Gearing up

Now that I have a bike suitable for riding, I guess it's time to get some use out of it. But hey, let's not get crazy here - these things take time. Far be it from me to jump right in and do something silly like exercise or get into shape. Instead, let's talk about cool stuff that will make my biking experience better, also known as Zen and the art of justifying my purchases.

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way. I already have a helmet, so I'm good there. I have a bike pump. While it would be cool to have those clip-type pedals, my low priced bicycle isn't bothered by such things, no fancy shoes needed. Instead, let's talk underwear. As a guy, our choices suck:

• Boxers: Not enough support for me, thanks. Plus I couldn't decide on either the budweiser frogs or the corona branded boxers.
• Boxer Briefs: Promising, but after a few wears and washes, they lose their tightness around the thighs. So it's all bunching, riding up, and uncomfortable south of the border. Fine for my desk job, but loses points for constant-adjustments-needed-in-public while walking, running, or moving at all.
• Bikinis: Embarrassing just to type, enough said.
• Scooby Doo Tighty Whities: Where are there adult sizes? WHERE?

Until recently, I thought I had no real options left, then I learned about compression shorts. While I don't usually want things in that area to be compressed, all important parties are left in their natural un-compressed state. I think they're pretty much spandex for men, or herein now referred to as mandex. They come in boxer-brief form, so immediately they have that going for them and are moisture wicking so they "breathe" (god help anything that's breathing my swamp ass) and won't chafe. Since I'm getting uncomfortable just thinking about that word and what it means, let's just say they seem to be where it's at, the bees knees if you will.

The problem is that the big name in compression shorts is under armor, and let me just say I don't want to have to take a second mortgage just for something to hold my junk in place. After some sleuthing I found that Target has some affordably-priced shorts made by champion for almost a third of cost of the underarmor shorts. If they work a third as good (which would still be roughly 100x better than my previous undergarments), it would be well worth it's weight in mandex. Moral of the story, I bought a few pairs and they are great. Currently living happily ever after.

Apparently biking shorts are pretty much exactly this (and have been for a long while), but have padding. You'd think with our almost limitless ingenuity we could have engineered a better bicycle seat. Something closer to a lazy boy than a broom handle. Just saying.

Enough talk about the lower half of my body, let me introduce you to my newest (unhealthy?) obsession: My Google Nexus One. It's so awesome that the sentence before this one needed capital letters on all the words. True story. Anyway, after a while of saving my pennies and almost unlimited whining and spouse annoying, I finally took the plunge and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Stuck with AT&T, I thought I might have to get an iPhone, but I really wanted to support the android platfrom due to it's openness and lack of smelly hipsters. The Nexus One was the obvious choice.

I could go on and on about my precious but I'll try and stay on phone. TARGET, I mean. Yea. What does my awesome phone have to do with biking? Thanks for asking, I like an involved audience. One of the cool apps recommended by my friend Dave is called Mytracks which uses your phone's gps to log your position, speed, distance, elevation all the while plotting your route on-top of Google Maps. You can then upload your route and publish it publically (or keep it private) if you feel so inclined, and a google docs spreadsheet gets generated with the data from your route.

To round out the package (wait, we're not talking about underwear anymore, right?), I picked up a belkin armband for my phone with some birthday money so I can use it while walking, running, biking, or most likely just making me look impressive. It's made for a iPhone/iPod touch but it works just fine for my phone.

Now that I have some more toys, I'm starting to run out of excuses. Will I actually ride the bike over a measurable distance? Will it be mysteriously mauled in a poetically-tragic bear attack? Stay tuned and find out!