Icame to the conclusion the other day that I am at the bottom of the cycling food chain. I was rooting around in my pile of touring gear, and came upon an old set of home made panniers that I had bought extremely used from Eric Ferioli. I’m sure that this was a big event transaction and that they were an absolute bargain, but I think in the many years I’d owned them I probably used them once, just enough to get them damp so that now they sported a rather fine coat of mildew and a particularly funky smell. I considered washing them, but wasn’t sure this was good thing for the washing machine, and the bag might disintegrate anyway when subjected to such extreme measures. I realized that what stuff he doesn’t make himself, Eric usually finds at the Wellesley dump. This is his good stuff. And I’m one of his best customers. Actually, I’m not since I only take the really unwanted stuff, and rarely do my purchases reach two digits. I’ve even got stuff that Eric GAVE me rather than take home after the Big Event.
I guess I’ve got two problems. One is that I absolutely cannot bear to part with anything that could be found remotely useful. My definition of useful encompasses quite a bit more than Mrs. D., for example. The second problem is that we have a big house. I had managed to fill up our old house in Malden with “good stuff” but it had reached saturation. Our big house in the suburbs is a whole new ball game. Besides the normal kitchen, living room, etc, we have rooms with no apparent purpose. What better use for them than to store even more “good stuff.” Besides the house itself, there’s all sorts of room under our porch which in addition to our canoe and gardening stuff, is a great place for my bike carcasses. Hey, it could be worse, at least I don’t have Chevy pickup trucks up on blocks in the front yard.
I do have to admit that some of this stuff I will probably never use. Take my latest bike carcass. I happened to be over at Peter White’s on trash day, and there was fine Trek touring frame that he was throwing out. I could not stand idly by and let this happen, so I gave it a good home. It does have a few fatal flaws, such as the fact that the fork can be made to move only with great difficulty, and it has the classic half step plus granny gearing that fell out of favor in the ’70s. That combined with the fact that I already have a perfectly good touring bike, with all the necessary moving parts, which I’ve used once in the last ten years says to me that it’s extremely unlikely the Trek will ever rise from its ashes. Still, it’s too good to throw out, so while there’s room under the porch it has a home.
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