I'll never go there again.

I bought my bike from them a few years ago. I live around the corner from them. It's convenient to go there. I'm friendly with the manager, Rex.

Over the years I put up with little annoyances. It seems as though no one who works there is ever happy to be there. I found that after picking up my bike from their shop I would have to double-check the work to make sure nothing was skipped (often) or, worse, broken (once). Whatever piece of clothing I wanted, they never had my size in stock. Etc.

A few Saturdays ago, the day before I rode a century, I stopped in to buy some tubes. The conversation with the sales guy went like this:

He said, "I don't know if we have those in stock. That's an unusual size."

I said, "I bought the bike here."

"It's an unusual size. I don't know if we have them."

Pause.

"Can you check?"

"Oh. Yeah."

He came back with two tubes which he said would fit. I wanted advice about my brakes. I had just changed the pads, and even though I knew the pads were gaped and toed correctly, I couldn't make the front brake stop squealing. I told him I was riding a century in the morning, that I wanted everything to be as close to ship-shape as possible and asked him if he had any ideas.

He said, "You have to know what you are doing."

I said, "Let's assume I don't know what I am doing, which is why I'm asking your advice."

He said, "It can be a lot of things."

"Just name a couple of those things. Maybe we'll hit on something I didn't think of."

"Could you leave the bike here for a few days?"

Pause.

"Never mind."

Finally, I needed some CO2 cartridges for my Blackburn inflator. For whatever reason, I've had a hard time finding cartridges that fit the thing. The standard cartridges always seem off by a few millimeters and don't work. I explained this to him. I pulled an old cartridge out of it that did work and showed him how the ones he had in stock were just a hair too long.

He said, "I don't know. Maybe you should take this to the place where you bought it."

I had bought it there. I pointed to the identical model hanging on the display rack over his shoulder. He took it down and read from the packaging, "Only use with genuine Blackburn cartridges."

I said, "Do you have any genuine Blackburn cartridges?"

He didn't.

Now, none of these things were the last straw. All of them were what I had come to expect of the place. The last straw was that my bill came to $xx.01. I didn't have a penny or any change at all. I was in my bike clothes.

He gave me 99 cents in change.

Now, I'm sure by the end of our conversation I was doing a bad job of hiding the contempt in my voice. I'm sure he thought to himself, "This guy is a dick, so I'm gonna give him a half-pound of change that he has to dump into his bike jersey back pocket. Ha."

Thing is, he was doing me a favor. Free at last, free at last. From now on, I'll go to Renaissance for high-end work and for a day-to-day neighborhood place go to Champion on 104 and Amsterdam.