The Wedgois

I have been riding long enough that most of my ‘first time on a bike’ moments are long since past. You know, the first time I fell off, the first time I got hit by a car, the first time I flipped a driver off…

You get the idea. Anyhow, last Friday I had my first ‘first time on a bike’ in a long, long, long time. So there I was stopped at a stop light with one foot clipped in and the other foot out – the pose that 'winter camouflage spandex guy' and other big time cyclist use to pee from. Anyway, so there I am when something incredibly embarrassing happens…

You’re thinking I fell over right? Well you’re wrong – I did that one years ago. No, this was worse. You see, somehow my chamois went wvoooop! Up my butt – a most unprecedented chamois wedgie.

In case you don’t know what a chamois is, it is the pad in bike shorts. It is pronounced ‘sham – E’. Don’t ask me why. I live in a state where Dubois is pronounced ‘Do – boys’, Kamiah is pronounced ‘Kam – E-I’, and perhaps most puzzling Pend Oreille is pronounced ‘ponderay’.

So there I am with a wedgois. I don’t know how it got there for sure, but I speculate it was the result of northward pressures from the bibs, lack of southward friction from the seat, and the torquing action of the one foot in, one foot out position. All combined to create the ‘Perfect Storm’ resulting in a tectonic chamois shift to the north.

I do the first thing anyone would do. I looked around to see if anyone noticed. No one seemed to notice, not even ‘sidewinder guy’ – the bike commuter behind me. Sidewinder guy is a story for another day...

So that’s good – no one notices the monumental wedgois I seem to have developed. It was so bad I think the IMT on the butt of my shorts had turned into IT, or at the very least INT. So now what? Do I dig it out there in public like a teenage girl pulling her underwear out, do I leave it, do I learn to love it?

I had gloves on so pulling it our wasn’t a real option – I wouldn’t have the tactile sensitivity or precision that this extraction would require. Besides I wouldn’t do something like that in public?

It was like 4 more miles home. Four miles of the bike seat shuffle. If you have ridden very much you know the bike seat shuffle – right cheek for a little bit, shift to the left cheek a little bit, slide back on the seat, slide forward on the seat, out of the saddle for a bit, and repeat as needed.

When I got home I waddled strait to the bathroom and performed the requisite extraction. I threw away the shorts. Then I had to take a shower because I felt dirty.