The £400 question, redux

I don’t go out to spend £400 every day. I know some people do, especially in our credit-card wielding, guilt-free, devil-take-my-credit-history society - but I don’t. Particularly on stuff for me.

(Sure, I’ve blown wads of cash on ordinary, necessary, socially acceptable things like sofas and beds. We did a lot of that when we got to Brighton… but ever since then we’ve been good. Well, fairly good. Plane tickets don’t count, right?)

I just don’t go on shopping sprees of any sort of size. In fact, I feel guilty buying stuff on sale these days. So after I recovered from the shock of my wife-remembered savings, and I figured I should get myself down to the bike shop and put my money where my mouth was, that’s when it suddenly hit me. I was thinking about spending £400 on a bike. An object which, last time I checked, was something that kids rode around on, perhaps with brightly coloured tape tied to the handlebars.

“We still have savings?”

Or, “Where the hell the money came from”.

I think the title maybe gives it away. On Saturday I told Amanda that I wanted to talk about when I could buy the bike - just talk about it, mind you. I was thinking perhaps I’d use the remaining credit card that we have, then pay it back over a couple of months. And then she says the obvious thing:

“Why don’t you just pay for it out of the savings?”

We’re back to the post title. After I realised she was right and that yes, indeed, buying a bigger fridge earlier in the year hadn’t wiped out our carefully stockpiled winter nuts (of cash) , and that as she put it “It’s better to pay for it out of the savings now, and then pay it back with the money you were going to just pay off the credit card with” well, I was outta there.

Not actually strictly true. As you’re about to see.

Ladies and gents, I have a bike

And here she is… bikes are female, aren’t they? Well the male in me says if I’m riding it… ahem.

‘She’ is a Dawes Sonoran - not a Sontaran, as I suddenly thought I might have purchased while riding it earlier today. (That would be a Doctor Who villain with a head like a… wait, this is a family blog. Right, right….)

The £400 question

So, last night Amanda and I had the briefest conversation about The Price of The Bike.

She knows about the decision to buy it (obviously) and supports it too (bonus, considering how many other gadget fantasies I have, usually involving items of imported, Asian origin). Now the real question is how we are going to afford the damn thing.

I do pretty well for myself, thankyouverymuch, but living and working in Brighton ain’t cheap. Nor’s paying off our debt, which isn’t mountainous, more… hilly. Still, it doesn’t leave much cash aside each month to fritter away on things like two-wheeled vehicles.

This is where you expect me to slap a PayPal icon on the side and ask for donations, right? Wrong. But hey, I need something to talk about before I can go on about the wind in my (lack) of hair and the road underneath my wheels.

Things I’ve already learned about bikes and biking

In just over twenty-four hours. See, I work fast. In no particular order:

• Bikes are nowhere near as cheap as they were when I was a lad. Either that, or the economy is screwed up, or my pocket money doesn’t go nearly as far.
• Bikers are geeks. This is good; I will get on fine with them, once I understand the lingo, which is many and varied.
• Bikers have blogs. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me. I mean, who doesn’t now. Still, it’s pretty heartening to see other bike blogs with bad puns for titles.
• Bikes are marketed in much the same way as cars. Y’know, names that make them sound far too macho (’Velocity’, ‘Comet’) etc. It’s only the fact that they cost about a twentieth of their car equivalent that we don’t see wall-to-wall advertising for them.
• Twenty-nine inches is apparently an important measurement.

More ‘revelations’ as they strike me.

In the beginning, there were bikes…

… a lot of bikes. Streaming past us at varying intervals, but still streaming. All kinds of bikes, with all kinds of riders; young and old, black and white… whatever that third pairing is.

Which was to be expected, as it was the day of the London to Brighton Bike Ride, 2006. 18th June to be precise.

And apropos of nothing, I turned to my wife - for she was with me - and said “I’m going to get a bike. And next year I’m going to enter the London to Brighton Bike Ride.”

Yes, I know. Perhaps I’d been out in the sun too long… but this is what beginnings are made of, right? A good hook. Now we just have to follow-through.

A really kind of pointless disclaimer

Before we get started here, I want to establish a few ground rules.

1. I’m here to blog about my experience of thinking about buying a bike, actually buying a bike, and then probably (if I’m still going), y’know, riding a bike. It won’t be about anything else.*
2. The title is a pun. A bad one. But my brain threw it out there as the first thing I thought of, and I like it. So there. It will not change. (Until I say it will.)
3. I may have blogged in other ways and other places, but for now I’m sticking with the plain and simple. I’m kicking it, in fact, old school style with Blogspot. Word. WordPress. Right.
4. I will try not to use phrases like ‘kicking it’, ‘old school’ and ‘word’ very often.
5. I may swear. For some reason I think I might not do that too often here. But I have before, and may again.
6. I may also add to these ground rules in the future for no apparent reason.

And that’s it for now, folks.

* Like movies, or my work, or games, or just general rambling angst.