Saddle Up! A Documentary Through Images of Bicycle Seats

 

Those who ride know this truism: three contact points guide your happiness whilst astride a bike. These points are, of course, the pedals, the handlebars, and the saddle. Today, I wish to present a personal documentary of my saddles, more of a pictomentary. Why is this so important? Because how and where you sit defines your existence!

The first saddle that I can remember was on my Ross kid’s 20″ bike. I was in the first grade, living in Wading River, New York (on “Lon Guy Land”). The bike was gold and I remember getting an after-market seat because I’ve always had a penchant for upgrading my gear. I do not have a pic of this seat, but I do remember the general design. Here it is:

Notice how this seat is not even as ergonomic as a banana-style seat. Why did I chose this? Because I was in the first grade. What was I, maybe 12 years old or something like that. I could not make an informed decision. Not great for long rides, but I didn’t go on long rides.

My next machine was a Schwinn Le Tour. I loved this bike. Used to do laps around the local trailer park in St. Charles, Missouri. This seat was just as painful as the previous “brick.” I don’t have a pic of this either, but here is a red one (mine was blue) that is about 5 years older than mine. Squint and use your imagination:

 

In high school, I started riding more seriously. I was introduced to racing by Chris from of Manchester, MA. I lived on the western edge of Gloucester, MA. He was my idol it is now safe to say. He was one of the best junior riders around. Rode for Richard Sachs! (which I too rode for eventually, but I was never really part of the clan, even though I wanted so much to be held tight in the arms of those “Connecticut Yankee”s–the best team around) He used to sneak into the pro fields at some races. I tried that once and lasted about 4 laps… Ah, those were the days when I was a teenager… ah those were the days when I can from my easy chair report back on all the fun I had and leave out all the terrible shit that occurred in between the blissful sporting moments. I started training seriously when I was about 15. I rode a heavy, flexy, sloppy Univega called, I think, Sport Tour. Its saving grace was a tan suede saddle (sorry no pic) and a sweet pearlescent creamy white paint job. It sucked. I worked some jobs, begged my rents for money and sold every baseball card and coin I had, and then I bought my dream bike: A 1984 Gios Super Record. Below is a pic, but not my pic. I did not rock the Selle San Marco Rolls. But beside my black Modolo Professional brakes, much of the rest is spot on-Campy throughout (except, also, for the Gipiemme cranks). 

This picture is not how it looked though. Why not? Because I was always riding this chariot, this paean to grace and style. This bike classed up the entire town when I rode down Western Ave.

When I was on her, this is pretty much how I envisioned myself:

 

Roger DeVlaeminck. One of the best classics and cyclocross riders ever!

 

It took me about 6 months to finish piecing the bike together. Started with just the frame, fork, and headset. My saddle? Selle San Marco Concor. I think Chris had one. Alas, I don’t have the Gios with me any more (though it is still alive and well here in Iowa City since I sold it to a local guy looking to get into racing), but I do have the saddle.

 

The Concor

 

In fact I still rock the Concor today. I stuck it in on my Panasonic MC-5500 (triple-butted steel from 1997-ish). I hope it pleases you all that I have converted the Panasonic into a fine fully geared, fully fendered, and fully basketed towny. 

When I got my Lemond Victoire in 2003-ish (about a million years ago it seems. God, do I want a new bike!), It came equiped with a very tiny Selle San Marco Era seat that never really worked with my “undercarriage”.

 

San Marco Era (end of?)

