It's expensive to be cool

There’s need, and then there’s want.
I’m a good wanter.
But I don’t need much to make me happy.
Still, try explaining to your wife that you want to buy another bike, when you just spent a goodly amount of money on a new/used mountain bike and a small fortune to get it tuned up and tricked out to my specifications.
Even as you speak about turning your old Bridgestone MB-2 into a single-speed mountain bike (which won’t be all that cheap).
“Tell me why you need a bike other than your mountain bike,” she said. “I mean, I’m not saying you can’t have a new bike, but I just want to understand.”
I told her that on a mountain bike, you’re always in this aggressive stance; that if I want to ride, I have to put on my mountain biking shoes, since I have little clipless pedals. That with a cruiser bike, the handlebars reach back to you, that I can ride with sandals and head out of the garage each and every time the daughter felt like tooling around the neighborhood.
I’ve been driving my local bike shops nuts.
Test-riding bikes on my lunch break.
One shop, after selling like a dozen bikes last week (I wrote about cruiser bikes for a story; our local bike group, Redding Mountain Biking www.reddingmountainbiking.com started a Friday cruise), ordered 20 bikes from Electra www.electrabike.com.
The former owner of the shop was building a Deluxe on Wednesday.
“Dude, you have to ride this when I’m done,” he said. “It’s so sweet.”
Twenty-six-inch frame. Candy apple red paint job. Whitewall tires. Shimano’s new Nexus internal-hub three-speed gears.
It’s got cool, wrap-around fenders, which I feared wouldn’t fit in my roof rack.
“Let’s throw it up there, and see if it fits,” Debbie, the owner said.
It fit.
“Just leave it on up there,” I said.
My wife came home last night as I was adjusting the seat post .
“I guess you decided not to wait,” she said.
Then she got a look at this thing.
“Is it set for you?,” she asked. “Because I really want to ride it.”
It’s that cool.