I’ve never sold a bike that I’ve purchased. Ever.

Does this cause problems in a one-bedroom apartment? Absolutely. I’ve had more than one woman in my life threaten physical violence if she woke up one morning and stretched her feet to find cold steel in the bed with us.

So what if I have to move my road bikes like a weird, extra-angular version of Tetris in order to get to my cookbooks? It just helps kill two birds with one stone - fine-tuning my spatial skills while attempting to hone my cooking ones.

My bikes are clean, well-groomed, and housebroken. They don’t howl at the neighbors, hump the poodles at the park, and they certainly don’t require much more than Teflon lube and air to keep them going.

Do you see how readily I give these mute machines personalities? It really does come from spending all of my time working on bicycles, day after day. I think of them as my angular, carbon-and-metal children. They’re not just a means of conveyance, they’re my means of expression, physical and artistic. They’re part of my identity. If you know me well, you can see me in every bike I own.

(Sometimes literally. I’m pretty sure there’s still a chunk of my shin in the handlebars of my MTB.)

I’m about to break that perfect no-sale record on Saturday. I’m wrestling with it, despite knowing that it’s the best decision. It not only allows me to reach the pepper better, but it gets me to Houston to see a friend who is desperately in need of some quality seeing.

I know all this, but it’s still hard. I’ll have to keep my hands shoved in my pockets as the buyer leaves. It’ll only confuse the hell out of him if I start waving goodbye.