 

 

I swapped the Era a few years ago for light-weight seat, a Selle San Marco SKN, that may not be very sturdy, nor very well-made, but it seems to work for me. The reason it works and the reason that it is so light (185 g.) is because it has minimal padding, no leather, and Ti rails. The titanium rails (titanox?) and saddle flex quite a lot, but this is not a drawback. So, if you are the right weight, the seat really gets comfy the warmer it is and the more you break it in. On cold days, though, the flex doesn’t come into play and I am not so happy. And when it is really hot, over 90 say, then the seat is downright squishy. Yes, it is a fickle seat, but for most of the time it is just right. And if you are around 145-160, then I would give it a try. One other thing that I really like about this minimal seat (and a detail that separates this saddle from many other minimal ones) is the width (280 mm x 150 mm). It is much wider than my Era, and that means that I know that I need a bit wider saddle for my 5.10 height and 155 weight. My lorica cover is wearing off, but it has paid for itself over the past 3 years. Here it is (I would say ignore the cheap carbon seat post, but I actually think that it is integral to the flexy/sexy feel that makes the rig so sweet to ride):

 

The flexy and comfortable SKN

 

 

My cross bike is another story, but it is a story that intersects with my Gios. I ride a used Bianchi Axis Cross bike (thanks for the deal, Thad). It came with an old Fizik Nisene.

The Fizik that I rode was silver though. I remember that during one February ride with my friends Lee, Jonah,  and Josh, I complained about how hard my seat was. It was one of those awfully long gravel rides that was great for my endurance, but hard on my family life and also hard on my seat area. We were almost home when Lee said, “I’ll trade saddles with you if you want.”

“Okay, sounds fine. What are you riding Lee?”

“I have a Selle Italia of some sort.”

“Deal.” So we actually stopped on Melrose Avenue in Iowa City, and changed seats. This is a charming story except for the fact that Lee’s saddle was terrible. Needless to say I don’t have a picture of it, but I imagine that it looks something like this:

I bought a used Selle Italia Octavia to replace the Fizik. The Octavia was in a banged-up cardboard box filled with traded-out seats in Geoff’s Bike and Ski–got a great deal, like 29 bucks (when I want to emphasize a bargain, I always use the word “bucks” instead of “dollars”. As in: “Honey the carbon fiber wheels were only, like, 89 hundred bucks.” Try it… trust me.). But, is the Octavia a women’s seat or a man’s? I think they made a version for each. Anyway I liked it. For a while, anyway.

 

Octavia, so lovely, yet not really very comfortable

 

 

Then, suddenly, it started to hurt. Why? Too squishy in the wrong sector? So, for the past year I have been swapping the SKN between the Lemond and the Bianchi. Winter it goes to the Bianchi for gravel grinding. Summer to the Lemond. 

Finally, I got a new seat for the Bianchi. The design of the SKN was not good for any cyclocross hop-on-and-off maneuvers (pointy points in the rear). Why? Cuz you can really hurt yourself in the worst of places. So, I shopped around for an inexpensive San Marco Rolls. Couldn’t afford. But I did find a very quirky deal on on a quirky Regal Ti.

 

My new Regal with a bit too much embroidery.

 

Only about 70 bucks for this white model that I have now rocked for a total of 92 miles (short gravel rides). Here are some kind details of the Regal:

The San Marco Regal is easy to distinguish from all other saddles at sight. It is a professional racing style saddle that begins with a molded nylon base. There are no depressions for extra padding at pelvic contact points. Over the shell is a molded, thin layer of high density expanded foam padding. Surrounding the foam pad and shell, a leather covering is glued. The Regal is available in a smooth Black, or White leather, and also perforated Black, or White leather, which gives a bit more air flow as the padding expands and contracts. The perforation process puts small, fine holes in a grid throughout the surface of the smooth leather before it is cut and cemented down to the padding and the shell. The leather around the nose is trimmed remarkably well using multiple cuts to give it a superior fit. On the tail of the saddle are six 5/8″ in diameter copper rivets. The rivets pass through the leather down through a second molded nylon piece on the underside. This second piece acts like a batten to hold the leather glued on the bottom of the tail even more firmly. This second nylon piece also has the rear rail receivers molded into it. The back of the rear rail receivers is molded for the copper “Regal Girardi” logos that are glued into it.   Product Specifications Weight: 280g, Width: 150 mm, Length: 280 mm.

Like the reviews state, this saddle should not really work in terms of science or physiognomy.

 

Yet many pro riders still swear by it. So, I think I like, even though it is not (yet) as sweet as my San Marco SKN. 

