Hand made bikes: Teabagging your ownership

As many of you already know, the North American Hand Made Bicycle Show (NAHMBS) went down this past weekend in Richmond, Virginia.  If you are not familiar with the NAHMBS, it is essentially a gathering of cycling fetishism.  There you can find individuals who dedicate themselves to hand-crafting lugs, hammered fenders and personalizing their bicycle ownership with creative new ways.  Curious, I sought out some news about the event on PezCycling and saw a report on some featured leather bar wrap made by a company named HandleBra.  Visiting the company's homepage, I learned that the product's slogan is "Wait 'till you put your hands on this!"

Apparently the folks at PEZ were as equally as excited about it as they claim:

"In fact, the grip is so skin friendly that folks were considering it a pleasurable option for things beyond bikes...."

And following this suggestion, the author placed this photo:

I don't know about you, but I find is slighty disconcerting that the HandleBra company rep holds his wrapped handlebar demo in front of his crotch, laciviously tempting passers by to follow the company slogan and "Put your hands on this!"  And what exactly is the PEZ author refering to when he suggests that the "skin-friendly" wrap could be "pleasurable" for other things.  Obviously, when one (and by that I mean ME) considers "pleasurable things" one thinks of genitalia.  So instantly, I considered that the "skin-friendly" HandleBra wrap would be a huge hit for someone wishing to learn that 'leg-over the handlebar, skid stop' fixie trick that is all the rage these days.  I'm sure this move has its own name, but honestly, I could care less.

In a sense, this rider is essentially tea-bagging his own handlebar, which might lead to significant testicular chafing, especially if the cut of denim in his skinny jeans is extra coarse.  Problem solved.  Before commencing on the tea-bagging skid stop, hipsters now can unzip and allow their testicles to rest directly upon the "skin-friendly" handlebars instead of the non-wrapped, polished chrome that this fellow is dry-humping.  Or they can simply add brakes to their bike, and stop slinging their legs over the handlebars to begin with.  Because, after all, exteriorizing one's genitals upon one's bike sounds like it would be fairly cumbersome, and not just a little weird.  Not so, apparently, as a reader recently sent me the link to an entire website called "Teabags on Toptubes" which is dedicated to the art of scrotal recumbency upon bicycles and is definitely not safe for work.  Upon this site you will see pictures of men resting their gamete factories upon bicycles of various kinds, as an act of "ownership", or so says the site.  I've rendered this particular photo (which demonstrates the act) safe for work with a strategically placed fezzed-Shatner.

One can only imagine how much more comfortable this particular gentleman's scrotal area would be had he chosen to wrap his bars with HandleBra Performance Wrap rather than cork prior to 'owning' it with his junk.

The male gender of any species tends to be possessive of objects and often wishes to declare ownership in one way or another, so perhaps this particular act should not be that surprising.  For example, the alpha male wolf urinates on the bushes surrounding a favorite hunting ground or his den, thus denoting the boundaries of his terrirory.  So too, is it important for many men to mark their bicycles as their own.  This may be most important in situations of bike sharing, where many individuals may wish to use a public bike, thus causing the male cyclist to claim one for his own by draping his boys across it prior to hopping on.

Apparently for some men, bicycle ownership doesn't stop at teabagging their top tubes, but rather stamping something more permanent there, while still inferring the intended meaning like this bike seen at the NAHMBS and reported by cyclingnews.

But as anyone who has frequented a tattoo parlor knows, when asking for the Chinese characters for 'Peace and Harmony' you might end up with the characters for 'Sweet and Sour Pork'.  Similarly, instead of saying "Dr. Tea", this could very well say "Place Balls Here."  And "Dr. Tea" certainly did just that with his own bag.

If one is shy about the act of teabagging one's own bike, and doesn't have the money for a fancy top tube tattoo, the alternative seems to be to hang a couple of small token representative nuts from the saddle rails to fend off the competitive male cyclists' stray eye...

Nothing says, "Back off - this is mine!" like a couple of golden balls.

Pedal on!