(no subject)
I'm really getting old. Or, putting it that way, what I hate is how buying anything has more or less become a science of its own where you have to endlessly gather information about the range of products available, details & technicalities, before you can even come close to making a choice.
I want a new bike. A simple, ordinary bike for biking to work, etc., but also for occasional biking tours, i.e., none of those heavy 'city bikes' practically without gears. Shouldn't be that hard, but it really is. I travelled back and forth for more than four hours through Vienna today, starting with a bike store that had a great website with a lot of bikes that I'd consider, but-oops-they have none of them in the store, because it's already September, and they'll get the new models during winter. Is wanting to buy a new bike at the beginning of September really such an outrageous idea? I know I shouldn't have procrastinated this long, but still... They did, however, have a gazillion sport bikes, and I jokingly said to the sales guy that apparently these days you need two bikes, one for sport and one for every day mobility. He said (deadly serious) that he has seven. *sigh*
But! On the plus side, in the middle of my to-and-fro-ing I walked past a small KTM shop that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise and was already closed (*sigh* again), but judging from their website they do have the bike that seems to be the best choice for me. (And is actually the same model as my old one, only prettier. Me: boring. QED.) (This one, and if they really have it in grey/black I'm going to love them forever, because I hate the gender segregation through colour. Hate. Loathe, even. If they can't put you in pink any longer, they force all kinds of white/creme/pastels on you. Er. Where was I?)
Was buying a bike always this complicated?
(On a related note, since Vienna is getting a new, central train station, they recently tore down the old Südbahnhof. Now admittedly it was an ugly, rather squalid post-war building with no atmosphere to speak of that no one could reasonably miss, but it's been there the whole 38 years of my life, and when I walk up the Prinz-Eugen-Straße now, and I see nothing, I irrationally do miss it. OTOH, no one I've mentioned this to understands what I'm even talking about, so I guess this is me being weird after all...)
Old. Meh
I want a new bike. A simple, ordinary bike for biking to work, etc., but also for occasional biking tours, i.e., none of those heavy 'city bikes' practically without gears. Shouldn't be that hard, but it really is. I travelled back and forth for more than four hours through Vienna today, starting with a bike store that had a great website with a lot of bikes that I'd consider, but-oops-they have none of them in the store, because it's already September, and they'll get the new models during winter. Is wanting to buy a new bike at the beginning of September really such an outrageous idea? I know I shouldn't have procrastinated this long, but still... They did, however, have a gazillion sport bikes, and I jokingly said to the sales guy that apparently these days you need two bikes, one for sport and one for every day mobility. He said (deadly serious) that he has seven. *sigh*
But! On the plus side, in the middle of my to-and-fro-ing I walked past a small KTM shop that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise and was already closed (*sigh* again), but judging from their website they do have the bike that seems to be the best choice for me. (And is actually the same model as my old one, only prettier. Me: boring. QED.) (This one, and if they really have it in grey/black I'm going to love them forever, because I hate the gender segregation through colour. Hate. Loathe, even. If they can't put you in pink any longer, they force all kinds of white/creme/pastels on you. Er. Where was I?)
Was buying a bike always this complicated?
(On a related note, since Vienna is getting a new, central train station, they recently tore down the old Südbahnhof. Now admittedly it was an ugly, rather squalid post-war building with no atmosphere to speak of that no one could reasonably miss, but it's been there the whole 38 years of my life, and when I walk up the Prinz-Eugen-Straße now, and I see nothing, I irrationally do miss it. OTOH, no one I've mentioned this to understands what I'm even talking about, so I guess this is me being weird after all...)
Old. Meh