 Peace,

Scraps

ps. for a while I borrowed my wife’s Serfas Curva. It was too soft. But I keep it around in case I need more cushion. 

Since this contact area is clearly the most important, I wonder why there is not more discussion, or more documentaries on this subject? Is the subject too tender? Off limits? Perhaps.

Peace,

Scraps

Part IV: The Final Sprint of Sean’s 2009 American Birkebeiner

[note: to read parts 1-3, go to Archives and click on April 2009]

 

I am not perfect. And I am not dead. I am still skiing.

 

A sweeping left hand bend and I can finally see the lake. And Lake Hayward is a cake walk; a 4 km piece of smooth gliding, just before the sprint through main street. I feel weak and giddy, sick and gloppy. One reason that I feel gloppy is because of the all the wool that I am wearing. Sure the big news in technical gear these days is Smartwool and Icebreaker, but what I now know is that after five hours of continual sweating, the fibers reach their max, and they sort of droop. So, I feel moist gobs of wool flapping around my arms and legs.

 

My legs cramp up again. I think about eating another Gu, but what if a real emergency should strike? I decide to save the Gu. I come up with a great idea. Since my legs are not working, why not use my arms and just pole for a while. This is working very well. I am going slowly, but making progress. I hear someone slowly catching up to me on my left. I look and see a young woman. She is carrying her ski poles like you would carry firewood. Her skate skiing technique is quite good though. I look at her and she looks at me. I say “hi.”

 

She responds by crying. It is certainly not uncommon to see and hear crying in the Birkebeiner; if crying helps, then you should do it. But the sound of her crying throws me off. A sort of “boo hoo, boo hoo,” sound reaches me as she continues to pass me. Now, of course we know from cognitive neuroscience that crying, the actual tears, precede the feeling of sadness. What if she is crying because of some crazy joy? That is possible you know. I cried during the 1984 Olympics when Alexi Grewal beat Steve Bauer in the men’s road race. As I think of that sprint, a sprint that Grewal could not even dream of winning against the powerful Canadian sprinter, I too start to cry.

 

I wonder if Alexi G. ever had problems due to winning?

 

We skate and cry next to each other for a minute before she slowly pulls away from me. Hey wait. Her race bib number is in the ten thousands. She is a tenth waver. I catch back up to her. She skates and I pole. We form one complete skier. Oh, that little rise really hurt me. I stop. I survey the scene before me. A smooth downhill run and there, just past those trees, I see the lake. Almost home. I start poling again and then I see him.

………….Do you like what you are reading? Then read on a bit further.

SORRY READERS!  I have taken down the rest of this entry because I am expanding the Birkie story and sending it out to small presses for publication. Let me know if you are interesting in a copy of such a book: sean-scanlan@uiowa.edu

 

Re-linking Place to Nostalgia (With Footnotes!)

An excerpt from Edward S. Casey’s, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study

“One of the most eloquent testimonies to place’s extraordinary memorability is found in nostalgia. We are nostalgic primarily about particular places that have been emotionally significant to us and which we now miss: we are in pain (algos) about a return home (nostos) that is not presently possible. It is not accidental that ‘nostalgia’ and ‘homesickness’ are still regarded as synonyms in current English dictionaries.”

 What is the relation between place and nostalgia?

The problem with place is that philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries sought to emphasize metaphysical ideas over materially constructed emotions and feelings. And the concrete home, along with site-specific nostalgia, fell off the academic map. But nostalgia gained steam in popular culture. Nostalgia in the early nineteenth century was seen by many to be the natural consequence of an upheaval of memory, often catalyzed by a forced removal from a known place, especially one’s home. On one hand, conscripted soldiers and migrant laborers forced from their homes suffered from a type of nostalgia closely connected to increasingly powerful forces of capitalism and state power. And on the other hand, according to Jean Starobinski in “The Idea of Nostalgia” (1966), academics and philosophers were de-linking the physical home from nostalgia, stating, as Kant did, that it was a romantic middle-class preoccupation with the passing of youth itself. Kant’s ideas on nostalgia, of course, were not simple. Casey says that “Kant scoffed at this remedy,” of a return home; any actual return was bound to be “very disappointing” because the physical site may have become “wholly transformed” (201).1 But Casey points out in another essay titled “The World of Nostalgia” (1987), that Kant, like Johannes Hofer (see previous post), also believed that nostalgia was an imaginative act that has affinities with various memories of places that are used to construct a “created” world (367-8).2 The friction between the place-based and philosophy-based views of nostalgia, not “settled” by the medical community until the end of the nineteenth-century, is not just present in a world full of moving, displacement, and exile, it is a primary source of both human identity adjustment and reinforcement.3

