Background: My main ride since January of last year has been a 1986 Miyata 210 touring bike. Steel frame, 27-inch wheels, cantilever posts, blah blah blah. Overall, it's a great bike, but the canti posts are short and positioned unusually close to the rim, which has given me a devil of a time in finding brakes that are both powerful enough and fit the bike. Because it's a tight fit, the LBS guy and I reluctantly concluded that, when my rims wear out, it may not be possible to replace them with a set of 700C wheels.

Fast forward to today. I'm at my parents' house for the week, and my bike is living in the shed with their hybrids. On an impulse, I decided to see if 700C wheels really couldn't be made to fit. I took the front wheel off of my bike and installed the front wheel from one of the hybrids, wearing a 700x35C tire. Mirable dictu, it fit! The brakes would require a bit of adjustment to prevent them from rubbing on the tire sidewall, but they literally just needed to be angled down a couple of mm. It might be necessary to use bigger tires in order for this to work, but that doesn't bother me - I like 35C tires just fine, thank you!

Anyway, the point of all this is that fate has a cruel sense of humor. There's simply no way that I can really justify new wheels... but Harris Cyclery has 36 spoke road and touring wheelsets available for $100 and $120, respectively. It's an incredible deal, but I'm spending a bucket on parts for a homebuilt lighting system and new fenders, and saving up for a possible new bike this summer - I can't spend $120 on wheels that I don't REALLY need, plus tires and a new cassette. But there they are... calling to me . What do I do in this situation? What do YOU do in this situation? Help me resist the siren song of new wheels!