I wanted to try on womens cycling kit without doing so in the presence of the guys who work at the local bike shop just down the street. Some of them have known me since I was like eight years old. Others, since they've started working there. I don't know if any of the rest of you are familiar with the kind of bond that forms when you're an extremely regular customer at a shop of that sort for 18 years, but if you are, you'll understand my reluctance to out myself to my "bicycling family".

Because that's exactly what the folks at Reggie's Bike Shop are for me, a second family.

Anyways, there were a couple of guys next to all the cycling kit setting up some sort of training machine the entire time I was there, and they must have thought me extremely odd.

First, I go over there, and see only mens kit, so I wander over to another part of the store that proudly proclaimed "Women" ... yeah, normal gym type stuff there, so back over to where I saw the mens kit for a more thorough search. Lo and behold, the guys had rolled other racks closer to the bike kit rack so that it was covering the womens side! I ask them if there's any way I can get to the other side of the rack, and they roll the rack around for me. I know it was obvious that only womens stuff was on that side, and my beard stubble should have been fairly prominent, but they didn't say anything.

I then start searching through the stuff for medium shorts, capris, and tops, having decided on the way there that that was the size I most likely would be. They only carried one brand of the capri style bottoms, Nishiki, so I took a pair of those in medium, a pair of medium shorts in each of the three brands carried, Nishiki included, and the only medium top they had, the brand escapes me. Only the two brands of shorts whose names escape me fit right, everything else was loose.

So I try smalls in everything I can. Again, only one top in the desired size, of a different brand from the medium, and it is still a little loose, but better, the Nishiki shorts and capri's were perfect. The two brands which fitted me in medium also fitted me in small, though a little tight, but I kinda like tight.

Finally, to prove my sadism, I get a pair of men's small shorts and mens medium shorts and try them. These were exactly what I was expecting: the small shorts almost refused to come up over my hips and then compressed them nastily once I managed to get them in place, and the mediums rode up into my bum in the legs, and the waist rolled down towards my groin.

The fitting room had a three item limit, so this entire time I'm making trips back and forth to where these two guys are working, with mostly womens kit, and once with mens kit, and it's obvious I've been trying them on. I'm sure they must have decided I was some sort of fruit.

But you know, I really didn't care what they were thinking, while if I had been at the bike shop... well, there's a reason I went all the way out to a sporting goods store instead. I wouldn't have been able to get myself to do it at the bike shop.