I want to ride my bicycle. Simple?

Right so every day I ride my bike, normally to work, and then at weekends and things I also try and convince myself that I am a cyclist and go for longer rides. And then every now and again I convince my friend Mat to go on cycling trips with me, and we go to places like St Albans and Sunderland (I know, I know, it sounds glamourous).

I’ve had the same bike for about 2 years now, when I got it I hadn’t ridden a bike for about 5 years and no clue what I needed. I got this which has been fine and good and works just as you would expect a bike to. But now I have decided that I want something more shiny and exciting. The trouble is, having narrowed things down a little I am now at the stage I reach every time I want to buy something that costs more than about £30.

I have decided I will buy either this, this or this. They are all pretty much the same price and have pretty much the same ‘stuff’ on them at a similar level of ‘good-ness’.

Now whichever bike I choose I’m sure will be brilliant, and shiny, and exciting. But because of the level of effort I have put into researching these 3 bikes I will be left with a huge feeling of “hmmm, but what if one of the other bikes would’ve been better“. The sad thing is that these bikes are SO similar in price and setup that I’m having to try and convince myself that I have opinions about things like bike wheels and whether or not I care about carbon or alloy gear shifters (note: I don’t care about these things). Now in the course of my research I have found out there are lots of people who have very strong opinions about these things and I have been a bit rubbish and tried to trick myself into adopting some of their opinions. Tried and failed.

I get very annoyed at myself every time this happens, it usually follows this pattern

  • I decide I want a thing
  • I do lots of research into the thing and narrow it down to thing a and thing b (there will usually be very little difference between the two, non-essential things like colour)
  • I realise I can’t possibly just be a grown up and choose between the two very similar things and I then resort to THE INTERNET (because surely there is someone on the internet with a far more informed opinion about things than me)
  • I read lots and lots of reviews and forum discussions and articles about thing a and thing b (overall consensus “both quite good”)
  • I choose one of the things based on a completely arbitrary point such as ‘the manufacturers of chosen thing seem like they’d be nicer to small animals’
  • I am wracked with anguish about whether I’ve made the right choice…FOREVER

And this is why I suck at buying things.

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