Or, not

So, I was getting tired. Specifically, tired of slathering my arms with sunscreen whenever I wanted to take a long bike ride during peak daylight hours. In the winter it's not an issue because the sun is low and I'm usually wearing a jacket to keep warm, and in the mornings I'm not bothered because the shadows are long and I'm not usually out for more than an hour. But the weekend and afternoon rides cook my arms with a bit more UV radiation than I'd like, and so I've started looking for alternatives to sunscreen.

In particular, I've started looking for long sleeve cycling jerseys.

Since most of my existing kit is Pearl Izumi, my first stop was to try their "Attack" lightweight long-sleeve jersey. It took ages to come in thanks to supply chain gobbledygook and when it finally arrived at my door I discovered that the sleeves were too long.

This was expected, of course, given that I have stubby little t-rex arms. What I didn't expect was for the sleeves to also be loose, which was definitely not going to work for me. I don't want wet fabric to be flapping around in the breeze when I'm trying to ride my bike.

So it went back for return and I polled the internet hive mind for advice.

I got a few good tips, and eventually settled on taking a quick trip up to SF to check out Ornot. They had a nice selection of long sleeve jerseys, and the sleeves were also too long on them (see the t-rex arms thing above), but crucially the sleeves were not loose and flappy. The jerseys seemed to be pretty good quality, so I bought two of them and gave them a try.

It was nice and toasty on Friday afternoon, so I rode up to the top of St Joseph's on Blackbirb to get some sweat going. As I expected the jersey did suffer from a little bit of wet-tshirt-syndrome due to the light color, and I decided that I didn't really care. It did the job of keeping me cool and comfortable and keeping the sun off my arms without needing to apply sunscreen.

As such, I am pleased.

While I was up there I took some other photos from the top. Looking out over the south bay.

And over into the Santa Cruz mountains.

It's quite lovely up there.

I'm going to keep my short sleeve jerseys in rotation since I don't always need the sun protection, and also they're still in good shape so it makes sense to spread out the wear and tear over them.

All in all I think these were a good addition to my cycling wardrobe.