Big Bikes

Where Do They Go?

The socks. where do they go? I have a pile of orphaned socks on my "bike staging area table." Sometimes their mates come back after a short absence, often they do not. I can understand if they disappeared forever...no wait, I can't. I have no understanding of how a washing machine eats socks, if they do at all. I've always kind of pictured the socks slipping through the cracks, getting sucked into the pipes, and washing away to sea. What a nightmare for that poor little sock. Maybe not, I don't know, maybe the little guy has a grand adventure out there — hopping onto a passing freighter and absconding for parts unknown...places I've never been and may never see.

If the socks eloped in pairs, I might never realize they were even missing, but they don't, they never do. They leave one behind...a reminder of the awesome pair of socks I used to have. The bastards. That's the thing, normal folks have normal socks, they buy them in big bags, they usually have piles of socks that are identical, it's not so sad when one goes missing. But bikers, we have very extra-special socks. They cost like ten dollars a pair, they often have some sort of sentimental significance, and we generally don't have multiples of a certain model of sock. Losing a sock is like, no exaggeration, having our hearts ripped out and stomped on.

I generally prefer to enter into discussions like this completely ignorant, with no facts to back up what I'm talking about, just my own delusions and hallucinations to go on, but this time I actually did some "research" (about thirty seconds of it anyway). I googled "where do lost socks go?" This article came up. You can tell it's going to be a humorous piece. You know how? It has the word "seriously" at the beginning of the title. Now that's funny because it's not serious at all.

According to that article the socks don't float off to Alaska and become crab fishermen, they merely get stuck under the agitator ("The Agitator" is actually the nickname of one of my co-workers. Don't worry, he'll never read this, he's too busy over on Glenn Beck's website, getting whipped up into a totally uninformed frenzy of thinly-veiled racism and xenophobia). The author describes how easy it is to remove the agitator to get at what is sure to be a veritable bounty of lost socks. I couldn't take it, I grabbed my camera and clomped down to the basement, hoping to add another chapter to this post, "Oh my god, there are ninety-two pairs of socks in this thing, happy freakin' day! Look, look, it's my errant SSWC 2008 sock...and my Rushin' Revolution sock...and that Swiftwick sock I won at The 24 Hours of Great Glen...I am crapping my pajamas with joy!"

That was not the case.

You know how many socks were in there? Zero. Zero socks, that's how many. What a let down. Do you know what that means though? It means I was right all along, the lost socks are off partying on an island somewhere, drinking boat drinks...boat drinks baby.

The now reduced to 100mm in the front yard Dunderchee and
The Ugliest Bike I've Ever Owned (which actually rides quite well), blocking the exit, creating a fire hazard, or really a "getting fired" hazard. Leaving my bikes in such an obtrusive spot is grounds for dismissal in my marriage.