Santaria

So I got fortunate and took on a temporary contract that will help me net about $2.5k for fun money. With that, I started looking at two possibilities, because the money isn't budgeted by the wife or kids.

I could buy a nice road bike, something like a Mr. Pink or a mountain bike. If I was going that route, I'd probably just buy a Salsa El Mar 2.

I guess my debate, in my head is, that N+1 is nice - but then I look over at my lovely Salsa Vaya 2. I start seeing things that I'd love to upgrade to finish her off because I'm putting anywhere from 200-250 miles a week on her. She's my commuter, my trainer, my date bike - and I don't see that changing. I get the idea that having a nice road bike would be awesome if I rode over 20+ constantly, but I'm a realist and know that I don't worry so much about speed, as I do about distance; my Vaya already offers me the ability to go as far as I want to, so it nullifies that. There aren't many places to mountain bike down here, so while it would be nice to have it in my stable, the mountain bike would still play second fiddle to my Vaya for the majority of my riding, unless I forced myself to add in miles strictly so that I could justify owning it.

So I'm thinking perhaps I could have some fun with Vaya and swap out the stock headset for the blue CK, replace the apex crank and BB for a CK BB and Rival crank; the biggest upgrade I can see is getting a set of White Industry hubs laced up to some Stan No Tub rims. With these ideas dancing in my head, I wondered about going tubeless even. I ride about 50 miles a week on gravel with the current CLEMENT 40c wheels that came stock, and I could see riding a lot more on gravel if I was running a little faster tire that was tubeless.

I'm using Crank Brothers low-end pedal and was looking at their Mallet (DH) because it would offer more contact for touring, etc.