Feaverish

This New York Times article has caused me no small amount of stress over the last couple of weeks. Basically, it reports on a recent study that links cycling to impotence, as, evidently, your bike seat can put pressure on places where you don’t want any pressure. There’s the cutting off of certain important flows and a lot of other scientific terminology, but I think the diagram on the right explains things pretty well (note: sunglasses not to scale).

Anyway, I talked it over (uncomfortably, euphemistically) with my local bike shop guy, who said that as long as I’m not experiencing any numbness while riding, I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Fabulous!

Unfortunately numbness is one of those things it’s difficult to actively “experience.” Experiments must be performed! Tests run! Data quantified! In the same way white isn’t so much a color as the absence of color, so numbness is a feeling you don’t feel.

And so, the testing. It isn’t easy. I’m riding around an active, densely populated city. How can a would-be scientist perform serious medical experiments on his, well, his business, without making it everyone’s business? I’ve pretty much exhausted all the tricks I know: reaching in through one’s pockets, innocently twidling one’s thumbs before one’s crotch whilst one’s pinky fingers perform the delicate “can you feel me now?” poking and prodding, bending over and pretending to tie one’s shoes whilst repeatedly elbowing oneself in the crotch, etc.

Once the sun goes down I have no problem just shoving my hand down my pants—though the horizontal scan of turning headlights is a constant threat—but during the day I’m overcome by self-consciousness. Maybe if I affixed some electrodes to strategic areas or wore a lab coat and safety goggles people would take my frequent crotchular inspections for the necessary scientific research that they are.

Still, if I have to choose between being impotent and looking to all the world like I’ve got crabs, I think I’m gonna have to go with the crabs.