I think I'm done.
It's over.
Well, sort of over.
I have to admit, I don't spend all of my waking hours thinking about bicycles and riding anymore.
I don't sit around and dream about this or that or the other thing, this bicycle or that bicycle, this group set or that group set.
I sort of feel like I've reached the end.
Almost.
The acquisition phase has run its course.
As far as the number of bicycles I need goes.
Yesterday, while I was sorting through all the junk parts over at Kvibe, some nice gentleman brought in a really nice Nishiki mountain bike.
My trained eyeballs immediately noticed it was something in my size with nice paint and a solid looking drive train.
Normally bells and whistles would have been going off in my brain.
Calculations would have begun immediately, the cogs and gears turning and an injection of delusional logic would have sent about a GAGILLION watts of power to the bicycle lust part of my brain.
Didn't happen.
Oh I looked and admired, but for the most part I found myself to be in a fairly passive state.
That caught me by surprise.
What was wrong with me?
I checked to see if I was feverish and I checked my pulse.
No, I wasn't dead.
Normally I would have been in Stage III Acquisition Mode(SIIIAM), but I looked at it, and went about my business.
Once I came home and thought about it, always dangerous, that thinking stuff, I realized I no longer have Bicycle Want(BW).
Or need(BN).
I mean I hardly find the time to ride the four bicycles I have now.
If you, the reader, have been following along at home, you know that four bicycles is needed for the you must have a back up to the back up to the back up.
I think I got that part covered.
Okay I lied.
I still have Bicycle Want, but I'm about to cover that part too.
So what's left?
Where do I go?
Where do I take this, this "hobby" that has consumed my life for the last three odd years?
I have to admit, somewhere along the line it feels as though a switch has been turned, not off, but to another terminal perhaps, as my feelings toward bicycling have changed.
I no longer spend hours and hours and hours on the eVilness or eVilist searching for some imagined grail.
Gone are all the Nashbars and Performance links from my favorites toolbar.
The fact is, my bicycle wish list is at an all time low!
Only three items left to go.
Okay, I'm not counting the tools, you know you can never have enough tools.
Now that one path reaches an end, what fork in the road do I take?
There are no road signs ahead, no guiding lights or maps.
The questions I ask myself are relevant, for I truly am looking in another direction, trying to find out where this road will lead.
I mean there are no dead ends in bicycling, you just turn around and go someplace else.
If you know what I mean.
So what's left?
I dunno.
I suppose I just follow the wise suggestions of the Great Sage JRA(GSJRA).
Time to get up and go ride.
When you really think about it, that's all there is to it.
This bicycling thing I mean.
4 comments:
That's just what I was going to suggest.....now that you have more time not being on the evil-ness perhaps you should spend more time actually riding the bikes.
You could have some fun (and pain) trying to go up steep gradients as fast as you can and practice descending even quicker or you could try seeing how far you can travel in 24 hours...just for fun of course.
You know there's something about self inflicted pain that just doesn't sit right with me.
As they say, no pain, no pain.
If you know what I mean.
Don't worry, the lapse of BW will soon pass and may even be stronger when it returns. It comes and goes in stages; I went years without BW and then last year I purchased two.
As they say at RBR, the proper number of bikes is n+1, where n=the number currently owned.
I actually have a plan and after this year only two more bicycles will be on the list.
One of which is in Onobtainableland.
Maybe.
Thing is, I just don't have the room for N+1.
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