White Fright and Bike to Work Day

Bike to Work Day is kind of a little piece of Christmas joy to me. It’s not so much that I need a special occasion to prompt me to pedal to work—though today was my first such foray of 2008—it’s just the fact that I see other people get jazzed on what I’m into and it makes me happy. And yeah, I realize it may be the only day of the year they get on a bike, but that’s OK. As long as they get flashback of the simple joy buried somewhere in their childhood memories, then it’s a good day…anything more is gravy.

Since there are no photos of me in the white shorts (thankfully), I added this Bike to Work Day video from our good friends at Top Dog Illustration.

There was a nice article in Santa Cruz Sentinel this week about a woman who bike commutes and I liked the fact that it was just about a regular person who made a few adjustments in her routine and made it the norm. Usually the story is about some über athlete or über environmentalist crusader and I just think that kind of thing turns regular folks off. Anyway, I like the article so much I sent a note to the reporter saying so. Her response was very warm and thankful—I get the feeling the folks at the Sentinel get a lot of angry email shit. People are so brave from behind their keyboards. But I digress.

Since I had left my road bike in the office earlier in the week, I ended up riding my XC mountain bike in this AM. I thought it might be a bit of a struggle as 40 odd miles and 3,000 feet of climbing tend to be better suited to the former. I was pleased to be wrong. The Yeti may be a bit portly for road riding, but its high-volume tires did pretty well pumped to the max, and the suspension and disc brakes were a blessing coming down the ripple and pock of Mt. Charlie “Road.”

I started my ride in San Jose and met my co-worker Sean in Los Gatos to share the joy and pain and sunshine and (no) rain as we crossed over the mountains to Santa Cruz. He rode his cyclocross bike with—inexplicably—a backpack full of laptop batteries. Some things I just don’t question. I was happy he had some ballast to equal out the added heft of my MTB.

I also unwittingly made a strategically advantageous clothing choice—white cycling shorts. A perk from one of the magazine’s we advertise in, these babies are comfortable, expensive and Italian. Unfortunately, they’re also virtually see-through when combined with a little sweat. After, oh, ten seconds behind me, Sean mumbled something about “butt muff” and went to the front, I tucking in behind him out of the wind for the remainder of the ride. A few years ago I had vowed to never buy a pair of white shorts out of courtesy to my fellow riders...Dan O had rocked a similar pair of Castellis on a lunch ride, exposing his nether regions for the duration and raising both the ire and disgust of the groupetto. As if cycling shorts didn’t already offer way too much detail, making them white adds that almost naked Cirque du Soliel costume quality to them. But they were free…and I thought maybe they figured out a new method to make them more modest. Apparently not.

So now all that’s left is getting home. I brought in another kit so I wouldn’t have to endure swampass on the way back, meaning Sean won’t have to suffer the “white fright” of my shorts twice in one day. We will, however, face the steeper and longer climb up from the coast with miles already in the legs, along with near 100-degree heat. But it’s all OK with me. I love today.
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PM UPDATE 9:30 PM

Sean pays me back for my AM white short treatment by wearing an entire white kit for the ride home. You should be thanful that my camera phone can't adequately represent the detail of his hairy asscrack.

I'm finally home and my balls are killing me. No, not those balls...the balls of my feet. Though the former took a bit of a spanking as well. So I switched to my road bike for the way home and as we were climbing up Mt. Charlie's, my seat bolt snapped. Fortunately I stayed up and only slightly slammed my taint on the top tube/seat post, spanking my balls in the process. No permanent harm, but riding 20 mountainous miles without a saddle is not my idea of fun. Truthfully, it was only really bad on the unpaved sections where the bike bounced around alot and I would have preferred to have more weight on the rear wheel. The real killer was not my quads as I would have thought, but the balls of my feet that took a beating as I stood on them the entire way home. Oh well, at least I could still ride and I wasn't too slow.

I ended up making it back to the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition's Bike from Work event at Gordon Beirsche after it was over, but before all the people I cared to run into had left, so that was good. And I still love this day.