I remember riding my little blue Sting-Ray bike -- back when dinosaurs roamed the earth -- alongside my friend Mary Chris while she rode her Raleigh "English racer" (what we called any bike with pretensions to roadishness back then). That was the first place I saw a Brooks saddle and I can remember how impressed I was with it. It looked so elegant, and seemed so far above my glittery silver banana seat in terms of what a "real" bike was supposed to be. There's still an element of that awe associated with a Brooks saddle. Some of the more current saddles are positively scary -- not that they aren't technologically advanced and absolutely perfect for the right applications, but that I can't imagine my large posterior perched on one of them for a moment.