My New Trends

 

No, not buying bikes and toting them home piggyback style, I've been doing that for years. One of the new trends is the price I've been paying for those bikes, which has been mostly steadily decreasing. Spring of last year I'd returned from a visit with my dad and sis in Connecticut, stopping to meet a Craigslist seller in West Springfield for my most fun price negotiation ever. After I pointed out a couple issues with the bike he'd missed, he responded with, "How about $25?"

My counter, "No, that's too low, let's do 30."

Everyone had a happy experience, I rode home with my errand bike for the last year, and had the bonus of a story that is worth at least $5 to me! Prior to that, my bike purchases had been $50, then $40, so when Friday I saw the ad for a $25 hybrid, and the photo showed my long desired rear disc brake mount to help complete the three speed bike build of my dreams for the last couple years, yup, no brainer.

The ad did claim a size medium, and while the specs I found were numeric sizes, eye balling the picture, I figured it was either one or two sizes smaller than my first choice, of which the prior would be fully workable. Well, it was worth a Saturday morning ride to the northern reaches of Sunderland before bustling back down to Northampton to help at the biweekly Bike Lab.

I'm due to have my vision checked. The size was spot on my first choice, more of what I'd call a large, but given how low the saddle was, the seller might in fact be more medium sized. I'd didn't have visual confirmation of that because, at $25, the owner trusted me sight unseen to leave the bike out and tell me where to stash the money if it was a keeper. I hope their dirt bike fide was fun.

Of course, the bike was a sale! So, with the fork clamped into my rear-rack-front-hub, I lost the elevation (yay!) bopping back down to Northampton in the river valley with the final leg of my trip on the Norwattuck Rail Trail. Sounding familiar? Trend number two: stashing my weekend find along the trail rather than negotiating the downtown bustle trailering a load. This time, however, with no overnight visit planned, stashing amounted to locking the bike in the shade to a trailside fence, but in a nod to consistency, it was only 100 yards down the path from where I'd tucked the trailer in the weeds last week. While the bike wasn't a free pile find, that part of my theme was continued with a snazzy tool bag that found a home on my rack a couple miles north of there!

Ok, now I'll acknowledge another not new trend. You may have noticed the bike decals in my photos are often blurry. That's not by chance. I have the neurotic misconception of a former professional that people might care what I'm riding, that my endorsement has value, so I doctor the images for illegibility. Yes, I know it's been years since anyone cared, just old dog, old tricks, but for anyone who likes verbal puzzles, I'll hint: "I did feel the need for marring those logos!"