back in the saddle again

After four years of hard use including a crash, one of my beloved Specialized BG2 saddles is giving up the ghost (I had referred to my purchase of the last two as the finding of the Holy Grail; the other one is still on the Krakow Monster). I'd done some research and shopping, and bought a Specialized Ruby Expert Gel at Kim's, but it's not suited to the way I ride. The Ruby Expert is a light, hard (if flexible) saddle, best for sprints and brief powerful efforts - but not for the long, leisurely, chatty rides I like. I put about 100 miles on that Ruby, and almost wound up with decubiti on my rear. So that wasn't gonna get it, and the Ruby will go on Ebay when I get my act together.

I really didn't want to get another Selle AnAtomica, but I wound up placing the order. I've written about the Selle AnAtomica before; how I had high hopes for it that were dashed, and how I had to salvage it. But my researches kept bringing up riders who said it was just the thing.

I had a number of problems with it, and all of them seem to have been addressed:

• It was noisy. (But the company has started installing a nylon washer at the source of the noise, and it seems much better now.)
• It flattened out and caused thigh pain. (Yeah, well, on reflection, I realized I had been monkeying with it too much, in my maternal grandmother's memorable phrase. If I'd paid a little more attention to the instructions instead of going with how I thought it was supposed to behave, I'd probably have been better off.)
• And the company gave me a lot of trouble when I bought it through an off-price online retailer; they initially wanted to cancel the sale. But now they sell discontinued colors and factory seconds off-price, and sometimes have sales to boot.

I happened on the site when they had a discontinued color, during a sale, during a week when they were offering free shipping. Bottom line is, I got a saddle that retails for $159, shipped to my door for $102. The color is called "Merlot", which is kind of a purply-red (and since the actual colors of the Yellow Maserati are various blacks and greys, there's nothing for it to clash with except the electrical tape holding the bar wrap down). And it feels great. I can ride it in my civilian clothes; I don't need to have bike shorts on.

 (Plus, you get to maintain it; you can put leather prep on it every couple of months, although you don't have to. But I love an excuse to maintain the bikes.)

I think it's just the thing. I hate having to admit I was wrong, but I was wrong.