A little whisper in the dark

Want and need

Not too long ago, I was browsing through the local cycling classified advertisements, and a roadbike caught my eye. The parts specification looked pretty good for the price, and I clicked on the provided link to have a look at the bike, next thing you know, I was hooked.

Now, I've always been a mountain biker, to the extent of being polarized away from the roadies (or road toads as I was apt to call them). Perhaps the steady diet of Lance Armstrong Tour de France victories and the fact this steed bears the same paintwork had more than just a little to do with it?

Told myself that I didn't really need a road bike, I'm just following up on this one because its cheap and its good, that if I didn't like it I could still sell it without loss. But as they say, if its too good to be true, it probably is.

Long story cut short, the bike was a dud, it had a cracked component that could have unceremoniously dumped me onto my face (that the owner tried not to tell me, but which a little detective work, for which Scorpios are known for, unearthed). That was the end of that.

$1200, and so I started looking at new bikes in that price range, given that that sum was what I was almost prepared to spend. The broken bike was a Trek. Lance Armstrong's brand. Don't believe them when they say product placement doesn't work. It does.

Ah, but you would say, didn't you say you didn't need a road bike, so why are you looking for a new bike now?

Well I'd gone from wanting Lance's ride to wanting to ride like Armstrong. Well not exactly Tour de France glory, but road riding. An ultimately futile attempt to ride with two roadies (one of which was female, both of which were younger than me), with me progressively cramping first the left, then the right leg for more than half the ride, in the process giving myself a muscle ache I haven't felt for a long while already. They had to slow down for me and my mountain bike.

The mind is a powerful tool, and I am talking myself into buying a roadbike, do the research, haunt the bikeshops, stroke the metal.

Retail therapy is a powerful tool, and most of the time I manage to talk myself out of it before I shell out the bucks.

But this time, want has become a need. And I need to convince myself otherwise.

posted by Chung Leong @ 4:28 AM