Everybody’s got some piece of gear in their closet that is exceptionally good at what it does but is embarrassingly ugly.
Mine’s a Hi-Vis Yellow Buff with retro-reflective striping. It keeps my neck warm and bug-free on the motorcycle, keeps my neck from getting sunburnt on the motorcycle, keeps people from running me over on the motorcycle, keeps my nose and mouth warm skiing, can keep sweat out of my eyes playing softball, but it’s godawfully hideous to anyone around me. When I got done skiing and was waiting around for Lia and the rest, I had it pulled up over my neck, ears and face balaclava-style and several people referred to me as “the traffic cone”.
I did have one in a much less obnoxious “black” color over the summer, but lost it somewhere.
I’m sure everybody’s got something like this – a piece of gear that they wouldn’t be caught dead in if it didn’t actually work as well as it does. That’s mine, so what’s yours?
Off the top of my head, it’s a GoLite balaclava. Balaclavas tend to look silly, but the GoLite one I have works amazingly to keep my head and neck warm in the winter with minimal bulk.
Otherwise, pretty much everything else I own is relatively innocuous-looking or actually fairly stylish, for certain definitions of stylish. Also, there is a certain aesthetic value to things that could be considered absurd or ugly, such as my fuzzy blue and green scarf, or “Midnight Cowboy” leather jacket. Sometimes you take pride it putting an aesthetic thumb in people’s eye, just because you can.
The only thing I have that might be ugly is the pink crate I clamp to my cargo rack and that’s mostly because it’s usually pretty dirty. Otherwise, I just seem to have an (absurd, maybe) array of crochet stuff when it’s cold: arm warmers, hat, neck warmer/cowl/scarfette/thing and messenger bag. None of them match.