Dating back to my earliest years, I have always been one of those people with an odd sense of curiosity. My brain normally goes where normal brains refuse to go. A good example of this took place yesterday while biking the Katy Trail.
The Katy is a rail trail in Missouri which runs virtually the width of the entire state. It is well serviced with nice trailheads, wineries, lodging, and numerous places to eat and drink across its 237 mile length. Restrooms are located at most every trailhead. However, in the winter months, the restrooms are typically closed and replaced with porta-potties. Now the one thing we can all agree on is porta-potties are disgusting on their good days. On their bad days, a clothespin for your nose and a bandanna for your eyes is a must have.
Yesterday while riding, mother nature was calling for me to stop and take a quick break. Upon entering the porta-potty I noticed this one was having a bad day. As I stood over the opening and staring at a mountain of poop, my brain started trying to match faces to the people who left these little treasures. Now, I must admit this is not an enduring quality I'm proud of, but I have admitted to having an odd sense of curiosity.
As a fat and happily retired senior, I purchased an e-bike about five years ago, and quickly discovered the joy and freedom of riding a bike again. It immediately brought me back to my younger days roaming our neighborhood on my Schwinn Stingray. That Stingray equipped with monkey bars, Sissy bar, and baseball cards flapping in my spokes was a treasured memory.
It didn't take me long to realize the disparity of riding a bike as a youth, and now as a 70-year-old out of shape fat guy. First of all, I can barely lift my legs enough to step on a scale, let alone raise one far enough to step over a bicycle seat. Secondly, without a motor and throttle to get me going, I would fall over in the first five feet breaking a hip and needing a hip replacement. I've always believed youth was wasted on young people, and now I believe it more than ever.
Even with all my non-youthful disabilities, I love riding my bike. There was however, one part of my body which refused to accept my newly found adventure, and that was my butt. Up until now, I had always thought my body parts were in sync with each other, kind of like a unit. I had no realization in the concept that one or more of them could refuse to play together. My butt refused to cooperate with our new adventure.
Given my odd sense of curiosity, I embarked on a mission to understand why my posterior refused to play when all the other parts were gleefully on board with the new adventure. My first thought was if my butt and my bicycle seat were to fall in love and get married, a nasty divorce would soon follow with major sums of alimony and the potential for bankruptcy. My second and most profound thought occurred as I was glancing around my house, and I noticed none of the chairs or seating areas were less than the width of my butt. I had never given any thought to this, and this triggered my odd sense of curiosity. After very little due diligence, it became obvious that approximately 75% of our body weight rests above our thighs, and all that weight on just your tailbone is a recipe for pain. The good Lord gave most of us wide butts to help distribute the weight across the entire width of our bodies. I then realized bicycle seats are in complete violation of our Lord's original design. The mere design of bicycle seats is basically sacrilegious and ungodly.
just so you know, the solution for all of this is not for me to resolve, but for some other genius to design a bicycle seat which meets God's intended design of weight distribution as I am only a guy with an odd sense of curiosity.
By the way, before all of you experts feel the need to correct me on the fact that bicycles don't have seats, and they have saddles, save that for someone else. I'm old enough to remember that saddles are for horses, and not bicycles.
Happy biking and give your butt plenty of rest between rides.
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