I have a problem with inventory. Mostly I have no idea what I have and furthermore, where it is.
Take bike computers for instance. I go through bike computers like water. They have a pretty limited half life, and when I did in fact manage to roll one over (10,000+ miles), there was dancing in the streets. Lately, though, I've been lucky if I get into three digits before the thing craps out. So, whenever I see a sale, I buy a bunch. Unfortunately, with advancing age and failing memory, I often don't remember when I bought the last bunch. The other day I was rooting around in the garage and happened to take stock of my bike computers. I counted roughly ten computers, enough to outfit a small fleet. I decided I'd gone over the edge on bike computers. Though considering I only buy the cheapest models available, and only when they're on sale, maybe it won't take me too long to run through even this massive amount.
Then there are freewheels. For the benefit of the non-techo-geeks, there are two kinds of rear wheels, the freewheel kind, where the gears and the thing that holds them unscrew from the wheel, and cassette, where the cogs themselves come off and the rest stays behind. Anyway, the cassette has pretty much dominated the market, sort of like VHS and Betamax (remember that?). Not being exactly in the vanguard, I decided I needed to horde freewheels, against the day when they would be no longer available. So, I would raid the big event for these beauties, and whenever I heard of one that needed a good home, I was there. I even went so far as to buy two from someone on the internet. I was set. Unfortunately, when I totalled up the store of spare freewheels, I decided it would take me a very long time indeed to work down this inventory. The other sad fact is that as wheels wear out and get trashed, I have found the dreaded cassette wheel infiltrating my rolling stock, so I may eventually not have anywhere to put these fine freewheels.
Many years ago, I bought a couple of sets of aero brake levers, which were on sale. These are of course now obsolete, with the advent of STI and their ilk, but when I bought them, they had just hit the market, and I thought they were cool. Some of you are probably wondering what else is there besides aero brake levers. Well, it happens that round about the dawn of creation, the brake cables actually stuck straight up out of the brake levers, and had to be artfully coerced into turning back to meet the brakes. You can see examples of this in some of the great classic cycling videos, like "A Sunday in Hell." Or, if you're lucky enough to see me commuting to work, you can see a real live example. So, I've had these neat brake levers in their original boxes for what must be approaching a decade. I guess I was waiting for my other brake levers to wear out. If you think about it, that doesn't happen very often. Of course, now the reason I don't put them on is sheer laziness, it involves more work than fixing a flat. So these fine levers will probably be passed down to future generations without ever having been actually used.
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