It's not You, It's Me

The very personal business of selecting a bike saddle.

- Aixe Djelal

A cushy, couch-like saddle ought to be the most comfortable option for a commuter bicycle, right? My Trek Soho came with a well-padded Bontrager saddle, but it always seemed a little wide. In the past year or two the padding started squishing down like a worn out mattress. I’d been curious about harder, narrower saddles for a while, but I refuse to wear padded shorts in order to tolerate a less forgiving saddle. A seat resembling a LaZ-Boy recliner seemed less annoying than wearing a diaper-like garment on my brief, six-mile commute to downtown Portland, Oregon. But I wasn’t sure how to go about choosing a new saddle on my own.

I heard that a local bike shop, Gladys Bikes, has a “try before you buy" saddle library to let customers check out a saddle a week for $25. That sounded great, but the shop is far enough from my normal route that I knew I wouldn’t get there once a week. I visited the shop to check out the options, and I learned about Saddle Therapy, a fitting consultation service rather like speed dating. In exchange for $30, I could spend 30 minutes trying out one saddle after another on my own bike in the shop.