Wheelin' and Dealin'

Another done with my little Canon point & click.  Pretty good if I do say so myself.

My wife was away for a few days last week.  I always like to use this freedom time to do a few things in the garage.  With her car gone, I can pull mine out and give the garage a good going over which means cleaning and continue on to try to put some sense of order to it. Three years in this home and I'm still working on it. 

I occasionally get asked by her Why do you have to have so many bicycles?  Let's see, I don't smoke, don't drink, don't gamble, don't chase women, but I have too many bicycles.  Oh Lord!  And with that thought in my head I stood there looking at my two mountain bikes.  Maybe I should get rid of one for I mostly ride the other.  I thought about it some and dreaded the agony of trying to sell it, using Craigslist to do so, and have to deal with the numbskulls and idiots of Craigslistland.  But this would be the easier way to sell it.  I cleaned up the bike, took a few pictures then sat down that afternoon to compose the ad.

In doing so I thought I should entertain the idea of doing a trade for a road bike and maybe get back into road riding once again.  This would increase the chances of moving the mountain bike.  Maybe someone might want to give up the streets for the trails.  I checked on other ads to see how people wrote them up and came upon a reoccurring ad by the same person for different used bicycles.  It appeared he picked up bicycles, fixed them up and sold them, plus he was right here in the Santa Rosa area.  Hmm...I gave him a call.  Yes, he does like to trade and he was very interested when I said I had a Santa Cruz Heckler.  I took the bike over to his shop that afternoon. 

My bike:

A bike that he had that I liked:

Done deal.  Straight across trade.  All over in the very same day that I decided to let the Heckler go.  I drove away unbelieving of my good fortune once again.  I probably had about $100 more into the mountain bike than what he was asking for the Trek but that was well worth it to me in avoiding the nightmare of selling it on Craigslist.  I am sure he'll make a small profit when he goes to sell it.

So in the end I didn't lessen the inventory of my stable of bicycles any, but I really am enjoying riding a road bike once again.  Now I can smoke them tires, drink lots of water in doing so, gamble that I don't get run over by a car, and chase the cute women cyclists wearing tight fitting Lycra cycling clothes.

My wife is leaving again this week for a few days.  I wonder what kind of mischief I can get into this time from puttering around in the garage?