bicycle time

it is indeed time for bicycles; they've been flowing in and out of my life like lake waves this month. first, a huge mountain bike very fancy, though not new; then 3-speed simple Raleighs and a little red Sekine. A friend of mine was driving around St Paul to used bike shops looking, for me, for the 3 speed Raleigh of my youth (actually a couple of them or their clones) to give to my kids, so they could fly like little birds rather than lumbering along on the knobby tires of their Target kid-type bicycles. While doing this he stopped at a coffee shop and encountered a young man in racked with pain in his shoulder, which he'd totally blown out going headfirst over the handlebars of his mountain bike (cadaver tendons, steel rods, etc.) and which was still giving him trouble. This guy was trying to unload the bike that had done this to him, and, being a wealthy kid (in passing mentioned his alma mater expensive private school in river neighborhood) didn't much care what he got for it. So friend, struck with insane desire at bright red ProFlex full suspension carbon swing arm etc etc, bought it. But it's way large, literally, that's the size frame it is, "way large," and so now he needs to sell it.

And then shopping it around one discovers the weird niche nature of certain things--that high end things, like certain styles of human being, when they get a couple years on them, even if they're in most excellent shape, become not the utterly prestige-defined things they once were, and hence dwindle in value. As the bike man said, the extra 4 millimeters in flex in the new carbon fiber is impossible to live without, for the truly gearmad.

So, as the bike guy says, one must tap the forthellofit market. Is there anyone out there that would love, for itself alone, for its truly amazing physical characteristics devoid of the cachet of being this years' model, this big beautiful red bike? For the hell of it?

Let me know.