I had the saddle of my commuting bicycle stolen yesterday. This is a first for me. I usually escape petty bicycle theft because I carefully choose equipment that, while attractive to the aficionado, would not appeal to the casual slag and/or rotter. It seems I was wrong about that.
The saddle was a honey-coloured Brooks B17. That's a leather, rather old-skool lookin' beast, for those of you not au fait with bike couture. It cost me £70, so the material loss stung a little, but worse still is the fact that leather saddles take a lot of painful miles to break in. It takes my arse about 1,500 miles to (literally) make a dent in a new Brooks. Until such time, it's like sitting on a house brick. This one had 2,000 miles on the clock, so it was perfect: broken in but not yet broken down.
What surprised me most about the episode was why people (if I might use that term in this case) would start stealing Brooks saddles. As I say, it's not cutting edge technology. I blame the popularity of cycling, which means that ruffians now know the price of most bit and pieces. A quick £70 saddle is now an easy score. But it has no resale value. People who buy expensive, leather saddles do not buy knock-off gear. It would be like trying to fence dodgy Archers omnibus cds in a pub; your target audience doesn't exist. And a broken in Brooks is of little use to a cyclist, unless his backside is a clone of my own. So, no-one wins.
Another bummer (so-to-speak) about its disappearance was the fact that I had then to ride home (7 miles) sans siege. I should point out at this point that I ride a fixed-wheel bike; this means I am unable to coast. If the bike moves, so do the pedals. I had to "honk", therefore, (standing-up on the pedals) all the way home, with the raucous laughter of chirpy cockneys ringing in my ears all the way. And take it from me: riding a fixed like this is like treading grapes in a room with a four foot high ceiling. Not fun.
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