Today I took the family down to the local bike and gear "blowout" The kids were excited and my wife was being very lovely about the whole affair.
Seeing as how I haven't needed to purchase much in the way of cycling gear in the past couple of years I haven't been to this explosive fest' before.
The first thing I saw when I arrived, a few minutes early, was that the line was about a million miles long. Having been warned about this I shouldn't have been surprised. But of course I was.
I guess since there were so many people there it must have been packed with great deals. Unfortunately I didn't get out with very much at all despite me having a fairly long shopping list going in.
First, the place was packed with people, all clambering to find the sweet deals. I don't do well in crowds and while I don't break into a cold sweat before punching someone in the nose and fleeing the scene, I do get very stressed out. And this impacts my ability to score sweet deals.
But the more serious issue was that I really had no idea where to find anything, and what was a good deal or not. I picked up more than a few pairs of tires and had no idea if they were a good deal or a bad deal, and more importantly, if I actually wanted those particular tires on my bike. I stared at product after product trying to conjure a google search out of thin air to figure out if what I was looking at was top of the line, or 20 years old.
I had expected there to be lots of winter clothing there, but it seemed scarce. I saw a rack of booties that got picked clean before I could close in. There were some $300 Assos tights that only came bigger than what I thought would fit. At $185 on sale they better include testosterone impregnated materials. The other tights I felt very uncomfortable buying without trying on.
The excursion wasn't a total loss. I stuck with what I knew. I bought some tubes, bar tape, a couple chains and that's about it. At least those purchases let me walk out of there without feeling like I had completely wasted my time.
That's not to say it wasn't interesting, I find people watching most fascinating. There were lots of different people there fingering bikes and looking more clueless than I was.
Of particular note were the number of people eying the triathlon bikes. Of course it's dangerous to judge but there were quite a few people walking fancy bikes out the door who's ability to adopt a position over top the aero bars without causing internal bleeding was very much in doubt.
I'm not really one to say, but there did seem to be a lot of good deals on older model bikes, and it was good to see lots of new riders, particularly women, buying their first ride. Although I did laugh at the salesman, making a desperate pitch to sell an older woman a Specialized carbon wonder, for "Touring", when the husband asked, "Can you put a flat handlebar on this?"
I walked off before he had a chance to recover and inevitably mutter, Yes.
So, in lieu of making any inroads on my list of gear to buy, I headed over to MEC, and satisfied my craving for Lycra.
The day ended with a 55 minute ride, whereupon I returned home to sausages. Sweet!
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