Categories: IrreverenceKitMusings from the V-Bunker

The Punter

Socks over the booties? Please say it ain't so.

They say you can measure the quality of a man’s character by his ability to admit when he’s wrong. That in itself seems wrong, since it would obviously be better to be right in the first place, but I’m probably missing the point because I’m Dutch and everyone knows Dutch people are 97% more righter 84% of the time than the rest of the world.

I must confess to a certain hubris when it comes to kitting up for a ride; I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve gotten accustomed to making good decisions about what to wear and how to wear it. But today I strayed from the path: my socks were carefully and deliberately pulled out over the tops of my overshoes. Not only is it the most concrete evidence that my socks are too long, it looked like I had two orange gaskets stuck to my ankles. Not to mention that this resulted in only a tiny amount of my shins being exposed between my knee warmers and socks.

Sometimes we must stray from the Path in order to understand where it lies; today I have wandered far indeed but have found my way back. Do not lose faith and always seek to return to the Path.

VLVV.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

Chipomarc says:

Dec 2 2015 at 4:10 pm

I call anyone with bare knees when temp is under 12 C a FRED
sthilzy says:

Dec 2 2015 at 4:24 pm

@Chipomarc

Katusha got Chicked by a mostly warmless wearing bunch
Chipomarc says:

Dec 2 2015 at 4:45 pm

@sthilzy

@Chipomarc

Katusha got Chicked by a mostly warmless wearing bunch

Katusha guys must have started out on the ride much earlier than the women when it was cold, going to a much higher elevation, et cetera.
Oli says:

Dec 2 2015 at 5:20 pm

@wiscot

A quick Google image search found that shot straight away, and I have several other pics of him in various magazines/posters wearing proper booties to hand. It seems to me as if he wore Belgian overshoes in essentially dry races and proper booties when it was proper raining, although I've got a shot of him here in KAS kit with booties and it looks like the middle of summer! He is wearing armwarmers that look like socks though, so perhaps it's colder than it looks - the Vuelta in April could be ugly.

I think in those days we all just subscribed to the point of view that cold feet were a very bad thing, but wintergreen and baby oil could take care of the legs. Also, the only knee warmers that were available were surgical bandages, separate leg warmers were non-existent, and full tights were too tricky to deal with in a race...
frank says:

Dec 2 2015 at 5:30 pm

@Chipomarc

@sthilzy

@Chipomarc

Katusha got Chicked by a mostly warmless wearing bunch

Katusha guys must have started out on the ride much earlier than the women when it was cold, going to a much higher elevation, et cetera.

What makes you think that's what happened? There are a trillion reasons why they might have been chicked and are dressed differently, and most of them are not chauvinistic.
Mike C says:

Dec 2 2015 at 5:49 pm
@Teocalli

@Mike C

Shorts should be shorts, pants should be full length and worn around the waist. Anything in between seems, well, indecisive…

Pants should be worn inside your trousers (or shorts) unless you are Superman.

Tomatoes, tomatoes. Sounds pretty British to my ears. Or we could get into the ridiculous discussion of why so many products get nicknames that end with this type of sound. The telly, my wellies, sunnies. I could go on about other crazy stuff also but I'm very busy at the moment sitting on my lazy ass, thank you very much. I know, I know, it's ARSE!!

@gilly

@Mike C

Could not agree less with this. Knee warmers are my go to through Autumn and Winter. I can’t abide tights, love the look of the EVH’s and it keeps me shaving the guns all year round.

It's December 2nd as I respond to your post good sir. The outside temperature at 8:35 pm is around 72* f. My days off riding in cold weather don't normally start until January. Even then it doesn't get too darn cold for long. As for keeping the guns shaven all winter, well, that would be mandatory here.
- You see, right at moment I'm wearing shorts. Short pants. Short trousers, if those exist, though I've never heard the term.
Do they exist? If not then I guess I'm wearing some form of undergarment. See, we're back to the start of this silly thing about the difference between trousers and pants. I need a recovery ale or three to clear the clutter in my mind
Chipomarc says:

Dec 2 2015 at 6:01 pm

@frank

@Chipomarc

@sthilzy

@Chipomarc

Katusha got Chicked by a mostly warmless wearing bunch

Katusha guys must have started out on the ride much earlier than the women when it was cold, going to a much higher elevation, et cetera.

What makes you think that’s what happened? There are a trillion reasons why they might have been chicked and are dressed differently, and most of them are not chauvinistic.

Chipomarc has more personnel issues than just his choice of shit beer to drink.
frank says:

Dec 2 2015 at 6:21 pm

@Chipomarc

Nice recovery.
osbk67 says:

Dec 2 2015 at 10:59 pm

@Oli

@osbk67

Erm.

Well played Oli! It just proves the unthinkable is possible, although I'm not sure that makes it right... If I've ever seen that photo before I've long since blocked it out...
osbk67 says:

Dec 2 2015 at 11:02 pm

Here was I thinking Kelly started early in wool and never wavered...

Photo by E A W Koestal from "Kelly" by David Walsh.