Packaged in a protective environment.

There has just been too many things to do. Fortunately, the weather is still crap, so it's not as if i'm out riding all the time. Precious little infact....should make the SSUK'10 pretty interesting....no legs and a big beer belly to haul around....ah well. It will be a innocuous return to the ssuk scene after a 2 year hiatus.

Blah.

So instead, i've decided to try and clear out some of the crap that has built up in my life. I'm not talking about emotional baggage either. It would be fair to say i'm a hoarder. The suspicious would have worked that out by now, i've no doubt, but hoarding has its uses. Need a Paul v brake that will let a 700c wheel work in a 26" frame? yep got that. An old Brodie brake booster for your just-so-retro-project-timebomb? yep. You get the picture. A few years ago i was particularly impressed after a conversation with Mr Furry Knuckle, who had written of his 'imaginary house fires'. The idea is: imagine a fire is consuming your home. You have, say, 15 minutes to throw stuff out the windows/drag stuff out the garage, but you have to chose the few things you want to keep. All the rest is burned up. What could you truly live without? Of course i was deeply suspicious that anyone could actually *do* that.

I was impressed because Mr Furry Knuckle left me in no doubt he did do it and infact found the process a genuinely cathartic experience. A weight lifted from the shoulders. It also probably made it a hell of a lot easier to find stuff instead of wading through seas of old bike crap, sinking ever deeper into a miasma of strained, cnc'd aluminium parts that should never have seen the light of day.

So, i decided i needed to try and sell some parts. The thing that stops you, unless you need to pay off some fines or have some sort of Dickensian dislike of the third sin, is that a) you spent a lot of money on things in the first place, little of which you will recoup (unless you liked coloured Ringle parts or old Yetis but had a germanic resistance to actually using them) and b) you might need them some day.

Piffle! it is time to move stuff on. without further a do i moved all compromising substances out of the front room. Armed only with a powerful tequila and orange juice, i set to work cleaning and packaging parts into old padded envelopes, in a protective atmosphere of pure heavy metal and under the watchful gaze of Persephone the cat.

Within a short burst of time i have made numerous items ready to live out a new and functional life. And you know what? It feels damn good.