — which coincides nicely with Portland’s rainiest weather.
My jacket was around $300 and more than worth every penny.
Yeah. For cycling, I wear short-sleeved summer jerseys under the Shakedry down into the 30s Fahrenheit. It gets pretty warm and sweaty in the high 40s but beats alternatives. (I'm up in Seattle.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtCdQfbLw7o
For those who don't know, FortNine is a YouTube channel from a Canadian motorcycle gear seller. Their producer has a physics background and makes excellent videos. Like xkcd, there's a relevant video for so many things even tangentially related to motorcycling.
To be honest, I don’t particularly care what performs best according to research. I’m the one wearing it while running and ShakeDry is best for me.
I would agree that optimal PTFE is a mini layer, bc it’s got such poor air perm.
However, the ‘working’ layer in futurelight and Neoshell has about 1/3 the material as PTFE and much higher void volume, making for higher flow rates. It’s worth checking out.
Not to mention the main downside of getting cancer
> As a result of a class-action lawsuit and community settlement with DuPont, three epidemiologists conducted studies on the population surrounding a chemical plant that was exposed to PFOA at levels greater than in the general population. Studies have found correlation between high PFOA exposure and six health outcomes: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
Why do you think they are discontinuing it if it is so amazing in what it does?
The grandparent comment seems to imply that wearing these materials is a cancer risk but it really doesn't seem like that is the case. Am I wrong? I can't find anything that indicates it is an issue.
(I live in an old house with some asbestos-wrapped ducts, I think asbestos is bad and should not be produced anymore but I also think that the duct wrap in my house is not endangering my family.. this seems like that sort of a situation to me.)
These flourinated organics don't break down in nature, they are known as 'forever chemicals'. They just stick around and get concentrated as they climb up the food chain. Like dioxins, the best way to get rid of them is burning them at sufficiently high temperatures, which apparently not all industrial incinerators reach.
I guess if enough of this stuff is pumped into the environment eventually some fungus or something will learn how to decompose it, but there will be a lot of cancer case before we get there.
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC 2017) concluded that PFOA is possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), and EPA (2016e, 2016f) concluded that there was suggestive evidence of the carcinogenic potential of PFOA and PFOS in humans. Increases in testicular and kidney cancer have been observed in highly exposed humans.
Less research on PFOS that aren't PFOA though, so there's room for dismissing the available evidence if you're so inclined.
[1] https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=1... [2] https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp200.pdf
To be clear I'm not diminishing the experience of the people who live around the plant where it was produced if that's what you're referring to, where clearly it had a terrible effect, but my understanding of that was DuPont dumped thousands of tonnes of toxic waste in the ground near the plant that went into the groundwater, which is very different from wearing the product.
Overall though for cold (32-45F) and rainy weather like we get a lot in the PNW, it’s an amazing fabric.
Only thing I can think of would be very rainy and very windy weather but those are pretty rare in my area.