East Coast Bikes, A New "Seat", and Wii....

No races this weekend!  Without the fuel efficient MINI we opted out of driving to Richmond to do the races and had some fun staying in the good ol' Hampton Roads area. 

Saturday we were supposed to go to Gloucester for the Renaissance Festival, but work and traffic had other plans for me.  I received a phone call from a customer that was having problems with equipment.  So I had to head to the Norfolk Naval Base to deliver equipment.  We were going to leave for Gloucester from the base.  Traffic screwed that one up though.... there was an 8 mile back up at the tunnel.  We scratched Gloucester at that point and drove back to the Ghent area of Norfolk to check out East Coast Bikes and Cogan's Instant Art Bar.

The reason for the trip to Ghent was to hit East Coast Bikes to see check out a new saddle.  For those non-cyclists types or those, like me, who still have the word seat ingrained in their head from years and years of calling a saddle a seat.  A saddle is in fact a seat.  It's the place where your arse gets beaten to a bloody pulp from all of your weight bouncing on and being supported by places that weren't exactly meant to support weight.  The mission to find a comfortable saddle has been going on for awhile now.  It started with numbness.  That was cured by getting a seat with a cutout in it.  Now the numbness is gone, but after a long hard ride I was having some MAJOR soreness around my sit bones.  To be graphic, sometimes I had what looked like blood blisters.  Obviously that isn't right, so I was very excited when I read Bryan Burn's post about the Bontrager Inform RL saddle.  After reading the post I went over to the Bontrager site and did some more reading.  It sounded like this seat might just do the trick!  Normally I buy all of my gear from Fat Frogs Bikes, but they aren't a Bontrager dealer, so the next closest place was East Coast Bikes.

I hadn't ever been to East Coast Bikes so I was very impressed when I walked in the door and saw the selection of bikes.  Especially the Felt B12 near the front of the racks.  I was greeted by a very nice employee who took us right back to the Bontrager saddle display and the special fit system.  The Bontrager Inform line comes in 3 different widths to accommodate different sized people. 

To properly size the saddle Bontrager developed a special fit system.  I was expecting this big elaborate system, but it was only a board with heat sensitive gel on it.  You sit down and it leaves an imprint of your sit bones.  Pressure is then applied to the gel where your bones contacted it and a color shows through.  The color corresponds to a size designation for your proper width saddle.  In my case it was the 146.  What was really cool was the fact that there was one white seat left and it just happened to be in my size!  On the way to the register we noticed that East Coast Bikes happens to be a Hammer Nutrition dealer as well so we snagged a container of HEED.  I had been wanting to try out HEED to see if it would eliminate the stomach pains I have been getting while training and racing.  The product I am using now contains glucose and sucrose.  Those two sugars have been reported to cause some people stomach cramps.  Hopefully the HEED will work!  I was impressed with East Coast Bikes they had a good selection and carry several items that I aren't normally stocked at Fat Frogs.  There location is good too.... it will give me an excuse to eat at Tap House Grill and a new favorite, Cogan's Instant Art Bar, more often.

After leaving East Coast Bikes we walked a couple of blocks over to...