My wife Adriana is big into bicycling, she rides every weekend and do a lot of long distance races for charity, like the MS150 or the Bike Around the Bay. These charity races are very long, usually a two day race covering 70 to 90 miles per day.

When she started she had a three hundred dollar bike she purchased from a rider friend who convinced her that it was a lot of fun. Keep in mind that Adriana did like to bicycle before, mainly on mountain roads and she was happy to get into the sport again.

Spending three hundred dollars for a bicycle seems steep to me, I have seen them in Academy for hundred dollars; her friend tells me that she spend eight hundred dollars for that bike when it was new couple years earlier and she was ready to upgrade to a two thousand dollar model; so she was more than happy to sell it for a good price to someone who would enjoy it. I was just wandering why she would spend that kind of money when Academy have them brand new for hundred dollars plus tax. Isn’t a new 2019 model what we call and upgrade?

She started riding Saturdays and sometimes Sundays, by the time she was done each day she was very tire when she came home. That is great work out I always tell her while sitting on the couch watching re-runs of Cheers.

As time went by she started complaining about her shoes, they were not the right shoes for bicycling, they needed to have cleats, I don’t know much about women’s shoes but when I had shoes with cleats I was playing football, I was wondering if she wasn’t bicycling in the weekends but rather playing ball with the boys at soccer field. Not having the right shoes turned into not having the right bicycle, that did make me happy, I figured I could sell her eight hundred dollar bicycle for four hundred, recoup the initial three hundred dollars and use the extra one hundred dollars to buy a brand spanking new bicycle at Academy.

Did I say Academy? I was thinking Walmart, but she was thinking the Bike Barn Bicycle shop. One evening she dragged me to the shop to look at bicycles, I was more than willing to go, I was ready to sell that bike and breakout even. I figured we would do couple stops, the Bike Barn and then Academy and finally I would convinced her that whatever they had at Academy we could get cheaper at Walmart. I could have never been so wrong in so many levels.

The Bike Barn has rows of bicycles of any kind, I didn’t know you couldn’t ride your road bicycle on the dirt; Did something happened during my college years that I missed? When I was younger we got a bicycle for Christmas and we rode that bike on any kind of terrain, in fact I don’t think mine even had gears but I was the fastest rider in my neighborhood. Going back to the shop, I looked all the bikes and I couldn’t find any bicycle under five hundred dollars unless you were looking for your three year old daughter and then you could purchase the Sun’s Lil Kitt’n bicycle for just a few more dollars over one hundred.

I was looking on my GPS for the closest Walmart and was about to dashed out of the store when my wife stopped me to tell me she was waiting for Steve the salesman. Apparently she had already spoken to Steve and had a bicycle in mind. A tall handsome guy came out of the repair area and greeted my wife with such a big smile I could swear I have seen him before in the soccer field. Your bike is ready he said, I was speechless, I looked at my wife, my wife looked at Steve, Steve looked at me and three thousand dollars later we walked out of the store.

While we were in the car I finally could mutter a word out of my mouth and I said, that is not the bicycle I had in mind, and Adriana with a straight face answered, I know, but they will change the pedals tomorrow so I can get the shoes with the cleats.