I have a problem.

I’ve got bike lust and i’ve got it real bad. I need bike stuff like a crack head needs crack. And just like that crack head, i tell myself that i’ve got it all under control, i can stop whenever i want. I’ve convinced myself that if i could just spend $10,000-$15,000 on bikes and related gear (Ha! Only $10-15K!?!) and just get everything on the ’stuff to get’ list that i could sit back and not need anything for a while. ‘I don’t even want the most expensive stuff’ i tell myself. If i did i could easily blow that on one bike. Somehow, i’ve convinced myself that this is totally logical, and i’m sure all my friends that ride will read this and not even blink. Meanwhile, those readers that don’t ride will see that number for the lunacy that it actually is. And the thing is, deep down i know that even if i went on a shopping spree, maxed out the credit card, and bought all of the stuff on my list, in a few days i know i would discover something else that i need to have, and the list would start up again and the cycle would repeat itself.

So as far as bikes go, what do i feel is my winning combination?

1. ‘Race’ Road Bike – This is the bike where you pull out all of the stops. Carbon frame, your best components, best wheels, best everything. This is the bike you take to races and you ride when you want to put everything on the line. I’ve raced with guys that will put well over $10,000 into their race bike, but something like the Giant TCR Advanced SL 3, $4125 (vs $11,000 for Giant’s top of the line race bike), would be great.
2. ‘Beater’ Road bike – this is the bike that you equip with fenders and take out training in the winter. It’s usually an ‘old’ bike that’s been replaced but you can’t bear to part with it, so you keep it around and use it as a road bike for when you don’t want your race bike to get messed up. Hopefully my current bike (Specialized Allez Elite, in red, of course) will fill this void someday.
3. ‘Long Distance’ Road Bike – This is the bike you ride for long distance rides when you aren’t so worried about going fast as being comfortable and having fun. This is the bike you take on ‘epic’ 6-8 hour rides with your riding buddies for fun. It has a less aggressive riding position so you can ride longer, it has gentler gearing for pushing up climbs after 8 hours in a saddle at a slower pace than you would race, and the carbon everything of the race bike is switched out for steel and aluminum. The focus here is more on durability and comfort than speed. In a crunch your beater road bike can double as your epic bike, but in an ideal world you’ll have both. My ideal bike for this category would be an Independent Fabrication Steel Crown Jewel, ~$3,000.
4. Track Bike – Racing at the velodrome is fun. If nothing else it helps you improve your sprint and your pack riding skills for crits and road races. A Giant Omnium ($1625) or Felt TK2 ($1399) would be great.
5. Cyclocross Bike – Originally created by European road racers over 100 years ago as a way to stay fit in the off-season, cyclocross (think mountain bike racing on a road bike equipped with knobby tires, and hurdles that require riders to dismount and jump over) is taking off and is damn fun. No need for anything really nice here, it’s only going to get muddy and gunked up. A Giant TCX1 ($1675), Independent Fabrication Steel Planet Cross (~$3,000), Specialized Tri-Cross Comp ($1900), or Ridley X-Ride ($2,400) would all be great.
6. Mountain Bike – Just one all around mountain bike would be fine by me. Say the Giant Anthem X3 ($2,000), or Specialized FRS XC Comp ($1550) would be perfect. Just something to get out with the boys and ride some trails for fun.
7. Fixed Gear / Single Speed / Cruiser / Hybrid Bike – Just for cruising around town, this is the bike you can ride to the coffee shop and lock to a bike rack without feel paranoid the whole time, constantly looking over to make sure your baby is doing okay. My Bianchi fixed gear works perfectly for this.

So that’s the current list for me. There are a lot of Giant bikes listed because they sponsor my club, so we get a discount. For some reason they make a big deal about the club price being confidential, so i’ve shown the list price from their website. As a roadie, i have many more road bikes than mountain bikes. A mountain biker would likely have one road bike and then a slew of mountain bikes on their list (full suspension, all out race bike, hard tail, 29′er, etc). And like i said, for the most part these are all middle or bottom of the line bikes. While the prices may shock those who don’t ride, for most of these bikes you could easily spend double what i’ve listed by getting a top of the line frame, components, and wheels.

I don’t know how i got to the point that i feel i need all of this stuff, i run my bike racing operation on a shoe string budget. I ride an entry level aluminum bike, i have a single wheelset that i use to race, and most of my equipment (helmet, shoes, pedals) is a few generations old, and not even top of the line to begin with.  Aside from race entry fees, consumable things (tires, embrocation, chamois cream, tubes, etc) and the power meter that i just got, i really don’t spend all that much on cycling. Compare that the guys i race with (and against) who have top of the line carbon frames, top of the line components, new everything equipment, and a slew of race wheelsets to choose from based on the conditions (terrain, wind), not to mention all the bikes they have that they don’t race, and i guess i don’t have it that bad. Then again, most of these guys are older than me, so they have more ‘developed’ incomes and have had more time to acquire all this stuff, meanwhile, i’m just getting ramped up.

So that’s it, that’s the list…of bikes. I didn’t even get into the equipment that i’d like to get or update in the next year or two (helmet, sunglasses, compressible wind/rain jacket, rollers, a few tools…). So now that i’ve exposed myself as a materialistic and selfish bastard who needs a bunch of trivial crap to be happy while there are children in Africa who are starving and living on less than $1 a day, we can return to our regularly scheduled blog…

The weekend in Healdsburg was great. We didn’t get to that many wineries, but we had fun. Ad Hoc was everything i was hoping it would be and more. Hopefully i’ll get a blog entry up about that weekend this week. For the weekend that just came to an end Rachel and i went to the Bridge School Benefit put on by Neil Young. I went for a bike ride with the club Saturday morning and felt awful. I continued to feel bad all day and ended up making a few trips to the bathroom during the concert to puke my brains out. Good stuff. Rachel was feeling pretty crappy too, so we mostly sat around on Sunday feeling sorry for ourselves. Got out to see Where the Wild Things Are, which i enjoyed, but question the judgement of making such a dark movie out of a children’s book.  Anyway, that’s all for now. Toodles.