HARDWARE store life lessons

Today, I lay in bed and shuddered at the thought of going out in the rain, but thankfully, yesterday I bought new cable snips.

My new Knipex snips were to be purchased for the sum of £32 in a local shop.  As I stood in line waiting to pay, I though of the last pair I bought, about a year after I started my first bike shop in 1995. Those cable snips had battled thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of cable shortening, plug attachment, mud guard stay editing and there was a substantial missing middle section to the snip blade when I cut through an electrical wire that was still live in a bike shed assembly. They had been lost, found and packed on holiday during our partnership.
For the last year they were spreading brake cables, rather than cutting them. It took two cuts not one for outer cable and an effort to sharpen them with a file was the death nail.  So here I stood in line, patiently waiting my turn to pay for the new snips, when ‘IT’ dawned on me. The previous cable cutters had lasted me 26 years. 26 years.
There is a good chance these new knipex would be the last cable cutters I would buy in my life. It was overwhelming! I paid and walked out stunned. These mortality moments often occur at funerals or marriages. Big life events.  This had blindsided me outside a hardware store.

Over the next day the shock dissipates like a peloton on a Col and the positive afteraffect is to reaffirm my desire to squeeze as much out of life as possible.
Lying in bed on a Saturday morning while your mates fight a headwind together, means no stories are created. That wet Saturday morning is lost in the calendar and no diary entry penned.

I went out and got soaked with friends new and old and it was fantastic.
I realise at some point on nearly every ride I get the buzz of what a simply amazing sport we do.  Hard, loaded with self-imposed suffering, but FULL of joy.

Today it was just better because I overcame my own weakness and said feck the forecast. I have a good rain jacket and new snips and a story to create.

There is enough hours in a day.