(Matching your saddle and your bar tape is for "woosies.")
Here's a closer look:
And here's a really close look:
And here is a pair of hard nipples:
If you recall, I immediately found the Cambium to be exceedingly comfortable, though around January I noticed it was creaking a little bit. Specifically, it would sort of squeak if I shimmied my scranus towards the saddle's nose while climbing. While the sound was mildly annoying, it was only occasional, and it was nowhere near as irritating as comments like this:
Mario's Albino Tadpole said...
Snob..no wonder you sucked at racing of the bicycles. Try shifting your scanus back when climbing instead of forward. You will make better use of your glutes and hamstrings that way. Only go on the rivet when you want to get low and aero.
JANUARY 3, 2014 AT 7:57 PM
Nonsense. Climbing is like intercourse: sometimes you need to change positions. You don't just park your scranus in one spot and grind away. Whether you're talking about your saddle or your bed, at various times you should be fore, aft, or even out of it altogether. And as for sucking at the racing of bicycles, I definitely sucked, but it was for a completely different set of reasons, since there's virtually no climbing in the various local New York City race series, yet I managed to completely blow anyway.
Plus, I hold the all-time record for ascending Mont Ventoux, so I think I know what I'm talking about.
Worst of all though was the Unsolicited Creak Advice, which is perhaps the most regrettable aspect of bike dorkdom in the Internet age. "Maybe it's not your saddle. Have you tried greasing the chainring bolt that's second from your crank arm going clockwise?" Look. I know when my saddle's creaking, and I also know a thing or two about chasing creaks. In fact, I don't just chase them. I stalk them. Sometimes you need to take the whole bike apart. Other times, you ignore the creak for a few weeks so it thinks you don't care, but then, when the creak least expects it, BAM! You figure it out mid-ride and then silence that shit immediately with a surgical lube strike.
This is me when I'm hunting down a creak:
(Errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to lube a bottom bracket.)
I love the smell of Simple Green in the morning, etc. and so forth.
ANYWAY, the point of all this is that I was able to determine that my flabby thighs were causing the rubber underside of the saddle to rub the rails, thus producing a rubbery squeak, which I confirmed by applying some electrical tape between the two surfaces (the rails and saddle shell, not my thighs):
As of my last ride it was as quiet as can be, and while there's certainly a more elegant solution (hint: Brooks x BSNYC velvet "collabo" bumpers "droppings" soon at $75 a pop), I'll probably just leave it that way until my liposuction appointment.
In the meantime, the saddle is extremely comfortable, happily silent, and well in line with my personal bicycle aesthetic, which is that of a fading Fred gradually wilting into a retrogrouch. Furthermore, I would happily put a Cambium on each and every one of my bicycles, if only I weren't so goddamn lazy.
In other news, there has been much talk of lumens this week, and clearly it's in the zeitgeist because Mission Bicycle have launched a Kickstarter for a reflective bicycle called...the Lumen:
And thus, with the advent of a dedicated night bicycle, "peak specificity" was reached, and the entire cycling universe contracted in a "big crunch," at which point all marketing segments were completely abandoned and everybody started selling and riding pennyfarthings:
Which was terrible news for the inventors of the Cogly cog-flosser:
This is an indispensable invention for people who haven't yet figured out that, if you're going to clean your cassette, you should first take the extra five seconds to remove the wheel:
(Oh come on, who even does that?)
Or even just the extra three seconds to shift the chain out of the way.
I'm not even going to mention removing the cassette from the hub, because that would probably make a potential Cogly customer's head explode.
By the way, if you didn't know any better, you might think the Cogly is a heavy-duty dental floss pick designed for Englishmen:
(Bike industry entrepreneurs, or British dentists? Because the whole "British people have bad teeth" thing never gets old.)
And for this they want $12,500--which, according to the video, will mostly go towards paying for the packaging:
Because if there's one thing the world needs, it's more packaging.
