Underwear!

My son likes to watch this show on tv with a bunch of sock puppet bunnies. The sock bunnies do little skits like on SNL. The best part of the show is that randomly throughout all the skits a little blue bunny pops out from the side (or top, or bottom) and says ‘Underwear!’, then disappears. That shit cracks me up. I also have a hard time not smiling whenever I hear someone say ‘beaver’. That’s a little bit awkward in my line of work.

I know, I have a very sophisticated sense of humor.

You can imagine my reaction when a few people I know had a protracted discussion about the use of underwear with cycling shorts. As I have discussed before, there is a steep learning curve for cyclists, and perhaps the steepest pitch is overcoming the fear of spandex. The fact that you are supposed to wear it without underwear just makes it worse.

So anyway, one of the people was a new cyclist, the other, a salty veteran – literally. When the salty veteran realized he was in the presence of a newbie he pounced like the proverbial fat kid on the donut. ‘You wear underwear with your cycling shorts, don’t you!’ Whoa, that came out of nowhere!

The vet launched into a diatribe on bacteria, chaffing, and yes, skid marks. A little too much about the skid marks. He proceeded on to the virtues of $200 bibs and matching $200 seats. Fortunately we didn’t get to DZ Nuts. It cracked me up. Note, the vet was right, but it still cracked me up.

I was a free baller from the start. I noticed that cyclists didn’t have panty lines in their spandex, so I wasn’t going to either damn it. No matter how awkward and uncomfortable it made me. That said, it did take me a while to embrace the spandex.

I used the padded underwear and baggy clothes that mail order catalogs developed to capitalize on my fear of spandex for at least a few months. It was another cycling right of passage – padded underwear, yellow jackets, and then gear with logos. Resistance is futile.