Eek. 5 days. 5 days to pack, get geared up, buy the food for the ride, get last minute equipment, etc. I’ve spent the last five MONTHS with the attitude of “just survive until the 21st”. Well, the 21st is next week, and I have a triathlon to start training for.
It’s a good thing I got on Hamish (the Schwinn) yesterday as I’ve discovered his front gears are all fu-bar’d. I leave for Vancouver on Thursday, his timing is spectacularly bad. However, Performance Cycle is close and I needed to get a cushier bike seat anyways (I’m sure to be sore, sore, sore…), so this is not awful.
What is awful is getting biker’s burn. Do you know what biker’s burn is? It’s like a farmer tan, except we’re talking about yours truly, and yours truly BURNS before she TANS. Ergo, I have redness of the skin in patches. And not in normal patches.
When I bike, I wear longer bike shorts (let’s prevent chafing, shall we?), a tank top, fingerless gloves, a watch, my helmet, a pair of wraparound sunglasses, short socks and my shoes (natch). Therefore, I have a burn on my arms down to my wrists and then completely white hands, a white strap where my watch usually is, and on my legs from about mid-thigh to my ankle. Oh, and my nose (not anyplace else on my face).
What is most distracting is the “red thigh-high” effect of the burn on my legs — the bike shorts are longer than regular shorts, so it’s a bit distracting seeing shorts, patch o white skin, then red. I feel like I should make some sort of weird garment such that I can get strategically burnt in all of the white bits, but something tells me that won’t really work out as intended.
Bobbie Conti 