My plan exactly! Can't wait until spring.

come on to google.

wut

Are you going to post it to addiction or are we just going to be led to believe you and coasting are having weird encounters

effing **** the guy mailed me back and said he bought a bike today. piss

When I sold my bike two different people committed and then bought something else. It was so irritating, since both of them asked me to wait until "payday."

It is frustrating. Mostly because I have a much nicer bike sitting in a garage with my name on it waiting to be ridden.

You got a new bike? Fun.

What did you get?

Selling bikes sucks, which is why I usually part them out.

wut

I found a used ACat mast for half of what I thought I was going to need to spend. This is good news for my very depleted schwag fund.

The Minister of Finance is out of town, but should be pleased with the unexpected savings..... unless the sum of the crap I have purchased for the new bike exceeds this paper windfall.

I prefer not to do this math.

can you do itemized taxes yet? someone said there was a delay a few weeks back.

We connected via Google. It seemed to work well, at least on my end.

An interesting conversation. We wondered if it's possible to voice chat with more people? It does add a dynamic not available with text communication.

could you tell what he looked like?

No, voice only. He does sound quite the Brit. I LOL'ed when his voice came booming out of the speakers.

It's an 07 Trek 1500 SLR w/ 105 group. A friends grandfather bought it new, rode it about 200 miles, then gave up and put it in his garage where it has sat ever since

Didn't insurance cut you a check for the mast?

yes, I got a bit over $5k for the Hall. The one I found is a Marstrom that was used by some big Swede to get 5th in NAs a few years ago (extra stiff and light goodness).

I think my insurance is tired of hearing about this boat though. I might use my repaired one for most of the bay stuff this summer.

$5k? Way to go insurance!

Cool. Congrats.

Go claim it . . . or steal it.

They have paid around that much 3 times in 4 years. I had no claims on my boat insurance before I started sailing Acats. I think I have recovered all or most of 20 years of premiums.

It did have a bit of a surreal quality to when coasting referred to "BikeForums" in his funny accent.

Otherwise, it was fascinating talking to someone who you've learned quite a bit about online but never connected with in the physical world. What to expect? He claims that I sound basically as he envisioned. I don't know what he based that on. For my part, I had no specific expectation on the voice of the real world coasting, but the tenor of the conversation didn't come as a surprise.

[Spoiler alert: be on the lookout for a picture of deer on Wednesday.]

The other thing that struck me was technology's rapid transformation of communication. Here (on the forum) we have become used to firing off messages instantaneously to people around the globe. But as recently as 20 years ago (which I'm old enough to remember) communicating with people on other continents, while possible, was a somewhat pricey encounter. Now all you need to do is download software, hook a microphone up to your computer, and chat away.

It's remarkable how the world has--in some ways--shrunk.

fixt