Now I'm Committed

Well I went to the Boise Bike Swap last night.  I went and paid my $1 so I could mingle, look around at stuff I wasn't terribly interested in purchasing, drool over stuff I couldn't afford, maybe look for aero bars, & help Tyler inform people about bikes & things.  Blah blah blah.  I saw an entry-level time trial (TT) bike for $550, considered it somewhat seriously, and decided against it - I should race a few times before deciding to buy a race bike.

So I left with Tyler & came home (after several more trips past the bike to make sure no one else snapped it up) and told Kate about it, wanting and expecting to be reinforced for controlling my gearhead urges.  But Kate asked me all about the bike: "Would it fit you?  What color was it?  How much was it?  You know, I actually wouldn't be all that upset if you bought it.  Et cetera."  So instead of reinforcement for my self control, I got encouragement for my gearheadedness.  Sheesh.

So after Kate left for obedience practice this morning, I headed out back to the bike swap, paid another $1 to get back in, found it, fretted a little more, then bought the darned thing.  It's purple, and Kate will buy ANYTHING if it's purple so I thought I'd better not pass this up.  :)

So now I must enter a race.  Kate's given me the ultimatum of entering a race within one year or being forced to sell this bike at the next Boise Bike Swap.  But I want to be clear that this post got its title before I was handed that ultimatum.

It's a 58cm Trek Hilo SLR.  They were only made between 1999 and 2003, and that's about all I know about it.  Shimano 105 components across the board.  That top picture is the entire stable hanging together.  Notice the dog crate that's been in my way for a couple of weeks now.  It folds up quite nicely but that's not really necessary since I carved out some space in the garage to store all of Kate's crap.  That's what I carved it out for.  The bottom pic is a better view of the new bike (and look, that dog crate came in handy).  Notice it's missing pedals - that's to improve its aerodynamics.