TechNiche Evaporative Cooling Vest
 Move
over Cool Tie; let’s cool down the core too
It’s one of those 95 degree days and you’re canyon carving
through the Gorge, the Palouse or wherever your adventure has taken you. No
matter how fast you go, you just can’t seem to ride cool and if you have to
stop, heaven forbid, you’ll melt down entirely.
Dehydration and heat stroke are two of the most critical
dangers in warm weather riding.
In the old days there were a few of us who had the sense
to soak a long sleeve tee shirt down and put it on under our jackets. That
worked…for about an hour… then we had to pull out at the next rest stop and
re-soak the shirt. Pain in the butt.
About 2000 the first mesh clothing was hitting the market.
Good stuff if it’s 80 degrees outside, but what about getting hit with 96 degree
air at 60 miles an hour? Dry heat like that on your dry skin means any moisture on the surface
of your skin is going to be pulled out right away and you’re going
to be about as hot, or hotter, than if you were sweating away inside a full
coverage jacket.
Then someone came up with the cool tie, a neck device you
hydrated for 45 minutes with water and put…around your neck. That did okay for
keeping your carotid artery from sending over heated blood to your brain
lessening your chances of heat stroke, but what about your overheated core?
Still overheated.
 Finally several years ago mankind stumbled upon the water
retaining properties of certain polymers and began to develop vests that you
could hydrate with water in about 3 minutes and ride with all day without having
to re-hydrate them. Evaporative Cooling Vests were all the rage, but expensive.
I watched ECV’s hit the market from various manufacturers
like Joe Rocket, Marsee and others. Joe Rocket’s Sahara was $79 and was designed
to fit…Joe Rocket gear of course. Marsee’s unit was $129 and the prices from
other manufacturers went up from there.
Someone at TechNiche got the bright idea to take the JR
Sahara concept and make it for the rest of us who don’t wear JR gear. Voila –
finally an Evaporative Cooling Vest for $32 that works!
In fact we tested a JR Sahara against the TechNiche just
to see if there was much difference. The medium size on both has a dry weight of
7.5 ounces. Once hydrated for 3-10 minutes they both bloat up to 5.25 pounds.
That’s just under two thirds of a gallon of water that each one saturates. So
far they seemed about the same.
Next test. The vests were placed outside and allowed to
dry under the same weather conditions of about 60 degrees. The TechNiche
actually retained water longer than the JR taking a total of four days to
completely dry when not on a human body!
For the record, ECV’s retain more water longer after the
first time they’ve been put to use. Be sure you do a dry run with your new ECV
before you go for that first real long hot ride.
An ECV works well with a full coverage jacket, or when
used under a mesh vest. Joe Rocket tells customers to only use their Sahara with
a mesh jacket. Perhaps they want to encourage another purchase, but it’s more
likely they want to keep customers away from the properties of ‘funk’ that occur
with wet gear under a full coverage leather or textile jacket. The simple
solution for that scenario is to be sure to air dry your gear each night before
you ride the next day. Hang it up on a hanger, don’t lay it down crumpled up in
the hotel chair. Common sense goes a long way here.
At 7.5 ounces ECV’s pack up light and small and are easy
to carry with other gear. If the air should cool down, simply place the ECV into
a plastic bag and slip it back into your gear bag. Just remember to take it out
at night and let it air dry.
For the time being I have yet to find the TechNiche ECV’s
at local dealers. In response I’ve added all the models and colors to the
Sound RIDER!
store in all available sizes ranging from Small to XXXL.
The vest now are available with optional collars and a zip on/off
sleeve option. I'm fairly happy with the simple standard vest,
but if you're going somewhere really hot, like Death Valley, the
sleeved versions will add a lot more cooling to your adventure.
With all the
great events happening this summer, you can bet I’ll be doing a lot of warm weather
riding, as I’m sure you will too. The TechNiche ECV is a great way for us all to
keep our cool allowing us to ride safer and enjoy the road at a price that’s
right.
Ride Safe, Ride Often, Ride Cool
PT/May05 (revised Mar07)
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