It's been hotter than heck here is Henderson this year. Sometimes temp reaching 117 degrees on my back porch, in fact, it's been over 110 here for almost 5 weeks this year. I wanted to go riding- but in this heat?

I read that some guy made a cooling shirt by sewing vinyl tubing to a tee shirt about 10-15 years ago. There are people still selling complete systems, not that expensive, but they run all the time and have small ice coolers so at most, they last about an hour.

So I go to ebay, type in Cooling vests, and got some hits, a full shirts and military vests, Bought 1 of each and then bought a 16 qt Colman cooler that fits on the back seat of the Can Am and a aquarium little water pump and some vinyl tubing and a bunch of little plastic fittings and timer. I built up one system and put 10 lbs of ice and 30 oz of water and hooked everything up and went for a ride.

The cooling vest is a working out great! I sat on the trike down at the lake drinking a Pepsi and eating a bag of gorp and it was 118 degrees! Now I find I can ride 4 hours on @15 lbs of ice@ $2.99 a bag.

The disconnect fittings were the hardest to figure out, getting the right size disconnects can run a retired person broke.

Was it worth all the work? Hell yes.