Saturday, June 13, 2009

What Size Were Those Shorts?

On Friday I decided to go for a bike ride. I figured it would be a great way to start my day off from work. I had briefly considered going for a row in a single, but on Thursday night's practice, when I was in an 8, I saw that there was still a lot of debris (i.e., logs) in the water due to the heavy rain. It's not much fun when you have to turn around every other stroke to make sure you're not about to hit something in the water. Anyway I was running around getting ready for my bike ride - loading the bike, putting my helmet in the car, etc. I also was running around trying to find my bike shorts. I was pretty sure I had put them in the laundry last Sunday so I figured they would be on the ironing board in the laundry room where they were left to dry. I grabbed them and put them on. Odd, I thought, they sure feel tighter then the last time I wore them and they seemed somewhat shorter as well. I put this down due to being laundered and shrinking some in the wash. I figured they would stretch out. So off I went fat, dumb and happy. I drove out to the parking area on RT 28 adjacent to the W&OD Trail, unloaded my bike, put my bike shoes on, then my bike gloves and then my helmet and I off I went. All seemed well enough on my ride, especially after I remembered to buckle my helmet. I rode to Leesburg and back. 20 miles round trip. Back on the car I was sitting on the tail section of the minivan with the rear gate up and taking off my gloves. Something seemed amiss. Turns out I had put my gloves on backwards on the wrong hands so all the padding was on the back of my hands (and therefore providing no cushioning) instead of over my palms and heels of my hand. Dumb. After driving back home, I commented to Ann that I thought that my bike shorts had shrunk considerably in the wash. Now we do our laundry, for the most part, in cold water and we don't run the bike shorts through the dryer so they really shouldn't have shrunk at all. Ann asked to see them so I slipped them off and handed them to her. She, unlike me, read the label. They were Women's shorts, size small. In other words, they were her bike shorts. Geez no wonder they felt tight and short. I don't know what that says about me or about Ann that I could fit in her bike shorts and not realize that they were her bike shorts and not mine. Good for me, I think.

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