Christmas is Three Months too Late

It never fails. Halloween is the busiest time of the year in our household. Work is ridiculous, soccer season in full swing with tournaments and playoffs, coaching my son's 6th grade basketball team an unexpected delight, not to mention the zillion other priorities in our lives. So not that I'm not thankful, but I'm a cyclist. And cyclists like their stuff. And every year around this time I need more stuff! 

Have you been outside recently? I rode from Novato the other morning (got 80 miles that day!) and at 4:30am it was 41 degrees, but "felt like" 39. That's what I get for being up early right? But the time of day doesn't matter much, at least not today. It was a chilly morning today. Even on my return flight over the bridge I was fighting what I think was an icy headache. All because I'm still wearing my spring cycling gear. (insert cartoon here with cyclist wearing swiss cheese socks and gloves into the wind)

When you ride thousands of miles a year, and you run who knows how many piles of cycling laundry, well the clothes just to start to wear out. And sometimes, even disappear. My fav cycling gloves for example decided to get divorced. Mr Lefty hit the road leaving righty high and dry. So now I'm left with finger gloves that don't stop the wind or cold..which means I wear a thin layer ski glove on top of those gloves. Cloogy yes, effective...well it's better than losing my fingers to the cold. And what about my favorite baklava? Love that thing. It not only protects my entire face, but warms the air as I breathe in. Unfortunately, I think the backlava ran away with lefty. Did I mention the holes in my merino wool socks? Well my wife did "think it's time to let these go Mr Mo". What, and let my feet freeze too? 

I creatively broke out my SF giants mock t base layer this morning. It worked great. I wonder if some of my work clothes can double as cycling gear also? You might laugh, but this is a niche market that is starting to open up. Problem is it's super pricey, just like everything else. Let's see, do I get new socks without holes in them, or another base layer. When am I ever going to afford those new wide rim HUDDs that are plastered all over the industry covers these days. Electronic shifting? Oh man and they even came out with disc brakes for my road bike. When will it end? 

Maybe I'll start adding a ferry trip to save some dollars for all the gear I'd like to get. 

A hah yes I just had a good laugh on that one. Never! Of course, there's talk of charging for parking at the ferry now so there goes that money saving idea. Glad to see the bridge district is in the parking lot business now, where they are dealing with occupancy rates and churn of their parking spaces rather than increasing ridership. And hopefully, they won't start talking about charging cyclists who ride across the bridge again but how did I get on this train? I digress. You know what, it just occurred to me..sell me a pass for one of those coveted bike hooks on the ferry. Give me a plate with my name on it. Cyclists like their stuff, we'd likely fall for that.  

"Will pedal for cycling gear" will garner as much empathy as the striking BART workers, so I'll pick a few things now, and ask Santa to get me started for the rest. But the only thing that will really cure the needs and wants of this cyclist is a total shutdown to the industry. But since that didn't work for our government I don't see how that could work for me either. 

Time to go to my laundry room to search out lefty and baklava. Rumor has it they're hiding under the dryer.