Old Fools Journal: DIY Bike Knickers

Tweedledee or Tweedledum?

When I was a boy I had a pair of corduroy knickers and I wore them to school. It wasn't a style it was what I had. They are actually pretty practical where the washing of clothes everyday is impractical. The bottom of the pants are moved away from the mud and the crud so your high top shoes and socks catch it but they are easily cleaned or changed. That of course is not the issue here where we trash the environment by washing everything far too much and far too often using chemicals that my grandmother couldn't pronounce. The issue here is keeping my fat ass warm on these frigid 50 degree days and keeping my pants legs out of the sprocket on my bicycle. I don't want to hear one peep from you rugged northern types about 50 degrees not being frigid. My blood is about the same specific gravity as wine and to me 50 degrees is frigid, besides I'm delicate. Just bear in mind that a duck has the good sense to go south when it gets cold and yours are arriving here now.

When sewing and especially when making something by trial an error method the iron is your friend.

So I had this god awful pair of Bugle Boy pants using up space and a pair of scissors and it seemed like a good idea to whack'em off and make knickers.

First thing of course is I googled "knickers" and found that a good portion of the western world thinks that knickers are lacy frilly girls panties. That's silly but then a good portion of the western world thinks that everybody in the World wears underwear which is far from true. Even in the western world most people have not heard of "Fruit of the Loom" or "Hanes" and would think jockey shorts (SWMBO calls them Chile Chokers) are an instrument of torture. They wouldn't be far wrong. I still enjoyed looking at the girls in their panties. It was a long research period and I may have to go back and do some post project research.

I was surprised that there was only one porn site. I got a dozen or so when I googled George Bush.

I did find one reference to DIY knickers and several places that sell "biking knickers", whatever that is, sewn with golden thread. It had to be golden thread to justify the price. Then there were some of those balloon things that golfers wear. I'm not a doctor, a politician or a CEO so I don't golf. As Mark Twain said "Golf is a good walk gone bad" or something like that.

Anyway the DIY knicker piece was what I had in mind but the end product was not. I took down my sewing kit and started whacking, folding, ironing and pining. It took several hours but I finally got what I wanted more or less. Some sewing, ripping that out and. sewing again. I finally got a wearable pair of knickers. I probably tried those on 40 times and stuck myself with pins 140 times. The second leg was a mirror image and took about 20 minutes.

The end result you see on Tweedledum at the top of the page. Knickers are just the thing to keep the cold wind from blowing up your ally.