Pant clips

As a bicycle commuter, you're going to need something to keep your pants out of your chain.  Sure, you could just wear tight pants, but who wants to change clothes every morning after you get to work?  (You weren’t going to wear your tights all day were you?)  For those of you that work in cube farms and lack office walls that go all the way to the ceiling, changing your pants in your office is an invitation for sexual harassment charges.  And if you can’t bring your bike with you into your office, you become fodder for the adage that the further you are from your bicycle the more ridiculous you look in cycling clothing.  Face it; there are simpler ways to keep your pants out of your chain. (Most of the time.)

For such a simple task, there are a lot of solutions.  The easiest, of course, is just to tuck your pants into your socks.  This method works great and is fool proof, unless you’re a hippie who won’t wear socks (i.e. me in the summertime), but doing it makes you the biggest dork on the block.  Especially if you wear tube socks.  Try it and see. 

Elastic bands work great in a pinch, but who has one handy when you need one? 
They break easily too, and they’re not much better than tucking your pants into your tube socks if you’re sensitive to people laughing at you.  I've also used a yellow LiveStrong bracelet to do the job, but I don't recommend them because they're hard to put on without removing your shoes. 

Next there are the Velcro straps people wrap around their pants.  They often have the added utility of being reflective and come in hi-vis, day-glow colors.  I have several of these, but have found they are more useful for wrapping tubes and tire levers into a tight package that fits easily into a jersey pocket.  It’s not that they don’t work well to keep your pants out of your chain; they’re just cumbersome to put on and the Velcro wears out easily.  I need something that will last and I need more convenience.  I need something solid. 

Pant clips are simple little tools.  They’re just little hoops, actually more of a horseshoe shape, with an opening on one end that lets you slip it over your leg and your pants at your ankle.   If you're crafty you can make your own out of an old spoke, or you can buy plastic pant clips but they won’t last.  The reason I am writing about pant clips at all is that I broke one in the middle of an intersection on my morning commute last week.  I have a metal pant clip that I use every day, but the roads were wet this particular day so I put a plastic clip on my left leg too, to keep it off the back wheel.  When it started to slip I reached down to adjust it and snap, half of it was bouncing toward oncoming traffic. 

Metal pant clips just feel better.  They don’t lose their spring.  They’re simple, they’re cheap.  Most importantly, they’re reliable.  I have owned only one metal pant clip in my life.  It was a gift from a friend in 1995, the same year my bicycle became my primary mode of transportation.  It’s been jangling against my keys and spare change every day for thirteen years. 

I like the jangle of my metal pant clip because I don’t forget it’s there.  It reminds me that wherever I am I can look forward to a bike ride home.  Once in graduate school I was playing with it during a particularly boring  lecture on aquatic chemistry when I dropped it onto the hard tile floor.  I might as well have dropped a plate in a fancy restaurant, it was that jarring.  I really enjoyed riding home that day. 

I feel no shame in saying I’m very fond of my metal pant clip.  Most of us tend to be sentimental about tools we use.   Attachment to inanimate objects has no rational basis, but you have to admit that caring for things that serve us well is one of the few nice things we do.  If I lost my metal pant clip I would never ride again.  Well, I might ride again as soon as I found a new one.