Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

I've always loved that line.  It’s fairly commonly used today in different circumstances but as far as I know, it came from the movie Animal House back in the 70’s.  In the scene, Kevin Bacon is pledging to the fraternity and gets spanked with a paddle to which he responds “Thank you sir, may I have another?”  I never thought I would be using it in the context of buying a new triathlon bike but that’s exactly what happened this weekend.

As a little background, I have been doing spin classes like a mad man the last few weeks and have been using my brother’s old bike for riding on the open road.  Sue has been riding with me on occasion using an old mountain bike with road tires.  I think it’s fair to say nobody has yet to mistake us for members of the USA Cycling Team.

Despite being January, we’ve already had several days here in North Carolina over 65 and sunny so I would far prefer to be outside riding than in the gym.  Looking through the 35 goals, it is obvious that without a good bike I’m going to be hurting as 7 of the 35 involve biking and I’m noticeably lacking in equipment for this category.  So, Saturday rolled around and I went to get fitted for a new Triathlon bike. 

After going through the fitting process, here were some of my key takeaways:

1.   You can spend anywhere from about $300 to $18.2 Billion on a new bike

2.   No matter how nice the bike is, if it doesn’t fit you perfectly, you’re screwed.

3.   I’m pretty sure I could ride a bike 3000 miles across the country in the time it takes to get fitted properly.

4.   Once you’ve bought the bike, you’re really just getting started.  You still need about 15,432 other accessories to go with it.

5.   If you don’t negotiate hard, you’re going to badly overpay.

I had set my sights on a Cervelo P3 coming into the process.  Why?  Well, from watching the Ironman special a few weeks ago it seemed like a lot of the studs had them and this is what it says on the Cervelo website:  With more wins in triathlons and time trials than any other bicycle in history, the P3 remains the benchmark for the entire industry, and the most copied Triathlon/TT bicycle in history.

Sounds good to me, let’s do it.  I was fit on a 58cm frame and the bike fitter put me through a series of different biking positions to make sure all the angles were perfect.  We ended up deciding the Cervelo P2 was a better geometry (that’s bike speak for fit) for me than the P3.  Once settled on this, we started with all the upgrades and accessories.  To give you a sense of that process, it went something like this:

1.   If you want more speed, you should upgrade the wheels:  Makes sense…I chose a Zipp 404 Wheelset

2.   You need tires to go on the new wheels:  Check…2 more tires…add it to the tab

3.   In case of a flat, you need to be able to repair it quickly:  Got it…add tire lever, spare tube, and CO2 cartridge for quick inflation during a race

4.   Sometimes the CO2 cartridge doesn’t work so you should have a pump also:  Fine, throw a small hand pump on the pile.

5.   How are you going to store all the flat tire repair equipment?:  Good question, apparently I need to buy a bracket and pouch for that stuff.

6.   You need a way to pedal:  I mean, why would a bike come with pedals?:  Ok, let’s do the Shimano carbon pedals.

7.   You need biking shoes and cleats to click into the pedals.  Ok, let’s do it.

8.   My aero bars felt a little too close together:  Alrighty, let’s buy an extension to separate them slightly.

9.   How are you going to drink water on the ride?  Wouldn’t it be nice to drink right out of the aero position without reaching for the water bottle?:  Ok, add aero drinking system to the bike.

10. What happens if you’re on a longer ride and need more water, you should have more places for extra water:  Fine, throw on extra brackets for water bottles.

11. You need the water bottles to go in the water bottle brackets:  Good point…done.

12. Won’t you want to know what your MPH and RPM are on the road?:  Sure, might as well add a little wireless computer that tells me that.

I could go on but I’ll spare you the rest.  Needless to say, I got to the register and the word “cheap” didn’t exactly come to mind.  So, after about 4 hours in the store I told him I would need to think about it.  At that point, I thought there was a 63% chance he was either going to kill me or kill himself.  Never fear though, I had a plan.

My plan was to use Sue in a good cop/bad cop routine.  Even though Sue was very supportive of me purchasing the bike, I thought I could get a much better deal.  I walked out of the store and called the sales guy later and threw Sue under the bus by saying she really wanted me to buy off Ebay or Craigslist and can’t see the value in getting a bike this nice.  I told the sales guy that I see the value but she just can’t get it and she wears the pants.  Obviously, the dude should have known at this point I was bluffing as I’m clearly the type of guy who wears the pants…I think we can all agree on that.  Well, at least I can agree with myself on that.  Anyway, to my pleasant surprise the price started to drop.  In the store, I had been offered 5% off.  With this strategy I moved him to 10% off of the bike and wheels and 15% off everything else.  This was as low as he could go he told me.  I said it was still too much and asked if there were any other options for getting a better deal.

He finally decided to mention to me that Cervelo is running a special right now that if I buy a 2^nd Cervelo bike, it will be $2000 more off.  Huh?  Seems a little late in the process to throw out that zinger but that’s what happened.  I asked about all the caveats and there really weren’t many…I even got him to agree to giving me the same 10% off list price and then subtracting the $2000 from that number.

With all of this, I went from thinking I wasn’t going to get the bike to saying “Thank you sir, may I have another?”  Sue desperately needed a bike so the deal was perfect for us.  She came in for her fitting and went through the same lengthy process.  Finally, after a long weekend, we ended up buying 2 Ceverlo Tri bikes and couldn’t be happier.  Never again will some chump pass me on a better bike with me thinking the only reason he was going so faster was he paid for the speed.  Now I’m the chump that did that!  Take a look at this freaking monster of a bike:

 

It’s now up to me to train and get the best use out of it.  After all, my first half Ironman is less than 4 months away and I need to finish in under 6 hours to check that one off the list.

And…speaking of the list, 25 pullups in a row is on there and I made that attempt today.  I’ll save all the background here and just cut to the chase.  Here is how it went:

30!!  Pretty solid.  The form may have been a little questionable at times but I think it was legit overall.  Feel free to rip me in the comments if you disagree but for now I’m counting it as complete.  That’s 2 goals down and 33 remaining…sweet!

Keep on Truckin.

Schmeis