In cycling, as in life, you develop relationships with people and things that you come to depend upon. Well, for me, and this sounds flippant, one of those things is a pair of winter cycling gloves that have finally become so worn as to be unwearable. Indeed, they are dangerous: last week on a steep descent I had a sticky moment when the end of my brake lever got caught in one of the gloves between the outer shell and the liner.
I bought these gloves about 12 years ago when I started training properly (or if not properly then at least hard) as a road cyclist. Rides were often long and, in winter, cold and wet. My combination of old cycling mitts with woolly gloves underneath was not up to the job. My hands were getting so cold I could hardly hold the bar. I went into my local bike shop, Edwardes of Camberwell (home of some of the most vindictive, hostile, rude customer care (in the very best sense)) and asked them for the warmest gloves they had. What follows is pretty much verbatim:
“I need a pair of very warm gloves please – what are the warmest you have?”
“You’re not going to f*****g want them, you’re too much of a tight f*****g c**t.”
“I see, may I at least have a look at them?”
“Get him (me) the f*****g Assos gloves” (boy fetches gloves)
“Hmmm, they’re very nice. How much are they?”
Anyway, they were about £50 and because, at the time, I had become a mature student I didn’t have much money and I remember paying for them in installments. That was the kind of thing Edwardes would do for you if (believe it or not from the above) they liked you.
I’m not sentimental about objects generally, but I have loved these gloves. I must have ridden 20,000 miles in them over the years. I remember one particular Tour of Flanders sportive, where I set off at 6am in the snow in the dark from Brugge – 294km later the only bit of me that wasn’t cold were my hands (we took it in turns to lie down on a huge heating pipe at the end just to try and raise our core temperatures). There was a London-Battle and back ride that we did in the snow. At the road junction at the bottom of the long descent of Toys Hill I tried to unclip and I couldn’t because my feet were frozen into my Speedplays. Again, my hands were warm. An icy chaingang ploughing down Polhill, reaching for a drink at the bottom only to find the bottle frozen. And so on. As they got more worn out I have tried other gloves, but none have been anywhere near as good. The closest I’ve ever found in terms of warmth are the Gore lobster claw things – but if I’m honest THEY JUST AREN’T RIGHT.
I’ve looked at the modern Assos gloves and, whilst still reassuringly expensive, they don’t look up to much. And also Assos seems SO much to belong to a brand of snotty, grabbing, aspirational types these days rather than to the stock room of a slightly grotty SE London bike shop where the owner calls you a c**t whilst blowing cigarette smoke in your face. All of its original charm is lost to me now.
…so if anyone out there has a pair of Assos Thermax XL gloves from somewhere around the early 2000s please let me know. There is some money waiting, possibly in installments.
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