When Behind Comes First
I wouldn’t say I have a big behind. Nina says I don’t have one at all. I think it was bigger before I joined the Navy, but they chewed most of it off during the six years I spent in the sleep deprivation program they called, being a boiler tender. One thing about that behind, though, it sure can get my attention.
When Mike came to pick up his Coho randonneuse, he brought a saddle with him. It was a no name saddle that he likes a lot. I asked him about it and he said, “You know what it’s like when you get a saddle that’s just perfect?”
No, I don’t know what that’s like. I’ve been riding Brooks saddles for at least the past five years and I’m satisfied with them -- especially with the one labeled Champion Special B-17, but I often look to see what others are riding. With Mike’s comment, thoughts about a saddle began to stir when I was supposed to be concentrating on the last of the set up of Mike’s bike.
Thoughts get all mixed up sometimes and this was one of those times because the Red Randonneuse has had a noise this year. While riding, I’d hear a sound like the chain rubbing the front derailleur, but it was intermittent and only under hard pedaling. I checked the derailleur and it didn’t look to be the problem. I even pulled it off and put some grease under the bracket. Then I pulled the crankset and checked it and the rings on my alignment table and they are true. I checked the handlebars and put a little wax where the stem grips them. I pulled the saddle and waxed the rails. The sound might come and visit with me for fifty miles and then go away for a while. I convinced myself, but not convincingly, that the noise must be in the saddle. Now Mike was talking about perfect saddles.
Investigation was called for. On the road bike review website, I read that lots of people love the Selle San Marco Rolls saddle and I have a friend in Washington who has at least two of them on different bikes. (The thing is, he is really skinny. I thought about that.) More checking and I found that Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond rode those saddles to Tour de France victories and Miguel Indurain might have liked them as well. There is another Selle San Marco saddle called the Regal. It’s similar to the Rolls. Tom Boonan likes these so much that even though he rides with Specialized sponsorship, he has special Regals made for him without rivets so people won’t see that he’s not riding a Specialized saddle.
Flip a coin? I bought a Rolls.
I did this on Thursday with a 200K brevet scheduled for Saturday and lousy weather that dampened my enthusiasm for a good test of the saddle before the brevet. In leu of acting intelligently, I adjusted the saddle height and started the brevet on the untried Rolls. I guess you ride enough that you start getting this goofy idea that 200K isn’t very far and that even if the saddle isn’t perfect, it won’t be an issue. Well, it was. When I saw any incline at all on the way in, I shifted up so that I could stand and pedal for a while. I was in pain.
Return the saddle, right? I mean, it came with a thirty day trial so give it back and say, “I’m sorry, I just can’t take it.”
The trouble is, I like the idea of the saddle. Do you ever experience that, you like the idea of something even though the reality of it isn’t so sweet? What do you do? Sometimes I stubbornly continue and try to justify it to myself. Maybe I just need to toughen up. Maybe it just needs adjustment.
Maybe the Yellow Roadie would be a better bike for the Rolls. I was looking at Ray Dobbins’ great site and there were some Rolls saddles on a couple of his bikes. That made me want to give the Rolls another chance. So I put the Brooks back on the Red Randonneuse and put the Rolls on the Yellow Roadie. (By the way, no more noise on the Randonneuse with the Rolls; or during a sixty mile ride last Sunday with the Brooks back on board. Go figure noises sometimes.)
Yesterday, the weather was fantastic and Nina egged me on so I went out for five and a half hours on the Roadie where I missed a turn and got lost in the county next to ours and didn’t have a map and found some great roads before I asked a farmer how I could get back to Randolph County. I found the county line at the southeast corner and stopped a while later at the store in Erect to have a 25¢ ice cream bar and a chat with the friendly clerk. Sometime after that, my behind came to the front again; at least to the front of my attention.
Bernard liked a Rolls and he knocked off 200K+ rides all over Europe, even on the pavé of Paris-Roubaix which, by the way, Tom Boonen won last Sunday on his disguised Rolls cousin, the Regal. But as I rode along thinking about how much I like the idea of the Rolls and about how much I don’t care for the reality of the Rolls, it occurred to me that Bernard and Greg and Miguel ride 200K or 300K a whole lot faster than I do. For a given distance, I spend a lot more time sitting. Sitting on a saddle that talks to me after four hours.
This morning, I steeled my resolve, found the box for the Rolls, and asked Nina if she knew where the receipt for it was. She did. I got everything together and decided to keep the Rolls a little longer; at least through the weekend. Maybe if I give it one more chance, idea and reality will come into sync and surprise me with joy. Anyway, if I waver just a few more days, my thirty day return period will end and I’ll be able to keep the Rolls whether I like it or not. It sure looks like a good saddle, don’t you think?
Coho Thoughts
Friday, April 18, 2008