A tale of eBay woe

I'm forever on a quest for better bike shorts.

Better pad, better waistband, legs that don't ride up or cut off circulation, etc..

But mainly a better pad. I usually wear Mavic shorts, and they're certainly comfortable, but after about 50 miles, I'm in pain and no amount of fresh chamois cream will do anything about it.

So while browsing everyone's favorite online auction site, I found a pair of shorts that looked to have a promisingly thick pad.

So what if they were an off brand and priced at only $30?

All that stuff my grandma always told me about getting what you pay for? 

Straight out the window. I bought the shorts.

They arrived the other day and this morning was my first test ride on them.

I had originally planned to do 80 miles up PCH today, but about 10 miles in, the shorts (or the spirit of my grandmother. I can't tell which) took their vengeance.

The pad, so soft and comfy at first, immediately compressed to the point where it was beyond useless and actually causing chafing, but that wasn't the main problem. The main problem was the seam up the back of the shorts with a very poorly placed tag that was rubbing the skin off the small of my back. It's amazing how the little things get you.

I figured that eventually the lady bits would numb out, but that seam/tag combo - I couldn't ignore it. The more it rubbed, the more it annoyed me, to the point that I started getting really snappish and mean to passers-by and riding buddies.

That, for me, was the signal to pack it in.  It wasn't going to get any better.

So I headed home after riding a grand total of 25 miles. I've got a patch on the small of my back that's rubbed raw, and my lady bits are hamburger.  Hamburger, I tell you.

So, lesson officially learned.

No more discount off-brand bike shorts for me

The Laws of Physics

Today was a team ride, doing what's called the Amalfi Loop on the Westside.

It's a great training ride, because it's a steep hill with some switchbacks - one of which is a hairpin turn to the right on a steep hill. Said turn is excessively banked, so when one is riding it, the bike tries to veer to the left, thus requiring the rider to lean right to correct.

When I was halfway through said turn, I chose a spectacularly bad moment to reach - with my left arm - down to grab my water bottle, and, of course, started to fall over. Also of course, since I'm usually accustomed to unclipping the right foot first, that's the foot that I got unclipped first.

Unfortunately, I was falling to the left and turning to the right so not only was the wrong foot unclipped, the combination of my weight, the turn, and the angle of the hill meant that I got up close and personal with the pavement, resulting in a really nice scrape on my left knee and a chainring mark on my right calf. Like so:

Gary bit me

This was taken at the end of the ride after I had washed the blood off my shin

This resulted in high fives from my teammates, and a lecture from the well-meaning sports massage guy (who was there to give promo massages and get us all hooked) about how I should better learn to use my clipless pedals.

He really did mean well, so I just smiled, nodded and refrained from trying to tell him that the reason I fell was because the laws of physics, not because of my ineptitude with the clipless pedals.

Massage guy turned out to be very knowledgeable about vintage bicycles,and may be able to help me locate a stem bolt for Gary, since the one he currently has is stripped, making any height adjustment of the handlebars impossible.

Massage guy also gave me a discount card (and a free sample of BioFreeze), so a sports massage may be in my future.