My mind lives on the corner of Luddite Lane and Cheapskate Court. I don't own a flat screen TV and a high definition TV is one that I watch with new eyeglasses. My stereo system has some 40 year old components, and I still will play record albums, although I do use a stylus instead of a sharp stick as I play them. iPhone? When I phone someone, it's either on my landline phone or on my pay-as-you-go cell phone. I'm typing this on a desktop computer that uses Windows XP, risking doom from nasty computer viruses that are out there just waiting to eat my Editor's Lett (or, perhaps, just to nibble at it). And I've never even been at the cutting edge of cutting edges, as evidenced by the fact that I used my first razor for over 30 years.
I'm also not the first person to adorn himself in the latest cycling clothing that technology has to offer, nor will I buy any sort of cycling clothing unless I'm convinced that I absolutely, positively need it. I rode a bicycle as an adult for over 10 years before I bought my first pair of cycling shorts in the late 1980s. After all, what is a bicycle seat? It's just a weird looking sort of backless chair and a person doesn't need a special pair of pants to sit in a chair. I bought my first cycling jersey in the early 1990s, which was my only cycling jersey for several more years. After all, t-shirts have the appropriate appendage holes, too. First pair of cycling shoes? Early 1990s again. An old pair of running shoes worked perfectly well with my toe clip pedals for years, at least until the serrated edges of the pedals started to dig through the soles of these shoes and into my feet. Even that built character, my all-purpose rationale for putting up with something that is uncomfortable when it doesn't have to be.
This may have been why I got some strange looks during a ride almost 30 years ago when I found myself inexplicably with a group of bicycle racers. My memory of how I got there is hazy, but there I was, clad in a white t-shirt, cut-off corduroy jeans, and running shoes; surrounded by polyester blends and lycra. I was able to keep up with the racers for a few miles, but then my chain fell off during a gear shift change, they didn't wait up for me, and that was that. I never saw these riders again and maybe that was just as well. I was like the guy who crashes a fancy dinner party dressed in scuffed shoes, sweatpants, and a shirt with a couple of missing buttons.
For a while, I used running clothing for base layers, tights, and jackets. Eventually, I gave up wearing my hooded running jacket for actual cycling jackets; one jacket that had the additional advantage of being "reflective," at least until it had been washed a couple of times. I also bought a cycling vest with the same property then lack of property. I got around to buying tights that were actually made for cycling instead of running, and added to my base layer collection, one layer per year at a time, thanks to an end of winter sale at one of the local bike shops.
I also decided that even more esoteric cycling clothing, such as arm and leg warmers, could come in handy for riding. They could also come in handy for walking around the house, preferably without any other clothes on, not that I would ever do that sort of thing, ha, ha, and why are there beads of sweat dripping on my keyboard?
However, I remained resistant to the charms, such as they were, to one of the more basic cycling clothing items; cycling socks. A pair of low cut cotton socks were my cycling hosiery of choice for years, coming in at approximately one-quarter of the price of a typical pair of cycling socks. And then, thanks to four trips to Japan in 2000, I accumulated 8 pairs of gray airplane lounging socks, for lack of a better description, that I used as cycling socks for several years after that. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that I finally decided to start opening my wallet wide in order to buy actual cycling socks.
So, when I began this year's DALMAC ride, I was well equipped with cycling clothing. Except, perhaps, for a rain jacket. The problem with rain jackets is that there appears to be only two varieties of them. 1) The $30 plastic rain jacket that works well while raining, but when it stops is more useful for reheating cold pizza slices that you happen to have stuffed into your jersey pocket. 2) The $200+ exotic material rain jacket that breathes, but for that amount of money, I'd expect it to talk, as well, which could be distracting. So, I didn't own a rain jacket and the forecast was for two days of rain later in the week.
On the first day, we ride through Alma and past a bike shop that always has a DALMAC rider's sale. We stop there to look for fabulous bargains, but I'd always found that no bargain was fabulous enough for me. Until this year. I found a jacket that spoke to me, figuratively speaking because it cost less than $200. It wasn't water repellant, but it was water resistant, and, since both of these words begin with the letters "r-e," that was good enough for me. And I could turn the jacket into a vest by removing portions of the jacket that were held together, not by Velcro, but by magnets. Let that sink in. By magnets! Just how cool is that? And if copper infused clothing actually works, I was sure that by a similar process that these magnets would also be able to draw away impurities from my system, whatever that actually means.
So, in an atypical act of impulse, I bought the jacket for half price at $60. And when it did rain on the third and fourth day of the ride, I donned this jacket, and it worked well. So, this turned out to be money well spent. And I haven't even tried wearing this as a vest, and then I'm really looking forward to putting it back together again, particularly if the magnets have a mind of their own (albeit unlikely, since the jacket did cost less than $200). And if they do, I can put on the jacket and turn into a Picasso painting.
So, yes, I've never been on the cutting edge when it comes to cycling clothing, either. But I think that that this might be changing, ironically enough, with the article of clothing that I was most reluctant to change. Thanks to the deep vein thrombosis for which I'm being treated, I've spent the last few weeks wearing a knee high compression sock on my left leg and a cycling sock on my right leg while riding. I like to think that I'm really rockin' this look. And sooner or later, I'm going to show up at a ride and there will be other riders stylin' just like me. Models will strut up and down the catwalk showing the latest in one compression sock fashion. And, then, Kate Upton will appear on the cover of next year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue clad in a bikini and one compression sock. It will be a leopard print (the sock). Asymmetry is chic. And my mind will move to a swingin' little townhouse on Trendsetter Terrace.
Rick Whaley, KBC Newsletter Editor
