Bespoke Jersey is Best Jersey

Same Colors as a Chewy Peppermint Christmas Candy

Along with the bike you need stuff to wear while riding. That means padded tights, which do not have pockets. And also jerseys, which (conveniently) do have pockets. I am no big fan of wearing tights in public but if you want to ride there is no way around it. I will never be that guy at the local coffee shop tromping around in clipless pedals and tights but as long as I am just out the door, riding, and then home with no intermediate stops then I am okay with it.

Finding cycling gear that isn't lame and ugly is tougher than you might think. Or maybe not, because if you even noticed almost any road cyclist you probably only noticed them because their outfit was ugly af. If you can find something that is decent (more on that shortly), you then have to find something that fits. This is even harder than finding something decent to wear, especially if you regularly lift anything heavier than your 8 Kg road bike. (Why are road cyclists so obsessed with weight? Because if the bike is too heavy they are afraid they might not be able to pick it up. OR: What's the hardest part about learning to ride in a peloton? Asking your dad to lift your bike into the truck. To be fair this is perhaps a bit much because cyclocross riders frequently lift their bikes and run with them and then jump back on again, but you get the idea.)

If you have shoulders then fit is problematic. Partly because I do not have a 'cyclists build', and partly because the hot thing in cycling these days is to be as aero as possible. Marginal gains and all that. So not only do the jerseys tend have narrow shoulders to start with, but, depending on what you buy, they are designed to be very tight.

So you found something that fits (maybe), what do you do about the graphics? While most of the designs you notice are butt, there are happily a few decent offerings from both affordable and premium brands. Or you can get creative and build your own. It is very easy to build custom from scratch and then order it online, as in this post and the one immediately below. There is a lot of overlap in the snob craft beer culture and the snob cycling culture so I enjoy the idea of having a not-cool beer jersey to ride on my supposedly not-cool bike. (My bike is polarizing because it has a suspension in the front, which gives traditionalists the vapors.)

I saw some California-themed jerseys out and about and they were okay, but not as good as one you could design in half an hour if, for example, you already had plenty of practice trolling the internet for Miller Lite logos and pasting them onto a color-themed template.

No plans to do a custom order on the jerseys any time soon, but if you want to then get your order in now because the price drops dramatically as you increase the quantity. You have my number.