The casual relationship of cyclists and underwear

Bike shorts are designed to be worn without anything underneath them. They became popular in the 1970s when the legions of new riders in their cutoff jeans were finding out what happens when you spend long hours in the saddle, grinding the seams of your pants into your tender anatomy.

Without posting links that include lots of pictures of dudes in jockstraps, take my word for it that the support garment was invented in the late 19th Century for bike riders. A key feature was that it had no structure in the contact zones, being designed to hold the floppy parts without creating friction between rider and saddle. Moving forward in history, the ubiquitous black wool bike shorts looked like something out of the 1890s as well. But why mess with something that works? Wool is a versatile fabric. The original liners were made of chamois, a soft suede, to combat chafing, not provide padding. Chamois requires some special handling to keep it nice, so synthetic chamois was developed to make care easier. Then came Lycra, and the image of road cyclists was forever damaged.

Lycra shorts have a couple of advantages over wool. In hot weather they can be a lot more comfortable. They dry quickly after washing or a summer rain shower. They're more streamlined, so the wind -- and adjacent riders -- have less to grab. But I've never liked the shrink-wrap look. Modern baggy shorts go too far the other way, of course. Modern humans are all about extremes instead of sensible navigation of a range of options.

The one common characteristic is the lack of underwear.

In the summer of 1975, when I was working in Miami, more or less living in my car, but spending most of my time on my bike or at a friend's machine shop, I spent a lot of time in bike shorts. I used my underwear to wash my car, because I didn't have any other rags, and the dirt was mostly water soluble. After laundering, the old tighty whiteys were kinda gray, but sanitized. What did I care? No one was going to see them unless they watched me washing my car. Some people I stayed with for a while seemed offended that I didn't respect my skivvies more. I figured that everything had to earn its place.

Over the decades, the life cycle of undershorts has led inevitably to the rag bag. While I do my best not to show them when they are in their active duty phase as actual underwear, once they've moved down to rag status I forget about their former role. Usually I rip the elastic waistbands off of them, but sometimes I forget.

This specimen got pretty oily when I was lubing several bike chains after winter storage. Not wanting to leave it in the house, I put it out in the woodshed and forgot about it. It was lying there when several deliveries were made. Only after several days did I think about how it might have looked. "That's that guy who leaves his underwear lying around." Add it to the list of my other eccentricities.