Last Saturday evening I was at an outdoor concert at our county's surprisingly progressive (This is Georgia, yee haw) multi-use theatre. I was kicked back in my camping chair, hands locked behind my neck...

... and somebody touched my hand. I came up out of the chair and confronted the guy. He showed me his hand... It had the same "D" shaped tan mark as I have, that comes from wearing cycling gloves all season. (In addition to the D-mark, I have orderly rows of tan "freckles" from the crocheted gloves I wear on really hot days. At work, I regularly get "Dude, what's wrong with your hands?")

"Bro," he said... "you obviously ride, I had to come over and say hi..." Turns out he works for my girlfriend, and he's a cycle commuter. My lady somehow didn't think I would care what any of her employees were up to...

We stood there among all the non-cyclists, comparing tan lines... Jersey lines & uncool pale upper arms? Check. Cycling shorts tan lines way too far down on the thighs to look "normal?" Check. Oh, and what about that ever so geeky sock tan? Check. And so on...

I trumped him good, though... I have helmet-vent tan marks on my (mostly) bald head. Looks kinda tribal.


It's good to share idiosyncrasies with other like-minded folks.

So that's how commuters socialize, by comparing tan lines.

It definitely looks funny looking into the mirror and seeing those tan lines on the thighs and arms.

Beats sniffing butts lke dogs do, or doing the stupid 'secret handshake' business in the 'hood....

I've the sandal tan

My wife commented on my D glove tan today, she just rolled her eyes

Heh, please tell me you weren't staring at each other legs.

lol I haven't met anyone with the 'spot' tan line, but everyone comments on mine.. but lately I've been outside on foot so my glove lines are starting to fade..

HOw about the reverse raccoon tan? Light around the eyes from sunglasses, the rest of the face below the sunglasses tanned? Mine gets obvious near the end of summer...ooh boy.

got the reverse racoon and white onesy thing going on. Its cool with the girlfriend as long as I wear the bow tie for 'special' occasions...

what about the mediocre cyclist's tan? we don't count?

Funny thing about that... It's only women who notice that my legs are shaved. (Either that, or other guys just ain't gonna ask...) Most ladies are cool with it, even if they don't know what that's about. One of my neighbors stared and stared, then, horrified, asked why my legs were shaved. I told her that panty hose look pretty weird with leg hair sticking through...

My bike tan pretty much lines up with my tennis tan and my golf tan. For golf they sell tan-thru golf gloves. The cycling industry might want to look into that...

Great story! Earlier this year I started getting the pasty hands with tan arms and fingers look and decided to finally get rid of the gloves. Tried specialized bar phat gel and roubaix tape and so far so good. Now if I could find some way to lose my socks and shoes...

I'm optimistically wearing sleeveless tops in the office and off the bike in the hope that my shoulder area will somehow tan to match the dark brown stuff above the elbow, but I think the arms are too far gone for that. Maybe I should bike for a few weeks with a sleeveless bike jersey and arm warmers.

I wear long-sleeve alertshirts to try to keep more of the sun off me, but the ones I have the arms are a bit short, so I have a 2-inch band of tan line around my wrist.

I took last week off and spent it roofing a building for church (volunteer work) so the bike tan is about covered up for now, and the gardening and such keep it from being too bad.

I was STARTING to get the lines... one afternoon floating down the river on a raft in boardshorts erased all evidence.

I'm going to the beach next weekend and I'm stuck with this:



See the white part heading towards my shoulder? Well, it extends all the way down to the bottom of my bike shorts. AND, it's even whiter in some areas, if you catch my drift!

I got some really nasty sandal burn my second ride with keens, ouchouchouch. I can still see it a few weeks later. And I still have sock tan lines from my time wearing wool socks in the winter.

Oh yeah - the sandal tan! I dig the sandal tan!

I have naturally brown skin thanks to my Mom's Mexican blood. Paradoxically, it's nearly impossible for me to get a nice even tan because the first warm day in March marks me with a Farmer's Tan for the summer.

I gave myself a Teva tan (sandals) when I forgot my sunscreen at the farmers' market last weekend . So far the bike tan isn't too bad, but last year's was pretty entertaining.

(To me, perfectly even tans look suspicious. If you have lines, it's obvious that you've been outside *doing* something, not just lying in a tanning bed. If you have multiple sports going on, the lines start to overlap, but they're still there... the girls I work with were horrified though).

Ha, when you've got skin like Boris Becker or Rick Astley you don't have to worry about biker's tan!!

SPF 10,000!!

fixed it for you.

Sandal tans rule! People often comment on it to me, because I have different types of sandals, so I get different lines on my feet. I wear those lines as a badge of honor! I freed my toes from the sock oppression!

boog