Bike faffery.
19 May 2008
When I bought my bike last year, M. told me that I’d know when I became a real Bike Person when all of my spare income went to bike stuff. I don’t think I’ve reached that point yet — my spare income still finds other streams to flow down, like shoes and eating out — but I still spend quite a bit of money on bike crap.
The latest addition is these purple panniers, from Basil, a Dutch company that specializes in bike bags and baskets much cooler than the ones most American companies make. I saw some panniers like this when I was in Belgium in January, but couldn’t find any like them in the bike shops I visited in Bruges or elsewhere. But I did find someone selling a set on eBay a few weeks ago, brand new, for reasons unknown, and I snapped them up. I was originally going to wait to get some until I went to Portland later this summer, since Clever Cycles, a store there that specializes in the Euro-style bikes that I like (browsing their site always makes me think I want more than one bike), but when eBay calls, purchases are made.
I like the purple bags much better than the wire folding baskets I put on there in January — they look more attractive and they don’t rattle when I ride down pitted and pockmarked streets such as Marquette between Carlisle and San Mateo. The baskets kept coming off randomly, and I had to wire them onto my rack to keep them on. The panniers keep things out of both the sun and the rain, something the baskets just couldn’t do. However, I worry much more about the bags getting stolen. They were fairly difficult to put on — there’s about seven different straps attaching the things to my rack, as well as a big orange bungee cable — so it would take a while to take them off, but still, someone determined enough to get themselves some purple bike bags could do the job with enough time and in the right location.
I already have one of the most recognizable bikes in this part of ABQ — people email me, sometimes, to say they saw my bike (and, presumably, myself) riding down the street, and the purple bags are just going to exacerbate the situation.
(I also like this set of panniers — perhaps they will be a future purchase, to have a pair in reserve.)
Today, I am finishing up my grading for the semester, and then trying to rearrange the furniture in my apartment so that I have a proper desk and workspace — most of the time, I do my work sitting in my one living-room chair (if you’ve seen my living room, you know that one chair is about as much furniture as it can handle), which is okay, except that it’s not the best posture for writing or reading for a long time. This is why I end up having to do a lot of work in restaurants or coffee shops. I don’t think rearranging my furniture will cut down on my eating-out expenses (after all, there’s better Internet access outside my apartment, as well), but it might help me be more productive at home. On Wednesday, I head to San Francisco for four days, and then, the week after that, I drive up to Colorado for who knows how long.