Satorial ineloquence

There are a couple of items of cycling clothing that should never, ever be purchased, let alone worn.

On a recent ride Mikeal, the chicken feeder, wore one of these items. In wearing this item, it says a lot about the man. Most of us have a degree of satorial understanding, and understand that sandels and socks are not a winning combination. Likewise wearing budgie smugglers away from the beach.

Actually wearing budgie smugglers, full stop, is wrong.

Several years ago I had to attend a conference in Fiji. The conference was held at a resort hotel, with a large pool, and fifty metres away, the ocean complete with sailing dinghies and Hobie 16 catamarans. There was a certain chap there who presented a visual challenge. Thankfully most of the time he and his wife lounged poolside, and I preferred the beach.

He was a man of reasonable girth and mass, weighing in at a solid 115kgs and under 180cm tall. He was also quite hirsute. Both his front and back sported rugs of luxuriant pile. Often, as he and his wife sat by the pool, she would run her fingers through his back fur, lovingly teasing the pelt.

In addition to his mass, he was prone to a touch of hyperbole, but his real sin was his lack of self-awareness. This manifested itself in a variety of ways, but over the week of the conference was displayed most obviously by wearing a set of bright pink budgie smugglers.

He was a sight that was truly astounding to see, quite mortifying and carsmash like.

One afternoon, a challenge around sailing was laid down by another couple of miscreants, to race the Hobies around the buoys out in the lagoon. I searched desperately for a crewman. Mr Pink'n'large piped up and said he would crew. Having already told tales of salty doggedness, I presumed, even discounting his usual amount of exaggeration, he would know one end of a sheet from the other.

Pushing off from the beach, me skipper, him crew, was a strange experience. The boat sat quite low in the water, but even with the stiff breeze the boat was sluggish going anywhere. I struggled to get the rudders down and get the boat going forward, then I looked bow wards, and there was the reason for our torpid pace. Mr Fatty had grabbed the sheet on the jib, and pulled the sail through to the wrong side. The jib was there, like a large airbrake, on the wrong side of the centre line with a bunch of hairy lard hanging on for dear life.

A few guiding words, some instructions, and the epiphany for me that my plump partner had never sailed, and we did start heading away from the beach. Meanwhile our opposing crew had realised that there was enough trouble on our boat going anywhere, that racing was out of the question.

After sometime, and in a fashion we started to sail in a fashion, gybeing, tacking and making progress. The breeze had stiffened a little, a good, steady, sailing breeze. As we started a reach I decided that I would try and get a little more speed and get the cat up on one hull. Things were going quite well, with the wind on our port steady, our speed lifted and the port hull lifted cleanly from the water, but I noticed that the starboard bow was pretty close to submarining. Time slowed, I looked forward to see that my portly shipmate had installed himself forward of one of the stays after the last tack, so we had a little too much mass at the pointy end. I started to release the mainsail and yell at him to move, but as I acted and before the words left my mouth, the starboard bow plunged under and the whole catamaran cartwheeled forward. The last thing I saw before I was ejected from the craft was a large, pink backside flying through the air.

That vision haunted me for days and nights and I had to poke my mind's eye out in the end.

Back to Mikeal's sin, he wears sleeveless tops on the bike. It's okay for women to wear them, just like in general terms that it's okay for a woman to wear a crop top. But no man should ever wear a crop top, and the same goes for a sleeveless jersey.