My Garage is not safe for the decent stuff, my new years project is building a vertical rack for the mud room between the house and garage so I can hang the riders by their front wheels. At the moment though, my SuperCourse lives against my desk in my bedroom.

I lived like that 'til I got married!

Now I have only 2 bike items actually IN the house.

1) In the master bedroom is my trademark 3 colored neon Ritchey road frame/fork from so early in Tom's career that no one knows exactly when it was built. It has what is refered to as the "Park Bench" chain stay bridge. Essentially a piece of sheet steel bend into a U shape and beautifully brazed in as a chainstay bridge. It was about the 3rd frame I painted once I had found Deltron as a viable paint.
And includes the original StickFace Bicycle Badge.

2) A framed copy of the PG&E Lets Green This City poster for San Francisco, featuring yours truly, riding my Challenge Hurricane recumbent. The big bold text reads; Green is this guy!
I have it in the downstairs bathroom. I like it because even though I drive a car frequently, I do like to think that I'm being diligently "green" in all other aspects of my life.
A family of 5 and we usually have one 13 gallon bag of garbage every week.
The recycling bin is always full of the stuff my kids can't recycle for money. And we compost everything from the kitchen.

Anything ELSE bike related is in my "Man Room"!

aka, the 2 car garage!

Which of course, will NOT fit ANY cars, the way I have it set up.

But the wife's good with that, and so am I.

Only glitch is my bike tree. A huge hedge outside the garage lovingly filled with old bike junk that hasn't made it to the dump yet.
Apparently Scooper mentioned it to MHendriks. So when MHendriks stopped by to pick a couple of mixtes, he was amused that Scooper was right, I DO have a tree that grows bikes in my yard!
Hopefully the mixtes he picked were ripe!

Why stop? I collect bicycles ( seven, and counting ), postage stamps ( seventy volumes of albums, and counting ), first editions of novelists I like, and other books ( 3000 books in my personal library and counting) and IBM Thinkpads ( nine at last count ). I'll probably have to rent another apartment soon to house all this!

The first step, of course, is:

"We admitted that we were powerless over collecting and that our lives had become unmanageable ( but we didn't care anyway )"

My philosophy is to enjoy all these things, but not be too obsessed with possessing them forever -- I think I could let most of this stuff go, if necessary. There will always be other things to collect. I think it is the activity of collecting (and the research and study and work that go with it ) that is critical. The objects themselves are simply a stimulus to the activity.

Hi, my name is Durward Kirby and I have BAS.

I was discussing this with USAZorro and told him how many bikes I had and how my wife was trying to be patient with me. I expected an astonished response to the level of my addiction and instead was called a "rookie" as he then told me the size of his stable. I tried to tell my wife how my problem was a minor one compared to his and I don't think she felt better as she could see the writing on the wall.

Stringbreaker, what is it with people who collect bikes, I have found that they also collect old camera's and guitars. I colect "old" guitars, I have one that is estimated to be around 150 to 200 years old, it is a spanish guitar with ebony tuining pegs ( like a violin) with catgut frets.

Cheers,

I had too many bikes when I was in a 1 bedroom apartment. About 10.

I then moved to a house, and even though I haven't even finished unpacking, I have bought 4 more bikes...

I have a room in the basement that I will be using as a bike shop, and so far, I have 16 wheels I need to figure out what to do with (some are pending builds) and a floor to ceiling shelf full of parts. I also have several bins of parts yet to move to the basement from the attached garage and office.

I have eyed my 2 car detached garage for hanging storage, but unfortunately the beams are only 2x4's so I don't think there is enough strength to hold enough bikes to make it worthwhile.

So, now I have about 14 bikes, and I still look through several "local" Craigslist sites every day, and also stop by thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales whenever I pass them (which is often).

Good to see that there's another rare book collector here. I've limited myself to three bikes (just for the moment) and about 3,000 books as well. I've lately been considering selling some of my books to bankroll the bike obsession.

I just picked up some nice 60/70s sculpture/art books from a library sale last week and will try and flip them and possibly pick up an old Cinelli in their place.

Whenever I think about my OCD and get concerned....I remind myself of this fellow and feel less anxious.

https://www.royaldevice.com/custom.htm

So far, my collections of bikes, computers, watches, tools, and flashlights are well constrained budget-wise. It's more of a space issue. I'm suddenly up to 10 bike frames, 5 pairs of road wheels, and 5 pairs of MTB wheels. It's hard to ignore a bargain. :-\

But some OCD-ers in other arenas can blow quite outrageous amounts of $ on stuff. It's all fine if one can afford it. It's sad to see when they actually can't and loved ones suffer and they go into financial hardship and ruin.

I can't speak for all BAS folks, but I feel so far it's a relatively small price to pay for the enjoyment. Mostly a cost of time and space.
As my fiance said, if it's not negatively impacting one's life, and it makes you happy, by all means.
There are a lot more expensive hobbies, and therapy is just as expensive.

Having kids didn't stop me, that was just an excuse to start pulling kids bikes out of the dumpster. there's a lot of those.
I'm up to 18 plus two for each kid, then my wife has two that she knows about and some others I haven't told her she has (keeps them off my list).

Ok, so if i had the chance, I'd trade all 18 of my junk bikes for just 5 or 6 really nice ones.
did I mention that I'm driving to boston tomorrow to get a couple more?

My stuff is mostly junk, but I've been at it so long, the number of decent bikes is starting to go up. I definitely had a real problem for a while, and collected everything I could get, regardless --- and I mean REGARDLESS -- of quality. Now I'm getting a little more refined, and I get things that fill a niche in my collection (or I could imagine filling a niche, after various mods) or are just too good a deal to pass up.

