The Magic Number

A contractor came to my house the other day to deliver my new cast iron Kohler sink (beautiful sink, by the way). As he stood at my doorway and peered past me into my “family room” (I use that term loosely), he caught a glimpse of my bike sitting on my trainer. My bike is the only thing in the room aside from a cat tree and a couple of plants.

“You ride bikes?”
The smart ass in me wanted to say, “No, why do you ask?” But, since this guy didn’t know me and might be offended by my witty sarcasm, I answered with, “Yeah, I love it.”

“Yeah, I have a friend that rides…he actually races.”
“Yeah? Me, too.”

“He has the whole get up – the clothes, the shoes, everything.”
“Really? Me, too.”

“Yeah, he has one of those like $5000 bikes. It’s REALLY nice. It’s REALLY light. I could pick it up with one finger.”
Again, the sarcastic ass in me wants to go to town on this guy. I love that he wants to try and have a conversation about biking. I really do. But, why is it that as soon as someone finds out I ride bikes, all of a sudden they all have friends with “one of those $5000 bikes.” Not $3000 or $6000. $5000 seems to be the magic price at which I should be impressed.

What’s funnier to me is that the contractor was saying this as he was staring at my bike, which he obviously had no clue fell right into that magic $5000 category. Nice bikes are not a rarity and five grand is not a surprising amount for a bike. I’m more impressed by what people do ON the bike rather than how much debt they went into to purchase it.