Seller’s remorse

Things I have sold this week!

Now buyer’s remorse I’m mostly fine with. Familiar with certainty, as it demotes the full stop to a few days punctuated by shoddy rationale, desperate excuses, unquantifiable promises and the receipt of a shiny new thing.  That thing generally being whipped off the delivery lorry and secreted in the ShedofDreams.

Four years ago though we broke with the tedium of the ‘Alex new bike protocol’ to trade cash with a bonkers fella  keen to sell his wife’s car. To this day I’ve absolutely no idea if she was even peripherally involved with this transaction. No matter we left with an MX5 that’s given us no trouble, and not a little joy with every summer since.

The same could certainly be said for my Mojo3 and the Smuggler – the latter in a more muted manner. I’m aware that my constant tedious banging on that experiences beat things is not a lesson long lived in any purchasing history, but these particular things are at least a catalyst for fun times and happy memories.

Our little roadster didn’t do many miles but it certainly delivered many smiles. Entirely viceless and as eager to please as a Labrador. It played its role as commuter, pub bringer and occasional shopping cart horse without missing a beat. Sometimes I just found an excuse to go nowhere reasonably briskly, and thats not something the 20+ other cars I’ve owed ever had me do.

It’s been lent out to good mates, sat under inches of snow, ignored through months of rain, but still kept coming back to put a huge grin on my face. Like I say, it’s a motoring Labrador. The Mojo3 was a lot like that. To be fair it was a bit more of a problem child especially when conditions turned un-Californian.  But it was just so much damn fun, I could forgive it anything.

In my happy place, I remember an amazing trail in Spain last year. A ribbon or bedrock snaking around a handy mountain. Seven minutes of mountain biking perfection riding a bike apparently designed for just this trail and just this rider. Yeah it was shit load of cash but that run, that memory, that untempered joy of being alive may have a cost but it does not have a price.

I’ve left the smuggler to last, because – well – it was. It was a frame always on my short list, so it was a small step to actually owning it once a newer model came out. The discounted price was still in the ‘really? is that all you get? Surely it should come with a car as well’ bracket, but perception is never a precise science.

It didn’t disappoint dragging me through a grim winter after extensive dicking about on an autumn long on dry trails and short on mud and clag. Last winter tho – even after my eight week mandatory riding cessation – reminded me that US designed bikes tend not to acknowledge that at least an extra inch of room is required out back to propel bikes through soggy dirty long distanced from firm.

Some frustration followed including carrying a heavy bike like a tired child across shitty trails because the rear tyre was jammed in the chainstays.  This macro problem was not really the issue at hand tho. A wider view would reveal three full suspension bikes, two of which looked very similar once you squinted past the graphics.

Desperate times ladies and gentlemen.  Through the medium of various internet channels, the whole shebang was cleaned, photographed, described – mostly with a semblance of honesty – and then thrown to the masses. Most of whom confused market price with the barter system. No, right now I’m good for a MOT failed rust-heap, 200 partially burned pallets and a ton of hooky aggregate.

Still from this sow’s ear of a global marketplace, a silk purse of three individuals – at least partially steeped in adulthood – came close enough to the asking price for me to grudgingly hand over the items in the hope they’ll enjoy them as much as I did.

In the case of the MX5, that’s pretty much a given based on her smile as she gunned it out of our drive. Strangely that’s the one I’m struggling the most with. Bikes come and go with revolving door frequency, but moving the Mazda on was a wrench. A last drive reminded me how much I have loved to keep it.

It’s not getting driven tho. I’m away far too much, and selling it now releases a wad of cash to buy Jess and Aid a car. That in itself brings a whole new set of problems, many of which will involve me going postal at some fuckwit salesperson who has dangerously attributed me with a iota of patience for their fist-twitchy spiel.

It might be best if I let Carol take the lead on any negotiations. Until then I look outside at the drive and inside at the ShedofDreams, and cannot feel anything but we’ve been burgled by a thief who really knows his stuff.

Seller’s remorse. I don’t know if that’s even a thing. It is now.

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