Don't let them sneak across the Delaware (George Washington style) into New Jersey.

Save the beer and pizza for when you make them help you move.

Tapas and White Claws might do for a low-key wedding reception

If you want a cheap wedding, plan for a 2:00 wedding and a short reception after (out by 4:00). Serve those dainty little sandwiches and iced tea. No booze. Have a small wedding cake. No dancing. Mid-afternoon wedding means no meal to serve.

That's how the Baptists around here do it.

I am tempted to tell the story of my sister's big blowout wedding but I think I already did, I will spare everyone the details.

I paid for one of those a few years ago. Triple the Texas average.

I'd have thought a down payment on a house would be more useful to a young couple than a huge wedding, but we didn't get either. Mrs. GJ and I were already 30 when we got married and her parents weren't well to do, plus nearly all our relatives lived 3000 miles away.

I saw the perfect wedding venue a couple days ago, during a gravel ride. They were holding it out on this big open spot, on the ridge, with a view of the surrounding mountains. It's out on the national forest, where they normally stage logging equipment, so it didn't cost anything to rent. I wouldn't even have known it's a wedding had they not had signs posted, I really dug the informal style of it.

My sister was given the offer of a down payment on a house and a very modest wedding, or a big blowout wedding. She chose the wedding.

Daughter and her husband bought a house that cost more than mine before they got married.

It's election day here in California. There are SIXTY ONE candidates for Governor, 50 of whom are running as a joke, or a publicity stunt, or for some other reason than wanting to be Governor. Because they use a random method to order the names on the ballot, you can't even look alphabetically for your preference, if you have one. You gotta keep looking till you find them.

As a low social needs introvert married to a social introvert, the idea of us being the center of attention in a big room with hundreds of people gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, so, there's that.

Wife number two and I got married in a meadow filled with wildflowers next to a lake on Mt Rainier. The cost was gasoline to get there and the reception at a restaurant after. The current and longstanding Mrs RSbob, 21 years, were married in an orchard next to a lake in the San Juan Islands. We hosted dinner for our parents and son after.

I would pay for them to elope.

Learned fiber and cable splicing back in the day. Preferred fiber, but never had any big jobs.

Frame warranty is 6 years on a Aeroad. That’s about the lifespan of a racing bike in competition. I wouldn’t have purchased it without a good warranty.

The local repair guy is ex-military and could repair or refab anything - any material, including paint finish. Airplanes, metallic, carbon, otherwise, you know it. Also restores cars. He is an expert craftsman so I trust his opinion, but yeah this is all second hand so take it FWIW. I'm sure that the actual incidence of issues with Canyon is objectively very low, just maybe a bit higher relative to many other brands. In his experience. YMMV and all that.

Years ago I had damage to the top tube of my older TCR. I brought it to him at track one night (his son was a nat champ). He takes one look at it, presses hard on it with his thumb, the tells me it doesn't need repairing, but that he'd do it anyway if I wanted it. He asked if I wanted paint matching, I said no don't bother. The next week he returns it to me, repaired, with paint matching PERFECTLY. Like you can't even tell where the repair was at all, or distinguish the paint job from the rest of the aged frame. Amazing. I handed him a hundred bucks cash and built it back up. Solid.

Liz and I were ready to spend 5 figures of our own cash on our wedding. That was planned for May 2020. We lost some in deposits but most vendors were understanding. "Acts of god" and all that. Instead, we did the courthouse thing and then Napa wine tasting for a couple of days, just the two of us. Fast forward a couple years, and throw in a company acquisition and liquidation of our shares (which doubled our cash position), and then we owned a house. I think everything turned out just fine.

61 candidates and not one to get excited about. Maybe they should have a primary before the primary.

What timeframe was this? Big weddings were a thing in the olden days?
You don't do much besides stand stationary.
So far.

One of my sisters has been married 5 times, (at last count, I haven't seen her in years). Another sis was married twice and the last was married 3 or 4 times. My parents never had money to pay for such shenanigans.
My 3 brothers and I have 5 weddings between us. 2 are still married to their first wives but older brother remarried after he lost his first wife to the big C. He has since passed on.

When I got married to the ex, my father was already gone but my mom and all 6 siblings showed up. My wife and I paid for everything out of our meager earnings. It was nice. Ceremony in the forest under pine trees, reception at the HOA clubhouse which has a bar, and 100 guests.

There used to be a welder/fabricator guy near here. He built dune buggies and could weld anything.

When the transmission failed in my Maico motorcycle it enlarged a hole in the case where a bearing was pressed. A new set of cases was several hundred and I was poor. It's magnesium, too, so most welders don't want anything to do with it. This guy ran little beads in that hole which was about the diameter of a nickel and about 5/8" deep. Amazing work! A friend found a machinist to bore it out to a pressed fit for the bearing and I threw it back together.

I had the same guy weld up a hole in an aluminum a/c line for a customers' car and an aluminum evaporator for my truck. Gotta love finding a craftsman like that.

This was approximately 1987. I believe the cost was about 35K in old dollars, which is about 100K now. There were 300 people, there was a big band (like 8 or 9 musicians), I recall decadent things like caviar at the appetizer tables, and over the top everything. My parents paid for it. They had offered a modest wedding and down payment for a house, but she took the big wedding. The marriage did not last, obv.

My wife and I got married in 1991. We had 50 people, splurged on the food/catering and thrifty with everything else (shocking, I know!). We asked guests to take pics and check "2 prints" for developing and share one set with us rather than have a photographer. I set up my stereo at the event and had a friend make a party tape. It was a lot of fun and the whole cost to us in 1991 dollars was about 3.5K. My parents did not spend a dime, nor did her family.

Question for the Afflicted brain trust.

If a mesh/woven base layer under a summer jersey is supposed to keep you cooler, why don’t we see them on pro riders in hot weather, when climbing? A corn-spiracy by big mesh?

I have found that it doesn't keep me cooler. A well made lightweight mesh type jersey alone is cooler. Sweat dissipates faster.

Good question. I never use a base layer in the heat, so IDK.

The whole concept makes no sense to me. The reason for wearing a mesh undergarment in the cold is to have a layer of warmer air next to your skin, rather than the colder next layer. But in warm weather you want the wicking/evaporating layer touching your body. You don't see pros wearing them because they don't want to be any hotter on hot days.

Cynics, of course, will say nobody's paying them to wear base layers.