Time Trial Bikes and Tough Guys

So the thought just occurred to me: Much of cycling makes men into sissies that shave their legs, lust after trinkets like Zero Grav brakes or other carbon bits and titanium bits and wheels that cost thousands of dollars. Men have often mocked women or claimed not to understand them due to their inherent desire for diamonds and other such things.

So is cycling really a feminizing influence? Does sitting on a little saddle for that long really do something besides just damage your perineum physically? Is it something about the whole nature of the sport that celebrates a guy with only one testicle over more fully equipped men? Is it the constant leg shaving that lots of casual cyclists can tell you is really just a safety issue while in the back of their minds they are wondering if they will ever be comfortable admitting to you they like having smooth legs.

So I like having smooth legs. Fine.

But back to the womanizing, oops, I mean feminizing influence of cycling. What struck me this evening as I pondered what will always be a hypothetical for a guy like myself, namely what it would feel like to ride one of the new Storck Time Trial bikes:

(this space is an experiment of sorts.  I thought I would try "contacting" Storck through their website to ask for permission to post an image of the bike here.  If I don't hear back from them, I might take the huge risk and do it anyway.  In the meantime, just google "Storck TT bike" and look at the images.

and whether or not you would ruin the whole aesthetic smash you in the face of this bicycle by putting 808s on it that weren't painted in the appropriate white and blue, (take a breath this is a long sentence...) was that the toughest thing in cycling (besides maybe cobbled classics) is the time trial. It is always billed as the race that is won by those who can really suffer, etc. Yet it is also the discipline most closely associated with incredibly specialized and expensive bikes and their accompanying bits and pieces.

So does this mean that even the toughest cyclist, the champion of the time trial, the Lance Armstrong who can suffer more than any mere mortal if you believe half of what folks have said, is really a sissy when it all comes down to it? Are there no tough-guys of cycling? Is Stuart O'Grady not a complete beast? Deep down does he like shaving his legs too?

Maybe we should ask his wife?