Gel riding shorts are not for everyone
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Tue April 02 2002
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Posted Apr 1, 2002
- 7,515
(From an article found on the internet...)
The great gel shorts blowout on the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure
In preparation for the 2000 edition of GOBA, my wife and I were putting in some pretty good mileage on the bicycles. One major concern my wife had was she felt she didn't have enough cushy for her tushy. In other words, she didn't want to develop those nasty saddle sores or the course of the seven days riding 350 miles.
So against my better judgement, she decided to by a pair of gel shorts, the ones with gel rather than suede or a nice wicking synthetic. Now mind you, on this ride we were camping in tents along the way, so that in itself presents itself to stories you can tell the grandchildren, considering I've been dubbed chief of the rain campers. But the gel shorts debacle takes the prize on this trip.
On the first day of roughly 60 miles, the gel shorts seemed to be working out okay for my wife if her tush is happy, she is usually happy. It was on the second day things fell apart. We were probably only about 15 miles into the ride when my wife started squirming, then complaining about discomfort on her shorts. She said she could fell a seam digging into her delicate behind. There were a few stops of twisting and pulling adjustments and a few miles of riding. As we're riding, her discomfort grew and she said that something was really wrong with the shorts because she felt like she was riding on a baseball!
We pulled off the route near a semi-secluded farmer's field and she investigated her shorts. Sure enough the gel had somehow balled up inside the material pad of the shorts. She really was riding on a baseball. So with me holding my rain jacket to cover her my wife slips off her riding shorts and butt nakedly begins attack the glob of gel, try to forms it back into some semblance of the flat pancake it started out in. Fortunately were in near the end of group that day and not too many riding went by wondering what the heck the woman in the field was doing while some guy held a jacket near her waist.
My wife tugged, pulled, pounded and massaged that wad of gel to no avail. She asked me for suggestions and in between the snorts and snickers of trying to contain myself; I could come up with nothing other than cutting out the insert and riding without. She figured riding on the seams wouldn't be any better than riding on a wad of gel. It was either that or ride naked.
My wife also wasn't real fond of the idea of riding another 40 miles or so balanced atop this not so soft mass of goo. I checked the map and indicated we were approaching a fair sized town, let's see if they have a bicycle shop where you can buy a new pair of shorts.
Fortunately we found the bike shop and found shorts to fit (Not gel!) andr but not before we had the bike shop workers all giggling to themselves. Well as far as the shorts situation went, they held up the rest of the week, however some stories live on. A few weeks later my sister heard this hilarious story during one of her bicycle club rides about this women whose gel shorts blew out during the GOBA. Fortunately no names were known.