Bicycling Ettiquette and a TMI question

[footfootfoot]

First, the ettiquette question.

About an hour ago my neighbor, who goes on a more or less daily bike ride, stopped by and reminded me that I suggested we ride together as a form of "exercise moral support."

She mentioned that a mutual friend would be joining us. Great, give me five minutes.

We decide to do the 5 mile ride with a hill rather than the 10 miler on the flats. We head off and I see that my neighbor is slowly and laboriously sawing away at her pedals, her entire body swaying with each pedal as if she were needing to bring her weight to bear in order to turn the cranks. I note that she is in a fairly low gear, about the same gear as me. I'm spinning easily at about 80-90 rpm, she is spinning about half that. I ask if she's finding it hard to pedal (thinking maybe she needs to downshift to get her rpms up) "Nope," she replies.

I'm in third gear (42 x 24) and I am just leaving them in the dust. I never get out of third gear the whole ride except for the hill climb when I drop into first (42 x 28). I've been home for about 20 minutes and they still aren't back yet.

I wasn't intentionally leaving them in the dust, I just couldn't ride that slowly and I don't want to spend an hour riding five miles. Our mutual friend can fly on her bike, I've seen her blazing through town. I am guessing she stayed with my neighbor throughout the ride

Was I being a dick? Should I have crawled at their pace?

Another thing, I wasn't staying in third as some sort of gesture, I was in third because I am so out of shape I can't really spin any higher.


Here's the TMI part:












I have not been riding in my biking shorts for two reasons; one, they don't really fit any longer, and two, I am really too fat to be going around in lycra. (essentially the same as #1)

So I've been riding in my street shorts with boxers underneath. The problem is that my nuts seem to be getting in the way and are all over the place. I don't remember them being such a problem. I don't think they've gotten bigger so I'm wonderign if this may be a combination of the boxers allowing them too much freedom to stray and me being 40 pounds heavier than when I used to ride leaving them less room in which to stray.