Let's see (quick visit downstairs and to the garage to count) ...

CRAP.

Despite recent vigorous thinning, donation of frames and complete bikes to the bike coop, and recycling a whole pickup full of junk, I still have about 45 bikes or framesets and 60-ish wheels or wheelsets.

In there, about six or so that are nice road bikes. Also includes two recumbent trikes and a recumbent Short Wheelbase bike -- actually, a classic, a very old RANS V-Rex.

Still lots of junk, much of which I'll recycle or donate to the local bike coop this Spring and Summer.

For a while, I set a new rule that if I ever acquired an additional item, I would get rid of two. I figured if I did that until I started having to make hard choices, I would know when I'd reached the core of my collection.

Hmm. I should set a goal to be down to, say, 25 max by the end of the summer. Ooh, my wife would like that. I bet she'd let me start sleeping in the bed again.

Eric

Heh. I know what you mean. A lot of my bikes are placeholders or tokens of the thing that I'd really like. For example, I'm restoring a very small sized Humber that I bought just because I liked it. I could never ride it. But I'd love to find one like that in my size some day (preferably also with 1953 SA AW with alloy shell). So I'm slowly cleaning it up, hoping one day to swap it out for something I could ride.

Hmm. On second thought, that wasn't really consistent with the theme you broached. Yeah, anyway, I'd trade about thirty of my crappies out for about five sweet ones. (a big-ass all black roadster with a triple sprung brooks saddle and bolt-upright riding position, a 1960s lightweight road bike with sweet old-school campy, one of those dreamy light-blue fillet-brazed Schwinn Super Sports in near-mint condition (it it were mint, I'd be afraid to ride it), an amazing touring bike with 10,000 braze-ons and racks and lots of brown leather and waxed canvas bags, ... mmm, and an Easy Racers Gold Rush Replica, and probably a couple of modern things, too, plus I'd keep a few of the things I have that I really like).

If I had those, they could back a truck up to my garage and take the 40 other things away.

But I'd feel sad.

Better to slowly acquire and build and trade and learn to appreciate the things you yearn for.

Oh, did I mention that I'd put my dibs on a 1971 Raleigh 3 spd tonight at the bike coop? And that I've put in a hopeful offer to buy something else special from a bike forums member? I just can't stop.

Eric

All true,

I've slowly started looking for slightly better bikes to play with, I blew a good chunk of my tax return on a couple of steel frames. But now there are Vitus 172 & 980, and Reynolds 531 and 501 frames keeping the Carbolite 103 and Raleigh 23-30 frames company in the basement.

I know, however, that as soon as flea market season starts up, I will be dragging home every oddball, crazy threaded, wrong sized gas-piper I run across.

Another bibliophile here! Why do we all have around 3,000 volumes? Hmmm.

Another one of my odd aspects--I read World War II stuff...

East Hill

I have...a couple thousand books, but I don't think I'm a collector. More worried about the information then the edition or condition.

Nothing strange about reading about WW2, it was a pivotal event in human history!
Once you read about the R.A.F. holding the line in the summer of 1940, or the fleet of Cleveland-Cliffs ore boats who braved the ice of the upper great lakes months before the shipping season normally opened in early 1941. It completely redefines heroism.

East Hill-

Why is there a little bird next to your name and your red star?. Is that a resurrection symbol, or is there maybe just a funny little blob of chocolate pudding on my monitor?

Eric

Wes-

What do you read?

E

If you ride a 22" C-T, PM me. I have an opaque blue SS frame in very decent shape. I got my 24" today thanks to schleven, so I may as well pass on the one that doesn't fit me.,,,,BD

History. and paperback spy novels. but most of the tonnage is stuff like T.R.'s History of the War of 1812, Every one of Winston Churchills books I can find, stuff like that. Also, old books on farming, building construction, railroads, ect.

The eagle is Igor, the eagle which proudly guarded Sheldon Brown's helmet!

After Sheldon's death, a lot of members asked if there was a way to honour Mr. Brown. Internet Brands and Brian came up with the idea of an icon, Igor, which denotes that the member has donated to charity in Sheldon Brown's memory.

The money donated does not go through Internet Brand's hands at all. If you've contributed to a charity, either through time, or money, and would like an Igor, just send an e-mail to Brian letting him know that you have done so, and he will put an Igor next to your name.

These are the two charities preferred by Sheldon's family:

https://sheldonbrown.com/harris/sheldonmemorial.html

but you can donate to just about any cause. The only requirement is, as Brian put it, "Unselfish giving is the criteria we chose. Describes the Sheldon most of us knew."

East Hill

True, but it's considered a bit odd for a woman!

However, my father was a pilot in the RAF, which is where I gained my interest. I also have a lot of relatives who were either POWs, or at Dunkirk.

East Hill

Lol, we must be distant cousins, because no one in my family would consider it odd at all. My Mom was a history major.

No one in my family thinks it's odd, but I sure do get some odd looks from the folks at work. Of course, they think I'm a bit weird because I don't watch American Idol .

East Hill

I work in public safety here in Chicago (used to work for Chicago Police Department and currently work Chicago Emergency Management) and the sterotypes ring true.

You can imagine how the crusty old coppers and firemen look at me when they find out that I collect old books and old bikes. Or, when they find out that I ride my bike to work whenever I'm not on call (and taking home a response vehicle). I don't consider myself particularly liberal but they look at me as if I must be a molotov cocktail throwing anarchist.

Books have ideas, that's what makes them dangerous.

East Hill