Blatant showing off

Cotic Rocket 2012

There are times when there is absolutely no justification for shouting stuff from the rooftops at all. Other than what my mum would describedisdainfullyas ‘making a scene‘. This is my scene and I’ve put a bike in the middle of it.

This is not merely the latest pointless addition in Al’s rambling pantheon of bike shaped objects. Nor is it some finely honed strategy explaining exactly why the five lovely BSO’s I already own fail to meet a requirement that has suddenly become extremely important. It certainly isn’t an impulse purchase, nor will it immediately punt a previously* loved shed based item into the shivering eBay wasteland.

No this is Al buying Al a present. After every major project, there’s at least one person in the Leigh household who strongly believes – to the point of much whinging – that he is due a reward. Depending on exactly how bat-shit crazy the previous months have been, this may besomethingfinanciallytrivial or an item potentially leading to the Children eating their own shoes.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the last six months, or had the misfortune to be the Organic B end of my spittle-fleckedvitriol, you’ll be unsurprised to hear we’re deep into the Clark’s Book of School ShoeRecipes.

If there is ANYONE in the world who can be as focussed and profligate as me in terms of splashing an almighty chunk of cash in less than seven days, please let them step forward so I can embrace them like a brother and assuage some of my guilt. Last weekend I was high up on a Derbyshire hill – in the pissing rain of course – wondering if I could really justify buying a new bike. Specifically this one which had me grinning like a loon and scrubbing crappy work stuff like a massive mental eraser.

I couldn’t. I was fairly directly honest with Carol about this. I didn’t create some convoluted list of dependencies that’d somehow make this cost neutral. I didn’t pretend my current flock of bikes was somehow unworthy of my God-like riding skills. At no point did I mention the word progression although ‘Alps‘ may have crept in during an arm waving view of my riding future.

No. I didn’t do any of that. My position was simply that I’d worked my bollocks off for seven months and come very close to rocking-under-the-desk stress bunnyism, and the only way I could make sense of that was to have something that said ‘you know what, you’ve earned that’**

Carol was as ever understanding if a little taken aback when the full cost was finally blurted out. You could buy a car for that, in fact we did. Or a Holiday, we did that as well. Not satisfied with a brand new frame, I wanted to adorn it with as much blinginess as a large warehouse in East Lancs could post by Friday. Somehoweverythingarrived on time including a massive hangover for the man dragged into the pub on his last day***

The sensible thing was to dispatch all parts to Nic @ Revolutions with a breezy ‘it might be a little more complicated that I explained’ before stumbling off for a second greasy breakfast. A quick call mid afternoon was met with a flowing invective I shallsummarisethus “fucking nightmare, those wheels, jeez what were you thinking, it’s a right bastard of a problem child‘. I hung up happy in the knowledge that someone other than me was dealing with this difficult birth.

Really if it were me, it’d have been hammers and tears of frustration before lunchtime. There are some mentalists of the screaming variety who love to build bikes. I am not one of them unless assembly is merely a percussion arms race with added powertools. Nic delivered the bike with a couple of throwaway comments including ‘tyres aren’t quite seated, should be fine on the first descent or they’ll roll off the rim. No Point dying wondering eh?

No point indeed. It’s sat over there <— looking as if it’ll be writing cheques my limited skills will struggle to cash. I’ve added some air to the forks before capping my mechanical knowledge right there.

Tomorrow we go and ride. The day after that we go on holiday. I’ve been given strict instructions to arrive home with my shield or on it, after at least one incident where our vacation plans were slightly disrupted by the designated driver spending three days in hospital. Carol doesn’t need to bring this up, she’s just given me a ‘”we’re going without you” look, if you’re lucky we’ll txt you some pictures’ which seems entirely fair.

If, and it’s a big if, nothing goes wrong in the morning and Turkey doesn’t suddenly becomeuninhabitable, then the holy trinity of completing batshit project, riding my new bike and going on holiday with my family could come to pass. Got to be a better than evens chance.

What’s the worse that can happen?

* let’s be charitable and say ‘last week’ shall we?

** Possibly not all of that.

*** WikiAlex definition of dragged “Hey Fellas, I’m off the to the Pub, Credit Card behind the bar, WHOSE WITH ME?”

3 thoughts on “Blatant showing off

  1. I was really impressed with your periodic updates on the bike build and genuinely marvelled at the way your mechanical skills had obviously improved (read “appeared”) since the last time I saw you, a garage and a set of tools in the same time AND place. So it was not without some relief in the restoration of the natural balance of the Universe that I just read the above and realised that you had – thankfully for your own safety and that of anybody else placed in an arc roughly describing your direction of travel – decided to let someone else put it all together. Your chances of actually being on holiday with your family are now that much higher. Only your riding can let you down now…..

  2. Alex – nice job. Looking good with the bling white rims! Just finished my build, and in nervous about the first outdoor trip…… But what the hell!

    All I can say is that after Cy and Paul took such good care of us, and then the bits and bobs arrived…. Joy. Havent wanted the courier or the posty to arrive so much since I was a teenager.

    Photos coming V soon…… And we can have our beauty pageant!

    P

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