35 Year Shopping Trip

It is a phrase deserving of contempt and scorn but how many times do we use “First World Problem” to describe something that takes up a lot of our time, can be frustrating but is at face value utterly trivial and pointless. 

At the time of encountering such a thing it may assume a significance and importance beyond which we cannot see or get on with our lives. We may feel hopeless, alone and abandoned by those whom we expect to be able to solve our problem. 

I felt these emotions just the other day when I made, for me, the momentous decision to purchase a new bicycle. 

I have managed perfectly well with the same racing bike for 32 years although I should say that back in 1982 it did cost £1000 for which I have to thank my Grandfather who bequeathed this sum to me. 

Mine was not a frivolous act or one of youthful impulse but a very well considered and researched acquisition on the criteria of hand built customisation, ie made to measure, the best quality components and in a beautiful bright red enamelled finish. 

I raced competitively on that bike for some years and with a periodic changing of components it was in weekly use from the Spring to mid autumn as recently as this year as my sole road bike. 

Any thoughts whatsoever on gracefully retiring what was the perfect two wheeled machine for me was not easy. I suppose it was a combination of a few, yet unfounded concerns over reliability of the key structural parts of the bike but mostly, I admit from my own lack of fitness, typically age related for my 53 years which meant that I could not pedal it as ferociously as I had been used to or at least it felt that way.

The frame geometry and materials were faultless for the 1980’s with lightweight tubing and above all its putting together by a master craftsman bike builder. I could sit on it comfortably for hours out on some of those carefree rides which saw me disappear from family and commitments for the duration. I hesitate to estimate the accumulated mileage covered over the last three and a half decades but it would be a very large number indeed. 

I did not feel it necessary to look into getting another or a replacement bike nor covet the latest models that increasingly passed and left me behind on the local roads. The use of the word "increasingly" can be interpreted in two ways, the first being the massive upsurge in the numbers of cyclists generally and the other my declining average speed. 

I felt mean and disloyal to my trusted racer on the rare occasions that I found myself browsing the glossy product sections of a bicycle magazines or on line reviews. 

As with all consumer products .where there is a proven demand, there is an enhanced price structure and taking the decision, reluctantly to do the same sort of market research as I had in 1982 I was amazed and dumbfounded at the asking prices for what seemed like fairly ordinary, off the shelf road bikes.  Cycling is now quite a hipster pastime and evidently there is a lot of disposable income available to indulge in it. 

Schemes to encourage cycling, in particular “ride to work “ and similar have allowed participants to stretch their original, unsubsidised budgets and I have often chatted to other riders sporting some very expensive bikes who themselves have admitted that owning such a pedigree was never in their expectations. 

There was only one decision to be made after my reccy of the product ranges and that was to stick to my late 20th century £1000 price range. 

This is where, I am embarrassed to say, that I encountered those despicable and trivial first world problems. Part carbon versus aluminium or steel for the frame. Shimano or Campagnolo components. Lightweight or more sensible wheels for demanding local road surfaces. Mounted or concealed cables. Two or three water bottle cage mounts. Single colour or multiple enamelled finish. Classic brand or new kid on the block. Conventional or disc brakes. I was spared any agonising over electronic gear changers and full carbon frames by my pre-set budget restriction. 

It was a case of whittling down the different elements in a too-ing and fro-ing from magazine page to computer screen and even a quick sneak visit to a local bike stockist in case I had overlooked anything. 

Fashion and style play an important role in all things cycling and last years bike models are quickly confined to the clearance stock sales which is where I found myself looking in what I could sense was the final decision making stage. At last I was closing in on the bike that fitted all of my discerning criteria. I pressed buy and filled in the payment details.

I could really have saved myself time and angst over the whole thing as my choice, well it was the same make as would have been my alternative purchase back in my impressionable youth. A First World Problem in its most obscene definition.