This is a post for bike nerds.
I went to pick up my mail this evening and nearly snapped my neck because my eyes popped so hard when I saw the cover of the new issue of Bicycling, the 2008 Buyer's Guide issue. Seriously. Click that shit. It's beautiful.
Not only is the cover striking, but the bike grabbed my attention. It's the 2008 Look 586. I got a chance to ride it last Fall, and immediately started saving my pennies to buy one. It's the perfect tri-bike. You can order it with a reversible seat-post that sits in a timetrial/triathlon geometry in one direction, and a standard roadie setup in the other. It's crazy. Plus it's just a beautiful bike. Gorgeous to look at. And it's more of a lightweight then, er, let's go with a freshman in high school at his first kegger after donating blood earlier in the afternoon and having naught but, say, noodles to eat. Whatever, it's light. It's carbon. It's got a one-piece carbon fiber monobloc fork and it gives me hope. Hope, for a better tomorrow.
Oh, and it has an MSRP of $7,000. Just to throw that out there.
Now, I don't pay retail. And neither should you. Everything can be had for cheaper than that. But even with a good deal on it, this was still going to be a damn expensive bike. And I was prepared for that. This is, to me at least, the epitome of a credit card expense. I've got great credit (borne of an atrocity of a credit rating that would set cities on fire when I was in my 20s that led to a now-obsessive/compulsive relationship with my credit score). My credit card charges me about the same interest rate my car loan does, and I'll spend more time on the bike than in my car.
And yet then, last week, or was it two weeks ago? I forget. But recently, I spied an Oh-Seven Look 595 on sale at Pacific Bicycle here in San Francisco. It was a ridiculously good price, the kind of price that any man with a heroin hankering for carbon fiber and Dura Ace components would find impossible to pass by. You'd have to be a preacher, and I'm not a man of the cloth. And so, despite my long-standing bikeenvy for a 586, I found myself earlier today gingerly wiping grease spots off of the fork of my beautiful 595.
And then minutes later, I'm confronted with the bike I had long considered buying, on the cover of a magazine. Stunning. Lauded. The greatest Goddamned bike in the world. At least this year.
So do I have buyer's remorse? Did I look at it in much the same way Britney Spears does, when she, mired in the depths of her need for a taco and some Red Bull and love (can't you see all she really wants is love! nothing more than love!), leads the paparazzi on a chase through the dark stinking streets of suburban Los Angeles only to arrive at the QuickTrip to be confronted with Justin Timberlake's smiling face on the cover of some magazine (that doesn't, for the record, carry the word "Breakdown" prominently in bold yellow Arial somewhere next to his photo) and have to face the horrible revelation that you're lost? Lost in the fucking biggest city (so to speak) in the history of the world? You're in the dark in this city of light? God help me? Is that it? Is that how I felt? Is that how I feel?
No. No not at all. That's ridiculous.
I mean, look at my fucking bicycle. Just look at it. 
Now that's a fucking bicycle.
Oh: And is it just me, or are those SpeedPlay pedals on that fancy new Look bike on the cover of Bicycling?
