rosie

remember this?

I do.

Way back when, I said I wanted to:

1) become knowledgeable in bicycle repair
2) buy a road bike since that's really what i should have gotten 7 years ago when i got my mountain bike what what i only ride on roads
3) make room indoors to keep my bike on account of our crummy garage here is no place to keep a bike and neither is my patio on account of things rust out there and there's no room on account of the tomato plant
4) become knowledgeable in bicycle repair

Hot damn if I didn't go and achieve all four! Hooray for me and accomplishing goals.

I love my bike, and my bike loves me. My bike's name is Rosie, and she and I were introduced shortly after the abortive bike ride documented above.

Several times since then I've been tempted to get a fancier bike. After all, I'm clearly a road bike enthusiast, and clearly I have $X in my bank account, so why not spend $X on a new road bike? I'll use it, sure!

But then there's Rosie. I don't Rosie to end up like Sherman, my poor, sad, neglected touring bike. Rosie isn't like Sherman, she gets lots of attention. And she doesn't need to be replaced, no sir, because there's nothing wrong with her. Even an all-carbon frame and Dura-Ace shifters would just be wasted on me. I'll take my aluminium frame and my Ultegra components, thank you, and leave the $10,000 road bike to the guy with the shaved legs and no ass that I just left behind on the hill.

I love road biking but I love my road bike just as much. I've bought a lot of crap over the years. A lot of that crap I don't use any more, because I lost interest in a hobby, or the crap turned out to be imperfect in some way, or I bought in at the bottom of the crap ladder and ended up with low-quality crap, and maybe the better quality crap is too pricey to line up with my interest, so I just ignore the bad purchase and pretend it will go away. Not so with Rosie.

As good as the day I bought her. No, better. I know how to fix almost anything that can go wrong with Rosie, and I've actually fixed many of those things personally. I know how to ride effectively, I know where to get quality parts and accessories, and I know where to ride around here. I have attained some small level of mastery in the local cycling arts.

I am extremely grateful that a stroke of craptasticness way back at the start of 2008 led me, unknowingly and by chance, into a wonderful sport that I may not be any good at, but which at least brings me a lot of happiness. And I'm lucky that I had the wisdom then to choose a mighty steed that still loves me nearly 4 years later.