The Madness Begins...

So, I took delivery of my Giant TCR Aero 2 bike today. I purchased it from someone I love and adore and think of as a younger brother. Said younger brother is behaving exactly as younger brothers have since the beginning, ney, the dawn of time... Procastinating, equivocating, side-stepping, doing everything in their power to drive you nutz.

Part of the purchase of the Giant was the extraction of an explicit promise that, "Yes, I will take the bike subject to you helping me find a storage solution..." Because, yes, of course, any apartment belonging to yours truly, even a two bedroom domicile, is filled to the brim with the flotsam and jetsam of a lifetime of travels and collecting and because I admit I am a packrat. I had NO idea where I was going to put the damn thing. My idea was to hang it from the ceiling of my office. But I had no idea how to acomplish that feat.

I once rode a bike to work every day, twenty miles a day. THAT WAS TWENTY-FIVE FREAKING YEARS AGO. All subsequent two-wheeled transportation has had a motor, usually a BIG motor attached.

"Little brother" is an engineer and has SIX bikes (at one time he had nine - he's crazy, probably certifiable, which of course is one of the many reasons I love him). A perfect candidate to solve the storage problem. Except... Long story short, after many false starts, fits and farts, bike was dropped off at my doorstep, "have a nice day, enjoy the sunshine, see you later..." What!?!

F**K!!!!! So I then spent the next three hours with my Father in tow, on a gorgeous sunny Sunday afternoon better spent at the beach I might add, going to three hardware stores!, four bike stores!, and finally just rigging up a Rube Goldberg contraption with hooks drilled into the ceiling and f**king bungy cords. Thank God for Home Depot.

Did I mention that I drilled seven, SEVEN holes in the plaster ceiling before I found ceiling joists? But, at the last bike store in Kitsilano, I was waiting for a sales clerk and Father, unusually patient for a change, was checking out the gear in my wake, quietly amusing himself. I idly tried on a bike helmet - the law requires you to wear one in British Columbia -(brain injury is probably the least of my worries...) and I mentioned to clerk that I needed something suitable for doing an Ironman. Being cool in Penticton in August was a must. Temperatures often get into the eighties and nineties. All black helmets were ruled out. As swelled as my head is, I am a Medium and NOT a Large.

Dear old Dad handed me a beautiful blue, white and grey helmet with the suggestion that it would match the colours of my new Giant. The cranky old bastard does have some taste on occasion... And then he offered to buy it for me (he must be feeling guilty for sleeping on my couch for the past ten days and drinking all my wine...). It was a lovely and touching gesture on his part.

So a Giro Pneumo Race model it was. With a flashy Aero brim for downforce and an additional two mile per hour top speed...

We both nearly gagged when we found out the price was a penny shy of two hundred dollars. YIKES!

Credit, where credit is due. The old man never flinched... And I can see that this is only the beginning of the madness where gear is concerned...