Sweetpea Bicycles

Fall fashion is on everyone’s mind these days. Everyone from The New Yorker to Bust has had their “fashion issue,” and it’s high time I unleashed mine. My issue is pants.

I spent a good portion of my young adulthood in Levi’s Polyeseter Permaprest Action Slacks. They make a fine pair of pants for bike riding - lots of stretch, dries quickly, and true to its promise, is permanently pressed. It will look equally sharp whether you are pedaling up Front Street or strutting down Broadway. But its greatest genius is the least obvious. It’s the back pockets. They fit a u-lock.

(Featured Above: Patagonia Shop Pants)

I realized early in my messenger career that the right pair of pants was nearly as important as the bike and the bag for getting the job done. When you are locking up your bike fifty-some-odd times a day, you’ve got to have a system. You can’t just go rummaging around in your bag for your lock; it is simply not professional. Look sharp! Time’s a-wasting! Lock’ um up, move em’ out!

You see the situation: the right pair of pants is a competitive advantage. And this, dear reader, has nothing to do with how the pants make you look. While my lime green plaid “Arnold Palmer Originals” may not have flattered my every curve, and may not have always been easy on the eyes, they, like the Action Slack of yore, are unparalleled in performance.

Modern fashion has done me no favors in the pants department. Modern fashion offers me tiny pockets to make my butt look… jeez, I don’t even know. But they aren’t for putting stuff in. And a low rise offers me little coverage as I ride my track bike – I don’t care what they are saying is the new cleavage!

So, over the years my pant collection has become a motley mix of primarily thrift store pants that meet my own pant spec. You gotta be able to put a u-lock in the pocket, they have to conform to my No Cleavage Policy, and if at all possible, they should contain some measure of synthetic content for fast drying.

(Above: The J-Lock)

This is a challenge in its own right, but it is further complicated by my tendency to go everywhere by bike. Locking up my bike outside the store leaves me with no way to “try on” the pants for u-lock compatibility. I’ve asked to take a pair of pants outside to check it against my lock, which really doesn’t get you any funnier of looks than if you stand in the store twisting around trying to measure the pockets of the pants you are wearing to the pockets of your pants-in-question.

What’s a girl to do? I recommend the buddy system. In the middle of a slow day at Rose City Messenger Service, my friend Caitlin and I teamed up and routed ourselves to various store to search for pants that meet the spec. This way, we could lock up our bikes together with one lock and then take the other lock into the store for trying on. The efficiency was unprecedented in both of our pant-buying experiences. We ruled out countless pairs of pants in record time by simply trying to insert the u-lock. It was a little bit like the glass slipper of fairy tale fame. But we never did find our Pants Cinderella that day.

I would have thought that the end of my messenger career would have expanded my options for pants – after all, I don’t need to lock and unlock my bike all day anymore. But building bikes has only altered the spec. While I still prize the accommodating pocket, now the primary concern is for the pants that won’t melt when I am brazing. Just this week, I had a close call and a fine reminder. I was squatting beneath the bottom bracket of a bike I was brazing when a liquid glob of pipin’ hot flux dripped onto my knee. My cotton pants – with no back pockets at all! – simply burned rather than melting to my leg.

The lesson in all of this is simply this: all my pants are Action Slacks at their core. They are the pants that are built for doing stuff. The nature of that stuff may change and so the pant spec will change along with it. And this is something that the New Yorker or even Bust will never have the leading edge on. Nope. My fashion manifesto this season is:

Wear it Like Your Busy Doing More Important Things.

Rock on. It’s the new look for Fall.