Dog breath* Blinded by the white

*the column formerly known as “rant”

Dog breath* Blinded by the white

Photo:

I’m working on my tan. Oh, man. Working on my tan.

Colorado just sprinted past spring and plowed straight into summer,like Tom Boonen center-punching a finish-line photographer. This wouldbe a marvelous thing indeed, were it not for this pigmentation problemI seem to have developed over the winter.

Where does this unearthly skin tone come from, this Day-Glo, über-ofayeggshell white, a pallor one might expect in the time-machine love childof a Wellsian Morlock and Bruce Willis in “Twelve Monkeys?”

If a guy had something like an actual springtime to work with, he couldease into a coloration that pleases the eye rather than scorches the retina.In more temperate climates, a rider can gradually peel off a garment hereand there in a sort of transvestite burlesque show, get a stylish fadegoing by trading the tights for knickers for shorts, the long sleeves forarm warmers for short sleeves.

But Colorado has only two seasons – winter and construction – and sothe temperatures segue from Napoleon at Moscow to Franks at Baghdad inless time than it takes Tom Danielson to ride a prologue time trial. Afterspending a few months either riding the wind trainer or wearing more layersthan an Imperial Valley onion, a Coloradan who strips down to the bareessentials all at once risks crumbling into a shrieking heap of bone fragmentsand dust, like Dracula facing the rising sun, unless he takes a few spinson the rotisserie at the local tanning parlor, or marinates himself inone of those “instant tan” lotions, which can make a guy look more likeHomer Simpson than OJ.

This seasonal albinism isn’t confined to cyclists, of course. At a recentWednesday-evening jog out of a friend’s running shop, a caramel-coloredgent ostentatiously donned his sunglasses as protection against the sightof a fellow runner in sleeveless tee and shorts, her hue that of a freshlylaundered lab coat.

At least a runner has a shot at building a respectable tan after a fewsunny outings. They all wear shorts good for a soliciting beef on SouthNevada Avenue, if a vice cop could only catch them, and the men go shirtlesswhile the women wear Jogbras, so when they hit the beach or tackle a littleyardwork they look like they just spent a month laundering money in theCaymans.

Cyclists just look pre-cancerous, as though they had passed out in thetanning bed after a pitcher of martinis set them to capering about in thewife’s Capri pants, peasant blouse and Easter gloves.

Look at me, for God’s sake, if you can stand to. Variously beige, pinkand white, I seem assembled from a heap of junkyard parts, still awaitinga final paint job.

My cycling gloves have stenciled a tanned circle near each pallid thumb.These look like little brown buttons that, if pressed, would cause thebacks of my hands to open up and reveal the circuitry and gears within.They go nicely with the red triangle a helmet vent sketched on my forehead.If it were upside down and on my ass, it would make an excellent slow-moving-vehicle placard. The fashionable do-rag I bought as a countermeasure doesn’t make me look piratical, like Pantani, but rather like Monty Python’s Mr. Gumby,whose brain hurts. And my sunglasses and helmet have left me looking theway the Lone Ranger would if he ever took off the mask and hat.

Still, it is warm. You can go for a ride, even up into the hills, withoutfirst piling on various removable strata that get stuffed into jersey pocketsuntil you look like the Hunchbutt of Notre Dame in search of a bell tower.You can sail straight out the door in shorts and short sleeves, a Carmexedgrin on your mug and some SPF 48 on the snout, climb up Highway 24 to WoodlandPark, then stuff a real-estate rag under your jersey as a chest protectorin case you’re worried about contracting SARS from the motorists spittinginvective at you as you careen back down to Colorado Springs.

Just don’t plan on looking good in swimwear come summer. Unless, ofcourse, you’re wearing a wetsuit.