What Should You Bring With You On A Ride?

You've just finished a long ride on a hot day.  Or, perhaps, you've been riding up and down hills, or spent the whole day riding into the wind.  Maybe you've been tearing up the turf or slogging through mud.

Now you're some combination of sweaty, dirty and tired. So, you wash up and put on some fresh, clean clothes.  What do you do with the clothes you wore while riding?

Some of you might hand-wash them.  That's what we did back when we wore Sergal or Kucharik wool shorts, jerseys, tights and jackets.  Later on, other companies offered wool clothing that could be machine-washed on the gentle cycle.  Many of the synthetic fabrics that came later could be treated in the same way.

If you are bike-touring, you might not have access to a washing machine.  And, if you hand-wash your vestments in the nearest sink, tub, river or creek, it will take forever for your stuff to dry.  (The "spin" cycle on a washing machine usually extracts much more moisture than most of us can wring out.)  That can be a real problem when you have to re-pack them, or want or need to wear them the following day.

One possible solution to such a dilemma is to bring a washing machine with you.   Then, it doesn't matter whether you sleep in the Hilton Hotel or in the woods:  If you bring a machine with you while cycling, you won't have to worry about whether or not you have access to electricity or any other power source.  Your bicycle becomes--or, more precisely, you become--the power source.

Easy Like Your Sunday Best

Some things never end.

Like the mails and e-mails I get from the alumni associations and foundations of the schools I attended.  I've moved to different states and countries, changed my name and even had mail delivery stopped during a time when I was feeling depressed and hermetic.  About the only thing those schools didn't seem to know is my financial situation:  They hit me up for money, whether or not I have it!

Then there are those mails and e-mails you get from retailers.  You might have bought an inner tube or a beanie ten years ago, but they send you announcements of the sales they always seem to be running.  Some of them spend more trying to sell more to you than you spent in their establishments in the first place!

One such e-mail I received today is trying to get me to buy "discounted" bike jerseys that were way overpriced to begin with.  I had to chuckle at one of those offers, though:  for a Castelli jersey called "Sunday Best".

Growing up in blue-collar Italian-American Brooklyn and New Jersey, I never heard the term.  It still sounds vaguely WASP-y to me.  So, perhaps, it's no surprise that the jersey looks like this:

If that jersey has anything to do with Sunday, the design makes me think of the Episcopal Church--which, according to Robin Williams (who grew up in it), offers all of the ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church (in which I grew up) with half of the guilt.

When I attended Catholic school, we wore our school uniforms to church.  After my family moved to New Jersey, dress codes relaxed and most of us didn't have a "best" outfit for church:  We just cleaned ourselves up and made ourselves more or less presentable.  For most of my adult life, I haven't attended church and when I go to any sort of social function, it's usually with people who don't care about what I look like.  If I wear a skirt or a tailored pair of pants, most people I know would say I'm "dressed up", though my attire might not be most people's idea of "Sunday Best."

Ironically, through all of those years I was racing or just riding with racers (or "wannabes"), my "Sunday Best" included bike kit.  Most of us took long or "fun" rides on the Lord's Day.  Or we might join organized rides, such as the one a bunch of us used to take from Brooklyn to New Hope, PA and back.  On such rides, I used to wear my "best" (or, at least, favorite) jersey or outfit.  

These days, I don't wear cycle-specific clothing, except for gloves.  So my "Sunday Best" is whatever I happen to be wearing when I'm riding on the second day of the weekend.

Now, if I'd lived another life, my "Sunday Best" might look like this: