My many unprepared years of parenthood, along with some sort of inborn resistance to waste and marketing, have made me rather - how shall I put this? - frugal. This seems to be especially evident when it comes to my bike. Granted, it's a real nice bike with full Campy Record stuff, but then again, I didn't actually buy it. I got it in return for some website work I did for a friend who, at the time, owned a bike shop. But somehow spending real money on my bike always feels like I'm taking food off the table.
In reality, I'm the guy who takes home the punctured inner tubes that the other guy with the fancy-schmancy CO2 inflator has left behind. Guys give me their old tires and I usually get another thousand miles out of them. My saddle only has leather left on it about half-way down on the sides, and what is there is held to the underlying foam with superglue. I buy patches in boxes of 100. (If you're real nice, I'll tell you where to find them.) Get the picture?
The only thing I don't scrimp on too much are my racing wheels, because you just can't be worrying about whether that piece of duct tape on the inside of the tire is going to hold up when you're careening around the last corner at full-bore in a criterium. Of course, that's why I use that wheelset only for racing. The other 10,000 miles each year are ridden on standard 32-hole wheels with whatever rubber currently holds air, and never mind the thump-thump-thump from the front wheel when the brakes are applied and catch on the little crack that is developing at one of the nipple holes.
Anyway, yesterday I broke down, pulled out the debit card, and ordered a few things. It wasn't really my fault. You see, The Daughter's birthday is coming up and I wanted to get her some nice speakers for her laptop since she didn't bring a stereo up to college this year. So I hunted around and ordered her some from Altec-Lansing, but the problem was, that got me into that "ordering stuff" mode, so I also ordered her a pair of on-sale Pearlizumi shorts from Supergo.com, along with some innertubes and a waterbottle cage for myself. Then I hopped on over to Longscycle.com. This is the most amazing website. It is a really terribly designed website, but these guys have some great deals on things like socks and shoe-covers and arm-warmers. I picked up a pair of DeFeet arm-warmers for $9, and some DeFeet socks for $2.49 a pair, and some DeFeet shoe-covers for $9. They seem to buy up overstocked stuff, stuff left over from special events, and some "seconds." I've bought stuff from them before. It's been a long time since I worried whether my socks matched my jersey, so if I can get some nice socks for half the regular price, I'm not going to quibble over whatever odd design is printed on them.
Of course, I wish I was instead at the LBS (Local Bike Shop) buying some $3,000 time trial wheels and those new chainrings I've been needing, and some new shoes that don't make my toes scream in agony after 50 miles, but hey, it's a step in the right direction, right? Maybe eventually the bank account will cooperate and I'll start to wonder why someone would ever go to all the trouble of actually patching innertubes! But I doubt it.
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