My wife is a patient and caring woman. I bring home bikes and parts constantly, so over time she takes comfort in knowing that the next time won’t be the last time. Sometimes I also come back bleeding and with broken bikes so she can play nurse. To pay her back for her endless indulgence of my pathological obsession with bikes, I take her to exotic locations (like Leadville, CO) and give her tons of alone time while I try to ride my bike faster than other people on bikes for hours and hours. I make us delicious meals, like porridge for example. I schedule vacations and special occasions together with riding bikes (two birds, one stone).
The secret to happiness is give and take. That’s why she’s so happy.
24 Likes
Lol
Love it but… wouldn’t work for me. I recently changed bar tape and my wife asked if I just got a new bike.
3 Likes
Now you know what you need to do: peel the bar tape off of your old bike, get a new bike and put your old bar tape on! 
Oh, and then tell your wife that your bar tape is all crummy, and you’d like to replace it.
3 Likes
Damn, you must have a shit job!
Bicycling is cheap, I present to you Craigslist!
Use your phone for a GPS and you’re good to go! I could smash many a KOM on the bike pictured.
Although, I’d probably budget another $100 to freshen it up and put some heavily discounted Michelin Power Comp or Pro4 tires on it for maximum speed.
Either way, I could easily score everything I need to cycle for under $400 in total.
“Cycling is cheap” is just a big lie. Maybe it’s been told to someone’s mrs? 
Cycling is cheap, until you start racing. Or doing more than 50 miles per week. Or in general taking it more seriously.
I stand by that cycling can be cheap if you want it to. Marketing has everyone convinced that we need the latest and greatest. The thing is, we don’t. A used road bike is perfectly sufficient to take things seriously. Not to mention, if you’re doing big miles that the components on the road bike I pictured are going to be exceedingly cheap to replace.
4 Likes
An aluminum bike with a 105 groupset will give you a large share of the performance of a top-of-the-range bike, yes. Once you ride a bike frequently as in several thousand km per year, you spend a few hundred $ in maintenance and consumables. For many repairs you need specialist tools, which aren’t all expensive, but they can easily add up to a few hundred dollars (especially a torque wrench will take a bite out of your budget). Or you give it into service and pay that way. If you ride a beater which you can just run into the ground, this may not be necessary. But if you want a dependable bike with which you can do sports, it definitely is.
You don’t need to spend $$$$ on a bike to race or to hang with fast guys, but cycling is ultimately an equipment-centric sport.
2 Likes
Blockquote
Either way, I could easily score everything I need to cycle for under $400 in total.
This man has his speech rehearsed perfectly! Read and learn
2 Likes
Shhhhhhh.
Thanks to everyone for all the good insights!!
Justifying time and $ essentially on myself is something I’ve been struggling with for a while, and have recently gotten more nervous about as my PM is on the fritz, making TR workouts no longer nearly as effective. Now I have some good insights from y’all on to how to approach the topic that a new PM would make my training more worthwhile and effective, thus making me happier. You’d think I’d have learned it by now that communication, communication and communication really does help solve most problems.
Thanks again!
The joke I make at the bike shop is that the bike I want isn’t $3200, it’s actually $6400, because my marriage requires balance.
6 Likes
classic
1 Like
I’m also divorced/unmarried. My online dating profiles include pics of me kitted out on the bike. So if any woman should decide to show interest, she’ll be going into a relationship knowing well what my priorities are. And if she can’t respect that cycling is very important to me, she isn’t relationship material anyway, and out the door she goes.
(And as yet, women showing interest is not a phenomenon I’ve had to deal with. 
)
9 Likes
Funny that…
That’s amazing…
To be fair, she’s normally pushing me to blow more than I can justify! But the reality is we both pay into the bills, and are left with what we’ve left to spend on ourselves. Time is the thing that is a compromise/ negotiation/ give and take.
1 Like
Anyone who thinks bikes are expensive has never had a sailboat. And anyone who thinks a sailboat is expensive has never raced one.
8 Likes
Truth.
1 Like
Bikes? Boats? Try kids …
6 Likes