I need something better than my brother…

A guy came into the shop earlier today looking for a mountain bike. He didn’t find what he was looking for here – and it’s unlikely he’ll ever find it here, but that’s another story. He said his brother just bought a new mountain bike and he needed to buy one now. Evidently, his brother spent “something like $6,000 on it.” I figured I’d help him and point him to someone who might be able to better serve him and asked “what brand did he buy” because folks tend to be brand loyal. “I’m not sure, but I need to get a better one.”

Wow, talk about some interesting family dynamics at play. He went on to mention that a few years ago he bought some “$4,000 tri bike, used it for a race” and it’s sat in his garage unused ever since. I asked him what brand it was thinking I could further help. He couldn’t recall what brand it was. How in the heck can you spend $4,000 on something and not know what it is? Well, I guess that might be possible if $4,000 to you is like a couple of bucks to an average joe like me.

In the end, I could tell he wasn’t really interested in my helping him find a place where he could buy such an expensive machine so I let his disinterest play out. I’m sure he probably didn’t want to hear my take on what fun it is to hit the trails on a fully rigid single speed mountain bike and that one does not need to have such an expensive machine to have fun. It wasn’t about fun for him. It was about besting his brother. I wonder what he would have done if his brother was into collecting Star Wars characters and just scored an ultra rare Boba Fett doll, er figurine…