Bicyclists seem to be concerned with bodily fluids much more than the average man.
Take sweat, for instance (or perspiration if you’re from Connecticut). My opinion is that you have to adopt a Zen attitude toward sweat. Take your helmet. You ride all day, and the helmet gets pretty raunchy. But you’re done, you throw it in the garage and set yourself to replenishing your fluid levels. Next day, you go to put it on, and it’s pretty rank. But then, after riding for ten minutes, so are you, and you don’t notice any more. Now, if you were to clean it, it would take at least ten minutes, all to avoid ten minutes of possible unpleasantness. This is time that could be better spent riding or drinking beer.
As one who has seen the dark side of helmets, I have found experimentally that the helmet will eventually reach equilibrium (I knew all those chemistry courses would come in handy sometime). In layman’s terms, once it gets bad, it don’t get no badder. It just builds up a healthy patina of sweat and stays that way. Once you can view those built up salt rings as a tribute to the intensity of your workout rather than a mark of shame, you are well on your way to a higher plane of enlightenment.
In the winter there are other problems. One is that your nose runs. Problem is that it doesn’t run very far. So you are faced with a disposal problem at the end of your nose. There are basically three techniques for dealing with the situation: absorption, elimination and denial. In my naivete, it was many years before I realized the reason the backs of cycling and ski gloves are often made of terrycloth. Still the absorption capacity of terrycloth is limited, and may not do for an extended outing. Elimination requires a bit of technique, since an ill aimed flick could cause distress for you or an innocent riding companion. Denial has its benefits, since gravity being what it is, the offending object will eventually reach critical mass and fall off all by itself. You just have to be willing to put up with some discomfort during the gestation period.
Then there’s spitting. For some reason, cyclists seem to need to expectorate more than your average citizen. Maybe it’s the large number of flying objects that get sucked into the trachea during the course of a ride (flies are especially tasty). This is another action that requires careful aim. This is especially critical on a tandem, as Mrs. D. will attest. After several unfortunate episodes, Mrs. D. has developed a Pavlovian reaction, so now anytime I turn my head to the left, she ducks.
Then there’s peeing. I’m sure there are individuals who can just hold it for a double century, but as we get older and wiser our bladders also get weaker. So we are constantly in search of the PTO (a term originally coined by Bob & Carol Anderson). A PTO is quite simply, a Perfect Toilet Opportunity. This is a place of great natural beauty offering a modicum of privacy and free of brambles, swamp, poison ivy, mosquitoes, etc., where one can relieve oneself as God intended. This, like Don Quijote’s quest for Dulcinea, is rarely found, and one can at best hope to avoid detection and contact with flora or fauna that require subsequent medication. While perfection is hard to achieve, the determination of what constitutes “good enough” varies widely with the individual. The more uninhibited consider merely turning around being sufficiently discreet. I have it on good authority, that there was a law in the town of London, to the effect that if you were to cry out “In need,” you were then at liberty to relieve yourself pretty much on the spot. I’m afraid the colonies never adopted this sound policy, so cyclists in need who fail to take the appropriate precautions may find themselves “In jail.”
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