Animal Instinct

After years of dealing with a pair of unpolarized shades with optical inserts, an ugly, ungainly, heavy combination, I finally decided to splurge on a pair of custom Oakleys. For the price of a small principality, they will create prescription lenses—not inserts, lenses!—that fit the frame of your choice. Of course, my optician was taking care of all the easy and technical parts (like the prescription); the awesome burden of designing the actual glasses fell to me. Oakley's site has a bewildering set of models, all poorly differentiated, each of which has umpteen customization options. Yee haw!

“These glasses will make you two miles an hour faster!”, my optician had said. Surely the glasses alone were just the beginning of the gains. The right color scheme, I was sure, would only enhance the effect. So I spent a night at it. What, I thought, spelled a combination of speed and stamina better than a zebra? I already have Cinelli cork zebra bar tape—a tribute to the great zebra train of Mario Cipollini, which represents everything that is ridiculously over-the-top about cycling—and this would be the perfect match.

In the morning, I was pottering around pouring cereal as Kathi came by. “I designed my new shades last night!” She responded encouragingly. “Guess the color scheme!” She gamely tried a few lackadaisical options, then confessed ignorance. I paused for effect. “Zebra!”, I proclaimed. Her reaction was a little too stable. “Want to see it?”, I only half-asked, bouncing off in the direction of the monitor.

“Oh, cute! A cow!”

Now would be a good time to point out that later in the week, she confessed to needing to update her prescription. I'm just sayin', is all.

Anyway, the shades are here. They're terrific. In my mind, a zebra is what they will always be. Though I could have sworn I heard a moo as I was waging war with the wind on Blackstone Boulevard earlier this evening.