Nice Bike Shorts

 A couple weeks ago I was in spin class in Scottsdale with a bunch on casual spinners who were trying a new workout routine:  they achieve fitness by looking like they workout but without expending any energy. You know the type. They have matching shirts and bike shorts, some of them have matching socks, they have a water bottle that they sip from but don't need because they don't get hot or sweat. Sometimes they have a hand towel with their initials embroidered on it by their girlfriend. If you didn't see them actually on a bike, they would generally pass the 9 iron test. If you don't know what that is, the 9 iron test means they look good from 100 yards away, but get up close and you see all the flaws.

If you compare that with the average 53 year old guy trying to drop weight and fight off a hangover, its night and day. My bike shorts and shirt never match. I wear decent bike shorts, but my shirt might have a piece of dinner on it from last night. I usually run through a full water bottle in a normal spin class and can put two bottles down in a hard spin class. I sweat enough for a family of four.

So anyway, I was in this class with a bunch of people way prettier than me, which, if truth be told isn't the first time that has happened. Then, the really really old instructor started yacking away about some sort of nonsense that didn't have anything to do with cycling but might save your life if you were in a trench in France, circa 1917. He said he was a Marine Sergeant so, as his logic worked, he must know a lot about cycling.  Plus, he really liked the sound of his own voice. He never stopped talking. I think he was in the manic phase for his particular malady. I was wondering if he was some sort of a idiot escapee from the local sanitarium. He was doing up/downs, shouting instructions to the class (he called the class 'his platoon', I shit you not) and he told everybody to spin like he was.  He said "OK Platoon, watch me and do exactly what I do", which would have been OK, but his butt was bouncing on his saddle so hard and so fast he sort of lost his balance and almost hit the deck. It was ugly.

It was at that point that I decided to just ride on my own for this class and not pay attention to the instructor. So far, so good. So I dropped into my triathlon position on my bike and started to ride for an hour at an 80-85% heart rate. That was my plan. It was about then that I noticed the person in front of me had the same idea. It was a woman and she dropped into the tri position and cycled a steady pace. Bozo the cycling instructor clown was having the class do gymnastics on the spin bike and, here is the weird part, except for my new best friend and myself, THEY WERE DOING IT. Lemmings.

So, in order to correctly describe my new best cycling/spinning friend on the bike right in front of me, I have to explain that I only saw her from my position directly behind her. Isn't that the way it always goes? Isn't that like life? We only see things from our own perspective. I think so. In this case, my perspective was from a tri position on a spin bike about 18 inches behind my new friend. If you don't yet realize it, that means my nose was 18 inches behind her bottom. It's not my fault. Somebody else put her bike in front of me. Maintenance staff maybe.  Perverts.

My friend wore Newtons, not bike shoes.  I deduced from that bit of information that she was a triathlete and was from out of town.  How did I figure that out?  Well, she was too good of a cyclist to not own spin shoes.  And, since she didn't have them, I assumed she didn't have room in her suitcase.  Sounds right.  Plus, Newtons are running shoes so, you add cycling and running, you get triathlon.

She was thin, but in a good way. I don't mean she was too thin, she wasn't. Maybe trim is a better term. She was athletic, well muscled, carrying about 8% body fat, I would guess. I didn't whip out a pair of epidermal calipers to measure, I just took a wild guess. 8%, maybe 7.  She was wearing these granite-gray bike shorts that had a little bit of a frill at the top.  The lycra/spandex material had a small snag right at the point where her bike seat hit her bike seat, if you get my meaning.  She had maybe snagged the shorts on a gym bag or something.  I wondered about where that snag had happened and exactly how it had happened.  My mind wanders a bit in spin class.  I mean, there we were,  two triathloners in spin class, working together for a common goal and both of us wondering how her bike shorts got a snag in such a critical area.  Well, I was wondering that.  I thought about getting off the bike and asking her if she was aware that her bike short snag was distracting me. I started to really feel a kinship with this girl.  We probably had a lot in common.

Anywho, I rode that spin bike for another 20 minutes in the tri position, sweating and thinking, thinking and sweating, riding right behind my new best friend. I named her Desdemona like you might name a pet.  I always liked that name.  Desdemona. Desdemona.  Desdemona's granite-gray bike shorts looked really good.

For the rest of class, there were two groups, first, there were 28 sheep doing the best they could to follow a neurotic, escapee ex-Marine with terrible cycling form and then there was Desdemona and I, riding to our own tune. I was happy as a clam at high tide.  

At the end of the class, I was going to say something to Desdemona, like “nice job” or “you ride well”. But that would have been dishonest. I wasn't thinking that.  If I said anything, it would have been something honest.  Something from the heart.  Something like “nice ass.”

Is that wrong?