Last week, I bid on an eBay auction for the first time in over a year. Two days later, the auction was canceled due to an error in the listing.
I have never been so happy about a canceled auction in my life.
I had bid on a used bicycle. I’m going to need one come August—Chico is a biking town, much like Davis, and I don’t own a car. I don’t know what possessed me to bid on a bike, but I blame Make. Minutes before my random searching on eBay, I had watched Bre build a single speed bike in a video podcast that left much to my imagination.
Granted, I did not want to build a single speed bike—I only wanted to own one. The best I can do is fill bike tires with air, so building a bike is really out of the question. But the idea of a single speed bike intrigues me. I haven’t ridden a single speed since I was eleven, and I got a mountain bike for Christmas.
By the way—I don’t actually know how to ride a mountain bike. Or a ten speed. Or pretty much anything with gears. No one ever taught me how which gear to ride on and how to fix them when they break. And my bike never shifted gears correctly, so I never bothered. So, while I can ride a bike, I’m sure real bikers would point out that I’m not riding it correctly.
After getting high from Bre’s excitement, I trolled eBay for bikes, and found one on a four day auction that was at a starting bid of $0.95. I thought to myself “I can afford that.†I even convinced myself that the $80 for shipping wasn’t too much. I placed a max bid of $20, and figured that $100 wasn’t a bad investment on a single speed bike that was guaranteed to work. Except that it didn’t come with petals. But I could deal with that.
Three hours later, though, as I was walking home from the bus stop, I started to have second thoughts. Really? Getting a bike shipped in from Houston was a good plan? Surely I could scour yardsales for a cheap bike before I left for Chico.
So, I didn’t want to win the auction anymore. My max bid was so low that I thought I’d have nothing to worry about. Someone was going to outbid me. Bikes must sell for more than $20, even with expensive shipping. After two days, the only other bids had pushed me to my max. On the third day, I was really afraid I was going to win.
And then eBay sent me the email that made my day. The auction was canceled, and I was saved from my own idiocy. It was quite possibly the best email I had gotten all week (and please, let’s not contemplate how sad that makes my inbox).
– “The Art of Losing,” The Art of Losing: American Hi-Fi
Gears are your friends, especially in hilly places like California. Single speeds are really trendy right now, because of the whole indy messenger scene. Fixed gears are okay, if all you do is hang out in front of the local coffee shop. If you’re actually interested in riding up and down hill every day, get yourself a road bike.
Scott, thanks for the advice.
Chico is a relatively flat town, and so hills really aren’t an issue. What is an issue, though, is the number of bikes that get stolen, and so for me, a qualifier is a cheap bike, not necessarily the best.
Although, if I could afford to be picky, of course I’d get a bike with gears. A gear-less bike to me just screams “hey, my parent’s won’t buy me a new bike.”
And there’s an indy messenger scene? I obviously need to get out more.