Surprising

I was quite amazed to view my stats page and learn that I have readers from around the world.  Personally, I suspect this is due to Google misdirects since I don't find my blog all that interesting.

With this in mind, however, I decided not to post about our trip until we got back.

I know that I whine (a lot) about the sad state of my bike.  I also know that this story make cause you to doubt the sincerity of my desire to upgrade or repair my sad vintage Victoria.  I can assure you, that is NOT the case.

I had just about saved up to be able to buy a Gazelle Basic.  It took over a year.  Now I have gone and spent that money on my husband.  It isn't that I don't desperately want a new bicycle, it just that I love my husband more.  I saved up once.  I can do it again.

T's grandfather was a John Deere dealer.  When T was little he and his granpa would work on a 1960's JD garden tractor together.  Granpa would take him for rides on it.  They would fix it up together.  It is one of T's happiest memories of his granpa, who I suspect wasn't every sure what to do with a grandson who couldn't walk before his surgery at age 7 and can't walk well even after.  Men born in 1910 just were never taught skills to interact with a diverse population.  T and I call it the "able bodied male syndrome."  The whole "never complain, never explain" and certainly never admit you can't do anything mentality.

T's granpa died when T was in high school and T's dad inherited the little tractor.  It was parked in the backyard.  That was over 20 years ago.  It has sat there rusting to pieces ever since.

For the last ten or so years that T and I have been together we have tried to get T's dad to let us restore it, or at least move it into shelter to keep it from getting worse.  Dad keeps saying he'll get to it.

The thing is, it wasn't HIS granpa's tractor.  Dad has no emotion attachment to it.  Taking care of it is not a priority for Dad.  And in the mean time it is crumbling to dust.  When we first started talking about fixing it up, there was still a chance that we could.  Now..... there is barely anything left to save.

T is heartbroken.

I have been watching the classified ads daily for a vintage bike since shortly after E was born and about a couple of weeks ago I saw an ad for the same model of tractor for sale.  These tractors occasionally come up for sale in the US where there were lots of them, but there were not that many in Canada.   In the over a year (almost two) that I had been watching ads and saving my pennies this was the first one I saw that wasn't all tricked out and being sold as a museum piece for $5000+ .  It runs.  It needs work.  It costs more than a Gazelle Basic and by the time you factor in driving to go get it and a hotel because it is a 10 hour drive away, it is almost as much as a Gazelle Toer Populair.  But it may be our one chance to get one of these tractors and if we miss it, I don't think we will get another.

I couldn't even do a gift of the magi for him and just spend my bike money on it, I didn't have enough.

In a completely fool hardy move, we spent my bike money and his tax refund and just got the darn tractor.  It took a two day trip.  We took Dad's truck.  We are both exhausted.  He is so happy it make my heart swell to see it.

It will like be another couple of years to save up for the Gazelle, but I am going to stop whining about my grungy of bicycle now.  I made my choice.  I will live with it.   Gazelles will still be there to purchase in another two years.  The chance to buy a JD 110 garden tractor wouldn't have been.

I just really hope we don't have cause to regret it.  In the mean time, we have parked the car.  T is biking to work.  I am biking for everything.  We are saving the gas money for other things. like a better bike and the never ending project of replacing the windows on our house.

That's the thing that has me worried.  Money in a bank account that could eventually become a bike could also become windows if we had problems.  Money in a tractor (or a bike for that matter) is a lot harder to get at if something comes up.  We never buy frivolous things, certainly nothing this big.  We never go on vacation.  It feels weird to finally have something like that.  Especially since we still are pinching our pennies everywhere else.