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.

New Knipex snips at £32 in a local, just reopened shop.  As I stood in line 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 came on holiday during our partnership.
For the last year they were spreading brake cables, rather than cutting them.  So I stood in line buying the new snips, it dawned on me that 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.