Remember the movie, Notting Hill, with Hugh Grant, there is a scene where the main character is sitting in the theatre using prescription diving goggles to see the screen.  That is exactly how I might look with my latest on the road innovation number 19.  The look is weird, but on the other hand I can actually read – and more to the point write on this computer screen here.

 There is a basic catch 22 with reading glasses.  If anything goes wrong with them on the road – like in an airport of something – like the frames break – or the lens falls out – or any number of small faults which might occur – you usually need them to see how to fix them. Right ? Yes – or a backup pair you say.  Yes also right.  However these days I need stronger prescription lenses so I just don’t have a backup pair – the frames [titanium] broke right down the middle – I think I live life a bit rough at times – so there I am about to embark on yet another trip with two halves of a pair of reading glasses.

Design principle – the lenses need to be held by something so they dont fall off you head and such

Style principle – sticky tape and other joinings dont have a good look.

Off to the local newsagent in the lobby of the LAX Hilton.  There I found the following useful bits and pieces.

a. Emery boards about $3

b. Black Plastic sunglasses $16

1. With the emery boards I spent a while filing through a corner of the titanium frames of the glasses – I could only get the lens out of one of the halves – so I had to file through the frame with the emery board.  It took 4 whole emery boards to file through the frame of the broken glasses.

2. I took the sunglasses, admired the uv resistant lenses and then poked them both out of the sunglass frame. These got saved somewhere in my travel kit for a rainy day some other time.

3. I then cleaned up the prescription lenses and pushed them into the plastic frame.  They met at four points around the periphery of the frame opening and basically fit reasonably snugly.

Its amazing how reasonably cool sunglasses get transformed into really weird looking spectacles if you put clear lenses in instead of the usual sunlens.