The Oakley Jawbones are the successors to the hugely popular Radars, and they certainly live up to all the hype. I’ll get straight into the review without any blabbering this time, lol. Without looking at every single aspect of these sunglasses and comparing them to the Radars or similar Oakley models, I thought I’d just make some broad observations and comments about them. Firstly, the fit is absolutely superb; my Radars, although comfortable, often slid down my nose too far due to the very long nature of their ear stems. The Jawbones solve this issue simply by having shorter stems, but still with a good portion of rubber to keep them firmly gripped to the sides of your head. The main difference between these and the Radars would be the fact that the Jawbones are a much more conventional design, with two separate lenses with the frame encircling both entirely, as opposed to the Radars, which had a single-piece lens and no frame coverage at the bottom of the lens. 

The most significant change with the Jawbones is actually referred to by the name ‘Jawbone’. The bottom part of the Jawbone’s frame (the yellow bits under each lens you see above) acts as a jaw, swinging down and enabling the user to switch lenses effortlessly. Changing lenses quickly on the Radars was a pain in the ass, and I’m pleased that Oakley have thought of something better with these. 

Changing lenses is the easiest thing in the world; and with these versions I got a second set of lenses (yellow) to be used when cycling in darker conditions or overcast days. The lenses you see here are the Black Iridium, perfect for riding on bright, sunny days. It’s also worth noting that both of these lenses are vented, which means that there are small holes cut into the upper and lower outside corners of the lenses to ‘surge’ air backwards. Both the new design and new lens gives the Jawbones fantastic coverage of the face and eyes, as well as much better visibility. Peripheral view is not impaired at all, as the Jawbones, once on your face, are much wider than they look. There is no issue with looking behind, up, or down. Where the Jawbones kick the Radars’s ass for me is in comfort; the Radars were tight, but almost too tight. The area behind my ears hurt after a while, and the area around my temples got way too hot. The Jawbone’s vents solve the heat issue, and I’ve also found them to be much more flexible than the Radars, thus providing a much more comfortable fit and feel. 

In conclusion, I cannot stress enough how good these new Oakleys are; I love them. They’ve taken all of the good aspects of the Radar, but enhanced and improved everything. These are certainly the best glasses I’ve ever owned, and probably the best sports glasses in the world. Yeah they’re pricey, but I don’t care because they will last me another four years, just like my Radars. 

I want it. 

I often have people coming to me for some kind of emotional support, mainly because people assume that because I’m a ‘nice guy’ I’ll be able to give a ton of advice very easily. Trouble is, people thinking I’m nice actually makes me feel very uncomfortable, as I don’t like to be considered as a nice guy; they get nowhere in life. I’ve had too many people take advantage of me, which sickens me, and that’s why I like to come over as a bit of a cold-hearted bastard. Everyone goes through stages in life where you start to feel that there is no way forward, when you’ve reached a point when your life is fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it. This has happened to me at more points in the past twenty-four months than I care to remember, but I’m always one to put on a happy face and look forward; if there’s one thing I hate it’s dwelling on the past, especially on events that I’d rather not remember. However I think it’s good to occasionally look back and reflect.

I’m pretty spontaneous, meaning that I often cannot plan things before doing them, I just go ahead and do it when I feel like doing so. I also find it very hard to motivate myself, even in things that I have an interest in. I also see no point in doing things that won’t give me a reward at the end, which makes some things in life pretty hard for me to get to grips with. People have also told me that I’m too lazy to use my brain at times, which I’ll admit to, as if I don’t see the point in doing something, I won’t give it 1% of my time or effort. Trouble with me is that anything that goes wrong in my life tends to have repercussions elsewhere, a sort of ‘knock on’ effect, if you like. Sitting next to someone who means everything to you for nearly a year with the knowledge you mean nothing to them hurts, and took a lot out of my already hard to come by motivation. Funnily enough, for a while she was the only reason I got up in the morning, lol. 

I have more online friends than real-life friends, mainly due to the fact that I can censor myself to some extent on the Internet, which is something I find hard to do in real life. I hate it when people see a side or aspect of me that I don’t want them to see or I don’t like, and the beauty of the Internet is that I can choose what parts of me people see. Sounds selfish and devious, right? Well that’s what I’m like so deal with it. 

The conclusion I want to come to here is that nobody is perfect, and nobody should expect perfection out of anybody. There will be times when you mess up, when you feel so pissed of at yourself that you feel like jumping off a bridge, but before you look at the bad, look at all the good in your life. I know no matter what I do, or how many mistakes I make, there will always be a few people out there who love me for who I am, and that makes me smile. You should think the same. As for me, well I’ll keep truckin’ through life, dodging obstacles, but sometimes hitting them, not really knowing for sure where I’m going. But if there’s something I know for sure it’s that there must be something at the end of the tunnel. 

“In order to see the rainbow, sometimes you have to get through the rain..”

I’m the opposite to most people who ride fixie, I can’t stand the plastic/metal bit that wraps around one’s toes (clip) on clips & straps pedals. I prefer having no strap at all, thus leaving my foot free to move about, or just the fabric strap around my foot without the clip at the front. I had previously used just one strap toward the front of my old pedals, but this was way too uncomfortable on long rides as my toes were having the life squeezed out of them; they were also pretty dangerous as the rear portion of the pedal wasn’t secured to my foot, so my foot would slip out and back of the pedal on occasion. I decided to make some form of strap arrangement myself, having read this and having bought some decent plastic pedals. I basically threaded through two straps through the front and rear portions of each pedal, thus creating the arrangement as follows:

They seem to work much better than any previous setups I’ve had, and my feet now feel far more secure. Those pedals are pretty grippy even without clips and/or straps, so now I won’t have to worry about my feet slipping out again! They fit my size 9 (UK) pair of Lacoste Cerberus trainers pretty well:

Sidebar: In the meantime, I’ll try and see if there are a set of these floating around the UK. 

If you look on the left hand side of this web page you’ll see a small grey tab with ‘tweets’ written on it; this is my Tweetboard, where Twitter users can log in and post to Twitter. I think they are working on one for Facebook, too. All you need to do is click on the tab:

You’ll then see the board slide over, where you will be prompted to sign in with your Twitter account:

Once you’ve signed in, you can post stuff right from my site. Cool, huh?