Returning the Favor and other Slices of Life

Returning the Favor
Returning the Favor
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Friday, September 07, 2007

This is gonna sound a little obsessive...

Name that tune -

Moving on, I think it might be considered a little obsessive that I now own 3 bicycles and an indoor exercise bike, and there are only two people in my household.

I might be saved by the fact that one of the bikes is my wife's.

But probably not, since I'm the one pushing her to get a bike and ride with me.

I also may have developed a mildly unhealthy fascination with Craigslist, a phenomenon that I have managed to avoid until this week.

When I bought two bikes off it.
Now, in my defense, I am paying for the two Townies (slightly used) what I would have paid for just the black one, so it's a pretty smokin' deal. And I have at least ridden a Townie before (and if you haven't, come visit and I'll let you ride mine. It'll take you back to when you were a little kid and riding bikes was cool) when my friend Lisa let me tool around a parking lot on hers. I loved it, so when the deal came up for two of these for $450 on craigslist, I couldn't pass it up.

So hopefully this is something that Suzy and I can do together on weekend mornings - go cruise the greenways on our bikes, break a good sweat and get some exercise while hanging out together. And the Townie is designed for people who aren't into biking, so it doesn't have the requirement for stretchy pants and clippy shoes that sometimes turn folks off from bike riding.

So of course in order to buy and pick up two bikes, I had to get a bike rack. And since I drive a toaster
and I don't want to lug around a stepladder to get up on the roof of the damn thing after I've gone for a ride, I needed a rack to go on the back of the toaster. And I use the tailgate. A lot.

I am, after all, a hillbilly. And football season has indeed started. So there is no real coincidence that both vehicles at the Casa de Falstaff have tailgates, regardless of the fact that I don't typically attend football games.

So I needed to get a rack that's a hitch mount.
There was just one issue - no hitch. So off I head to Google, to find out how to get a hitch put on my toaster. That statement was met with some confusion when I later told Suzy "I googled to find a hitch for the toaster." She was very confused as to what I doing to the kitchen appliances, and asked me if I burned anything I'd need later.

Turns out U-Haul installs hitches, which I had no idea of, despite driving past the U-Haul join at least twice a week for 15 years with a big sign out front that says "We Install Hitches." So $200 later, I have a hitch with a 3,500 lb. capacity on the back of my toaster.

So off I head to Performance Bike, where the sales people are starting to recognize me. When they start to call if I miss a week, I'm gonna worry. I pick up a bike rack, then remember that the new bikes don't have water bottles. So I grab those. Or cages to hold the water bottles. So I grab those. Then I remember that the black bike has a rack on the back for a trunk, and since there's a 15% off everything sale, I grab one of those. So another $200 later, I'm on my way home to put my new rack on my new hitch so that Sunday I can go pick up my new bikes.

So much for retiring from lighting design because I don't really need the extra income.

3 comments:

Irongirl01 said...

This is what i have on my Santa fe.. A lightweight Hidden hitch and a Thule bike rack that snaps in. Of course I havent used it in about 4 years as Ive been on triathlon dry dock.

Want to buy a carbon fiber Specialized with aerobars and clipless pedals, index shifting etc etc. ??

Better Idea I get off my zoftig butt, come out of retirement and we train for a triathlon and prop bet it!!

How the heck are you!!

KenP said...

You need to get back to where you anguished over 11.5G or the metal weighted centers chips.

Getting out of a perfectly good car to sweat on a 5% grade is -EV.

Astin said...

And here I am not even getting my rear tire straightened out because I haven't ridden the bike in over a year. Although I did buy a cushy new seat.

Which might have been silly since I should just buy a whole new lightweight bike that I'll never ride.

Don't you hate that slipperly slope of purchases?