Re: [Paddlewise] Prescription sunglasses - polaroid vs tinted

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 2:55 AM, rebyl_kayak <rebyl_kayak_at_energysustained.com
> wrote:

> However, polaroid prescription sunglasses are really
> expensive and worse still the optician says they make it harder to read
> instruments and his bus driver clients won't use them, preferring to use
> tinted spectacles instead.


Before I had cataracts and subsequent surgery for new lens implants I had a
huge vision correction and had to buy prescription sunglasses. Back then (at
the very beginnings of the Internet) prescription glasses of any sort were
expensive enough so that I had purchased two pairs of stainless steel frames
and just rotated them requiring the opticians to prepare lenses for those
frames. They never much liked that. :P

The problems with polarized sunglasses became evident when I was flying
gliders. The light through the plastic canopy would be polarized in a
different direction and then the polarized sunglasses added just enough
change to make it difficult to see other gliders. Plus instruments (which,
in a glider, you generally just glance at.... the most important instruments
are often set up to make sounds so you don't even have to do that) also had
a fuzzy aspect when looked at through polarized sunglasses. I quit using
them then. Saved me a bunch of money and I never missed them. My wife drives
a schoolbus and I just made her move from the cheap Wal-Mart sunglasses to
Serenghettis. Sometimes you just don't want to scrimp.

Several things I *did* find out about sunglasses in general, however:

1. I tend to end up with badly scratched lenses unless they are glass. I
don't care what sort of treatment they put on them or what they are made out
of if not glass. Opticians don't like it when you buy glass lenses for some
reason.

2. The sunglasses that are "variable" (clear when it's dark.... dark when
it's sunny) never quite became clear enough after a few months. This may
have changed now. It wouldn't be important with regular sunglasses but if
you added this to your normal eyeglasses that you wear all the time it might
be important that they clear up completely at night.

3. I lost sunglasses or broke sunglasses (mostly broke the frames) much more
often than I did regular glasses. This is even weirder than it seems because
I wore glasses 100% of the time when I was awake (and 10% of the time asleep
in the reclliner) so one would think that losing them or breaking them would
be about the same rate for regular glasses as Rx sunglasses. But not so.
Oddly enough, since I had the surgery and now either buy Ray Ban or
Serenghetti sunglasses I never lose them or break them. Go figure. At any
rate, I bet the loss rate for ocean paddlers is even higher than white water
paddlers (which was what I was doing then).

4. I also found that for everything other than flying gliders I could just
buy cheap flip-up sunglasses. They look dorky though but at my age I
*always* look dorky so who cared?

If I were doing it again I'd get contact lenses and buy good non-polarized
sunglasses. I don't know if contacts can correct for astigmatism but I know
you can get them with corrections for close up. I would *never* want to go
back to wearing glasses and would undergo almost any hardship to avoid that.

Second choice would be tinted sports-type glasses.

Oh... one other thing. Go see an opthalmologist before you do anything.
Opthalmologists are physicians who specialize in diseases of the eye and
aberrations in vision and they know a LOT more than opticians do. It's
something everyone should do every few years anyway... especially as we age
and especially when we live in high-UV areas.


Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
www.nwkayaking.net
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