 

So, what does this mean for today’s world in which place matters a lot to those losing their homes due to foreclosures and job losses? And what does it mean for those caught up in telecommuting and web 2.0–where workers and users are making the work place less important? 

Stay tuned to this blog for definitive answers!

 

Peace, 

Sean Scanlan

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1 Casey believes that the history of nostalgia within philosophy hinges upon to role of place. While specific place diminished in stature during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the desire for a return to imagination as the source of the world increased. Put another way, by the late eighteenth century, as the geographic site of home was stripped from nostalgia, it was replaced with a spiritual return, an attachment to a way of being in the world. Artists, unlike most philosophers, elevated and refined the uses of nostalgia in terms of actual homes, and if not in terms of descriptions of physical structures, then in terms of the hope of return–often in the face of great odds. See Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (1987; Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000) 201.

2 In “The World of Nostalgia,” Casey compares a variety of philosophers’ views on nostalgia in terms of place. Casey’s phenomenological perspective regards home as vexingly tethered to both the exterior world and the world “within.” Ultimately, Casey believes that nostalgia is a “unique mode of insight into a world that has become irretrievably past and that arrays itself, as we remember it now, in a plenitude of places” (380). Edward S. Casey, “The World of Nostalgia,” Man and World 4.20 (Oct 1987): 361-384.

3 Homesickness has replaced nostalgia as a medical term, so that a crossing of usage has occurred: nostalgia has been de-medicalized, while homesickness has recently entered medical literature. During the First World War, American troops were still being treated for nostalgia. But by the Second World War, some doctors employed therapy as treatment for homesickness. By 1952, no entries on homesickness were in The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). But homesickness returned by the 1968 edition. See Susan J. Matt, “You Can’t Go Home Again: Homesickness and Nostalgia in U.S. History,” The Journal of American History 94.2 (2007): 469-97. Recent studies on the linkage between environment and body have emphasized the possible existence of homesickness as a disease. The pediatric specialist Christopher A. Thurber has written several scholarly articles on treating homesickness in adolescents. See Christopher A. Thurber, Edward Walton, and the Council on School Health, “Preventing and Treating Homesickness,” Pediatrics 119 (2007): 192-201; and Christopher A. Thurber and Marian D. Sigman, “Preliminary Models of Risk and Protective Factors for Childhood Homesickness: Review and Empirical Synthesis, Child Development 69.4 (1998): 903-34.

                             

What Is Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a word that was invented by Johannes Hofer, a Swiss medical student, in his 1688 dissertation titled “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia.” He combined two Greek roots: nostos, or return home, plus algia, or suffering. So together we get homesickness–the common synonym for nostalgia in many dictionaries.

Commonly thought of as a yearning for the recent past, or homesickness due to present losses, nostalgia is a deceptively complex word that, like an umbrella, covers a wide range of personal and collective feelings about the collision between the past and the present. But nostalgia is also about the future, characterized by, especially, the tension between looking toward the past for traditional answers and looking toward the future for hope. The simultaneous presence of peculiarly modern forms of destabilization and recurrent desires for stabilization produces this tension. 

Nostalgia helps frame the past in terms of present experience. Nostalgia illuminates the historical context of the actual and perceived loss of home. But what is more, when public pasts fuse with private feelings in stories of historical change (real or imagined stories), nostalgia informs and structures decision-making and ultimately it reconfigures identity. Nostalgia is not amnesia, but rather, it is a complex use of the past during present moments of crisis.