I liked my old saddle. There was nothing fancy about it. In fact, it was the no-name one that came with the bike, but it was comfortable and I had been riding on it for over five years. Near the end of last season, don't ask me how, I bent one of the rails. The saddle is now leaning to one side and when you sit on it, you feel like you are going to slide off the bike.

When the cold and snow arrived last fall, I put the bike away and the slanty saddle was forgotten. Then, a few weeks ago, when the spring weather arrived in this part of the world, I went to pull the bike out of the garage and remembered that I needed a new saddle.

It is always fun to buy bike accessories, but I was a little apprehensive about picking out a new saddle. Saddle comfort is such a subjective thing that there is not much point in looking at reviews and you can't tell how one is going to feel just by looking at it in the store.

I decided to pay a visit to Velocity, a new bike shop that just opened up in town. I ended up purchasing a Selle Italia XO Genuine Gel for fifty dollars and a promise that if I didn't like it, I could return it and try something else.

As soon as I sat on it, I was in discomfort. At first I thought it was because it was the beginning of the season and I needed to toughen up my nether regions, but after ride number three was in the books and it was still causing me pain, I decided that it must be the saddle. That is not to say that it is a bad saddle. I have read good reviews of it, but obviously it was not the one for me.

I took it back to Velocity and had Ron help me pick out something else. He suggested that I try out a Selle Italia XO Trans Am. Despite similar names, the two saddles are quite different. The Trans Am is wider, cushier and has a cut-out down the middle. It is also a little heavier, but I was much more concerned with comfort. According to Ron, comfort has more to do with the shape of the saddle than how much padding it has. Armed with my new purchase, I headed home to put it on the bike.

Right away I noticed a huge difference. The new saddle felt a hundred times better and it didn't take me long to decide that I was going to keep it. That doesn't mean that it would be comfy for everyone, but it works for me.(I guess that's why there are so many different saddles on the market.) It's important to have a bike shop that is willing to put customer satisfaction first and that definitely happened in this case.