On the eve of a weekend that is full of races for me, my wife and I sit trying to make tough financial decisions. Have you ever noticed that in all the romantic comedies there always seems to be some factor of almost unlimited wealth? It makes it easier to come up with interesting solutions to challenges. Well, our lives are certainly comedic and I would say that my wife and I have romantic in spades but we seem to be missing that “unlimited wealth” factor that should be helping our story along. And so here we sit trying to figure out how to afford even more needed equipment (does it ever end?) and our conversation turns to Angus (the Big Blue Bike).
Angus has been in my life for years, he was built by my father for me and we have had so many of our cycling adventures together. We have ridden together in Annadel, Whiting Ranch, the trails outside of Palo Alto, Auburn, Granite Bay. Angus was my first official race bike (I rode him in the TBF series last spring). My wife even wrote a holiday story about him. Heck, she even named him (I never named my bikes before I met her.) In the naming, he became a person, a part of our family, with his quirks and components endearing if sometimes frustrating. Yet, we needed funds to support my racing and with all of the mechanical problems he had been having, he had been “out to pasture” for almost a year taking up room in our recently downsized garage area. He would need to be sold.
Saying goodbye to Angus was initially difficult, and then we thought of what we could do with the funds from his sale. I decided that I would sell him at Sea Otter where we could expose him to the largest amount of target buyers who would know just how special Angus is. We hoped that he would go to a good home with an experienced mountain-biker who would know how to treat Angus the way he deserved to be treated. We had made our peace with the decision and had moved on.
Or so I had thought. My wife -the keeper of the family budget and so usually the one to push us to sell off old stuff if we want to buy new- came to me not long after we had made our decision with her brow furrowed up in sadness, “We aren’t selling Angus.” She stated. A hundred thoughts crossed my mind, I think I may have even uttered a few of them: he is a money pit, he is not the racing bike I need, he is taking up space, we don’t have the money to get him back in shape, etc. But I knew what I wanted; I wanted to keep Angus too, even if it wasn’t the most financially viable decision.
My wife continued her explanation, “We spend way too much money on taking the bikes in to be worked on and even then we don’t always get them back in working order like they should be. We both want to learn to fix bikes but we don’t want to work on a bike that you need for racing in case we screw something up. We need Angus to learn with so that we can work on bikes ourselves." How could I argue with logic like that?
And so Angus was not to be sold, just his purpose in our family changed. He has gone from downhill demon and racing buddy to venerable and revered teacher. He will teach us to clean, to fix, to upgrade, to alter, he will teach us how to love and care for our bikes as we should. Welcome back, Angus. We love you.
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