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AG: How to ride in ordinary pants
My favorite way to protect expensive pants is to carry them in my pannier. If you have to look respectable between the place where you park your bike and the place where you can change pants, you can wear your suit pants over your riding shorts. But if you don't sweat a lot and if you don't mind wearing the pants out in the saddle area, you *can* buy a pants protector. This is a sort of half gaiter that you can strap on to protect the inside of your ankle and shin. (I'm wearing a home-made pants protector in this pictu http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/...S/LINJERSF.JPG back view: http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/...S/LINJERSB.JPG ) (store-bought varieties are only half as high) If you are wearing black work pants, all you need is two safety pins and two pieces of tape or ribbon that are long enough to wrap around your leg twice. My tapes are three and a half feet long; even if your legs are thicker, a three-yard packet of tape should be plenty. It should be half an inch wide, as knots in narrower tape tend to jam. Sit down with your knees bent and form a pleat on the outside of your leg. It's easiest to just stick a pin close to and parallel to your leg, leaving the excess fabric sticking out like wings, but it looks a little less dorky to smooth the excess into a dart and pin it flat. The wing method is a trifle more reliable. Next, smooth your pants upward, stroking any excess fabric to above your knee, and wrap a tape around your leg in the notch below the knee. For some reason I've never heard explained, garters *must* wrap around twice or they won't hold. No matter how wide or narrow the tape is, it must go around twice. Mysterious, but experience shows that it's true. Put the middle of the tape where you want the knot to be, then hold the ends together and pull to make them even. Cross, bring them back to the beginning point, and tie a bow knot. (Same knot you tie in shoelaces.) Tension must be just so: you should be able to feel the tape while you are tying the knot, then be completely unaware of it afterward. Be sure your knees are bent while tying the tape: its purpose is to keep your pants loose over the knee so that they don't pull while you are riding. When you get to work, pull both bows undone, use the safety pins to fasten the tapes together, and put the whole mess into your pocket. I'm awkward about getting on and off; if I mount and dismount a lot of times during a ride, the right pin is likely to bump against the saddle and open. It's best to look down each time you mount and make sure the pins are still there and still closed. A spare pin in your wallet is a good idea -- or three or four; safety pins have a lot of uses. -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
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