Welcome To New Bikedom

Traveling to New Bikedom is like traveling to grandma’s for Thanksgiving. You know you’ll have a good time when you get there, but whether you’ll have to fly or drive, stay with family or in a nice hotel, pack a lunch or eat out, zip through the tollway or take the less expensive bypass are bridges needed to be crossed. A trip to New Bikedom is littered with budgetary garbage, strewn with agonizing compromise, and has too many exits to Rational Decisionburg. I look foward to passing through Rational Decisionburg as much as the oil tanks, rusty train tracks and broken pavement of Gary, Indiana. I wish New Bikedom was more like New Shoeville. While I don’t get the same rise out of New Shoeville, women tell me its first class all the way, leaving is nearly impossible and it’s so wonderful return trips are certain.

Whenever I go down the road to New Bikedom, I can barely make out the skyline. It looks like a new bike on the horizon, but the details are blurred in a fog of finances and guilt. Do you splurge on the steakhouse, or is it better to settle for a few bites of Ultegra? Will the trip be that much better perched on carbon rails, or is a seat in coach just fine? Even after the details are ironed out, travels to New Bikedom always turn out more expensive than expected. Like traffic jams in Chicago, when traveling to New Bikedom, you’ll most certainly forget about tax, pedals, cables, bar tape and that your blue bottle cages just won’t look right with the pearly white and red landscape of New Bikedom.

Then there’s the ungodly guilt. Like traveling to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving, you have to help with dishes before setting roots in the couch or face Mom's consequences. If you go to New Bikedom, you’ll most certainly have to put off traveling to other exotic locales such as Laptopville or Kayakistan. I hear they’re beautiful this time of year.