An Educated Consumer is Our Best Customer

Having signed up last week to do a five day bike tour in Israel next Fall, I just decided to purchase a new bike. I had been feeling guilty about spending so much money on a bike but my yaitzer harah (evil inclination) was wearing me down, convincing me that I had to have it for many reasons, yada, yada, yada.

Then I had a fortuitous discussion with a bike freak ("Riding Man") who is also doing the tour. Riding Man, who has done the tour in Israel all four times, rides 6,000 miles a year and has the same bike as Lance Armstrong (retail: around $5,000). As luck would have it, Riding Man gave me two very solid reasons why I needed a new bike. First, my current bike only has a double crank and he highly recommends a triple crank for the amount of climbing that we will be doing. Second, my gear shifters are on the downtube rather than in the brake lever. On the hilly terrain of the tour, I will likely be shifting constantly. Having to reach down to the downtube every few seconds is just not practical. Understand?

Add to that the fact the the new bikes are much lighter and there's nothing more to talk about.

Riding Man turned me on to the Trek 1500 or the Giant OCR 1 and I'm looking into them.

The only problem with getting a new bike is that I will no longer have a good excuse when the Amazon Men drop me in Central Park.