Recycle Cycle

You are what you eat (I am a sesame bagel with cream-cheese and an Americano) and you wear your heart on your sleeve. Or in our case, our ankles.

Now granted something approaching the perfect sock, the Audrey Hepburn of socks, has already been published: short (just above the talus) and white. A makers' logo only if absolutely necessary, and to be honest the Nike logo on those otherwise marathon-comfy socks pains me greatly. Despite being the acme of socks, this would be a pretty short blog if that was the beginning and ending of the matter. I might as well have called the blog "Andrew's Pointless Ramblings With Occasional Excursions Into Endurance Sport Fashion" consisting of pointless ramblings with way too many adjectives, parentheses and pop-culture references interspersed occasionally with egregious sock sinner exposés.

As well as evangelising (short and white, short and white, short and white) perhaps this blog can be used for good (as well as cathartics) and help the uninitiated navigate the murky waters of sock fashion. How does one approach the wall of DeFeet socks at MEC (gingerly to be honest) and drill down to the one acceptable pair? How white is white, is there such as thing as too short, how long is too long and perhaps more germanely, how much colour is acceptable before falling foul of the sock police?

Colour: in most cases and situations it's wise to stick with the dress code the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club apply at Wimbledon for competitors' attire; all white or, if you can't help yourself, almost all white with colour accents.

With this in mind, we present this week's Sock Of The Week. It's kinda pushing all white, but unless you are wearing sandals with your socks (NO!!!) the green body won't be (shouldn't be) seen. Not too high either, a tad longer than the Audrey Hepburn sock but still within acceptable limits. Green isn't a bad colour, and it's not that fluorescent green that blighted socks in the early eighties. The only problem may be getting a jersey to match (of course, matching your cycling shorts is no problem because your cycling shorts are black, right?).


The logo is an interesting one, the recycle symbol and a bicycle. Unless you are one of those people who straps a $10 000 Pinarello with all the trimmings on the back of a Lexus, you'll know what I'm talking about. Many cyclists are committed in some way or another to the environment; after all we spend so much of our time out in it. Hemmingway said ""It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them" (Hemmingway clearly didn't ride fixed) and we don't want the contours to be swathed in smog or softened by a layer of plastic bags and coffee cups.

Plus, this sock is guaranteed to raise the ire of any self-respecting Hummer driver when you slip through a gap and skid-stop your $500 fixie in front of them at the lights in particularly gnarly rush-hour traffic-jam. What wouldn't be sweeter than that?

laters

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