Cycling Pants

I've been trying to adapt my clothing, so that I can jump on the bike with limited preparation and just head out the door. This is a pretty easy thing to do in the summer when shorts are king. If you are brave enough to wear long pants in the summer down here and spend time outside then "god have mercy on your soul," because it's really hot. I used to be a pants only kind of guy because you can only really get two kinds of shorts, baggy cargo and dork/ old man. I'm not a real big fan of either, so I haven't collected a bunch of different shorts over the years, but since I started cycling to get around I've been more shorts friendly, because it is freaking HOT. I'm fully expecting it to get into triple digits this year on a regular basis. Most of my shorts however are cutoffs. Old dress/ work pants that have become too faded and worn out to be presentable are great for cutoffs.

Dress pants and shirts, for the most part, are designed to be comfortable even in heat, because our culture thinks that wearing a suit in 90 degree weather is appropriate, so pants and shirts are made of wool and poly blends that breath, wick away moisture and dry rapidly.

I have a few of these in my chest of drawers, but what I don't have are cycle friendly pants. For the last year, I've tried straps, boot bands and the cutoff tops of crew socks to try and keep my pants out of the chain and keep them grease free. All of these work and don't work for that purpose, but they all still provide one more barrier against just hopping on the bike and going, so I did something about it.

I made cycling knickers or capri pants or whatever you want to call them.

The bad thing is that I made them out of some old "summer weight" cargo pants, which were made out of cotton. Now if you spend a lot of time outside, cotton is the devil. It soaks up moisture and never ever, ever dries while you're wearing it, but unfortunately it was the only thing I had that I was willing to butcher.

Here is the result.

 These are actually hanging up to dry after a 20 mile test ride, so they look like crap, but this is what they look like. They hang down to about mid calf and when I'm on my bike they are higher than the crank and the chain, so I don't have to worry about them getting snagged or covered in grease while riding, them getting covered in grease while getting on and off is another story.

They were fairly simple to make. You cut them off at the desired length, turn them inside up, fold up the end of the leg where you want it to be hemmed, pin that thing and then run that thing through your sewing machine. With set up and everything, I think it might have taken me an hour. The actual sewing takes about five minutes. I chose to do two lines of stitching to give them a little bit of added strength.

 Here's a picture of the inside of the leg.

Overall the pants are pretty comfortable and they definitely make riding more hassle free. I'm not sure how much better they look than strapping your pants to your ankle, but they require less equipment than regular pants.

In conclusion, I think I'll be hunting around the thrift stores for some wool or poly blend pants to hack into some more riding pants.

Keep mashing those pedals.