Dual Eyeware Sunglasses - First Impression

Getting older is mostly fun, but sometimes it may be less fun for people around me. During the California road trip, my friend John realized that I had trouble seeing the map details as well as the numbers on my computer, when I wore contact lenses, and he got tired answering my "are we almost there?" questions. I am short-sighted and I have been using contacts for sports for a long time. With age, a weird form of long-sightedness creeps up, but disappointingly it adds onto my primary vision impairment, and does not seem to even it out. See, I normally wear progressive multifocal glasses, but they can't make that gradient of power with contacts.
John has recently pointed me to a company who makes bifocal cycling sunglasses. You can buy them online, but I did not know how much power I needed to compensate my contacts to see better at the handlebar distance. I found couple of bike shops in Santa Cruz listed as dealers, called to confirm they had the glasses in stock, and set out for a road ride on Sunday starting near Skeggs preserve on Star Hill Road towards Santa Cruz. The ride itself was beautiful, I was riding on the fog edge, alternating between warm and sunny and cool coastal micro environments. The plan worked, I bought the $50 glasses with the +2.0 strength and gave them a first test on a Monday ride.

I like the shape and the wrap-around style, as well as the brown lens color (also come in grey). Ventilation is just so so, compared to my old Oakleys, and the nose pads are not adjustable. But the main point, using the bottom part of the lens to look down on your phone, cycling computer or a map worked great!

There is a problem, though and I will see if I get used to this: when clipping into my right pedal from standing, I like to do a quick visual check. With the glasses, the shoe and pedal are a blur. Next, while riding, I also like to perform quick visual checks on what gear I'm in (none of my bikes have gear indicators), again, looking down on your chain rings or cassette, you get a blurry image. Tilting your head way down to use the upper part of the lenses solves this issue, but I am sure this will take a little getting used to. So far, I take the advantages over this little inconvenience, and for fifty bucks I will be able to finally see how fast I ride :-)