Tender vittles

I literally have 2 seats to fill in my stable. Two of my bikes are without their own saddles and I'm tired of swapping out every time I want to take one of them out. They don't make two of my favorites anymore - the women's Avocet O2 titanium and the Selle Italia Women's Turbo (no not the newer gel one). I wear my titanium Brooks Finesse like a glass slipper and I might get another Brooks for the Fat Chance, but I'd like to get something less bulky for the track. So recently I've been looking into what designers have come up with in the world of women's racing saddles.

I've heard good reviews about the Fizik Vitesse so I went to the shop to check it out. Oooooooooooh it is sexy! And I'm Italian too! It must be a match made it bootilicious heaven! But my instinct said it was too narrow, yet my stubbornness and urge for instant gratification insisted it would be fine. So the shop taped up the rails and I took the fancy package home to try it out.

On the 2007 calendar today could be heralded as the first true day of spring. It smelled like spring. Like emerging green and fertile earth, vegetation moist from the winter reaching out for the new warmth, and trees plump with colorful blossoms. At home I put the new saddle on my bike and ran out to take advantage of the rest of the memorable day.

But it pretty much stopped at my parking lot. I sat down on the saddle and knew it wasn't going to work out. I rode around the lot, stopped 3 times to make saddle adjustments, but knew this was going to be a short ride. I made a loop around Magnolia and stopped 3 more times. The sexy Italian saddle felt like the cheapo seats they have on the rental bikes at the track. My seatbones felt like they were wrapping around a stale burrito, and without proper butt support my tender vittles were quite emphatic about the unpleasantness of being squished against a long hard log of salami. I couldn't move the seat forward anymore on the rails to perch my butt better on the widest part and even then its nose felt like it was 10 inches long and in the bloody way of my pedaling. This piece of machinery sucks. It's failed my simple test of riding around the block. Now I just wanted to make it home without scratching the stupid piece of expensive gear so I could return it this weekend.

In their ads, Fizik says, "The Vitesse is the women's saddle-choice of pro road, xc and triathletes." Well I guess it's a good thing I'm not giving up my day job.