Derailed

Before any long vacation I typically do some spring cleaning and sell things for pocket money. It usually doesn't amount to that much, maybe enough for a meal or a T-shirt, but it's not really about the money. Vacation is simply motivation to get rid of stuff.

One time many years ago, right before Jennifer and I went to Mexico, I sat and ripped our entire music collection, which was around 300 CDs. We then sold the CDs to the now defunct Dimple Records back when CDs had value. We had quite a few pesos for fun money.

Most of the time, however, I sell bike parts. Being a lifelong cyclist, and a hoarder, meant I had a substantial collection of parts in The Archive. Until recently, The Archive was vast and deep, but when we moved to Folsom I didn't have the space to hoard anymore.

Last year before we went to Cabo I had a five dollar sale on Craigslist featuring derailleurs, shifters, cassettes, pedals, stems, handlebars and various other parts. Everything was in great shape and as you can imagine, business was good. The beauty of selling things cheap is it seems to limit interactions with weirdos, scammers and negotiators. Everyone showed up with cash and was happy with their near-new parts.

In a couple weeks we are again going to Cabo San Lucas, but this year The Archive is looking a little thin. What remains are the parts I will still use and really old crap with a very limited audience. Last year the front derailleurs weren't a huge seller for obvious reasons—the front derailleur has gone the way of rim brakes and friction shifting. I think I sold maybe three or four of them. I looked at what was left and decided a "grab bag" package deal was the way to go.

I listed 14 front derailleurs and various adapters and shims for 20 bucks. Even at that price it took almost a week before a got a bite.

It doesn't seem like all that long ago when I was using front derailleurs. I personally never had a real problem with them—on the trail or setting them up—but once I tried a modern single-ring system I knew I was never going back.

Now the house is completely free of front derailleurs, and a little bit of history is gone from The Archive forever.

Later.