Since I got such wonderful advice about saddles here before, I thought I should share this: the Zero X has changed. It's now really squishy. When I got my Calfee, I got a second Zero X. It started out not as hard as the old one and just got squashier and squashier. This put more and more weight on my soft tissues. Eventually I got so annoyed at this that I emailed them, only to find out that they've changed the Zero X to make it squashier *on purpose*. (They did this long enough ago (without changing the cover to make it obvious) that I'm pretty sure I can't track down another hard one.)

Now I'm a little baffled as to what to do. The rest of the Terry saddles seem to be out because they're too narrow (my seat bones measure in at about 140 mm center-to-center) or don't look particularly compatible with my normal bent-over posture on the hoods, let alone the drops. I'm clocking enough miles to need to find something comfortable that stays comfortable. It seems simple enough: I want something that holds my seat bones up so I can bend over and not squash all that poor soft tissue.

A bunch of my guy friends ride Brooks, so I borrowed a new B-17 that one had sitting around and rode it for a few miles yesterday. (My friend figures that since he's 80 pounds heavier than I am, whatever breaking in I do can be easily overcome by his butt.) Somehow I ended up sitting on the rivets. This was a lot more comfortable than it sounds; apparently my seat bones are fine with a hard seat but I *really* like not squashing my soft tissues. I'm going to shove the seat back a bit, but I suspect that the effective width of the B-17 is less than the effective width of my seat bones. I'm also a little worried that I won't be able to hang out very well in the drops because there's no cutout. On my friend's broken-in saddle, I'm not sitting directly on the rivets, but I can feel them right behind me. (I can also feel some leather on my soft tissue on the broken-in saddle, but it tickles more than anything.)

Brooks lovers, does this mean that what I really need is a B-68? The Selle Anatomica also looks interesting, but I can't tell whether the rivets would be a problem. It also seems awfully odd to even consider putting a saddle as heavy as a B-68 on my Calfee. :P