Sometimes the urge to splash some cash on a new bike is almost irresistible. You may have convinced yourself it’s an essential purchase, rationalized the expenditure, prepared your excuses for your blissfully ignorant other half, figured out where it’ll fit in the shed and even spoken to that lovely salesman who understands you and your needs better than anyone – anyone – else.
But hold on there a second. Before you part with your hard-earned cash, it makes sense to ask yourself a few difficult questions. That argument you cooked up to persuade yourself it was an essential purchase…is it really quite as water-tight as you seem so happy to think it is? Will parting with that four-figure sum really address all the issues you’ve told yourself it will?
Let’s be honest here. The chances are, there’s nothing wrong with one of the bikes you’ve already got. You’re probably just a bit bored with them and have decided that you deserve a new one.
Goodness knows there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t get us wrong – we haven’t swapped sides and joined the ‘you paid how much to save 500 grams?!’ brigade. If you want to give in to the N+1 impulse, Simpson would never dream of standing in your way.
But if there’s a little part of you deep down inside that knows it’s actually a rather bad idea – that you’d spend as much time feeling guilty and regretful as you would enjoying your new bike – sometimes you can scratch that infuriating new-bike itch at a fraction of the cost by simply gussying up your existing bike. It’s truly amazing how efficacious it can be to fit new forks or handlebars or even just a new seat post. (Pro tip: try all three! We did!)
So for those times when N+1 = a whole lot of trouble, why not consider N+0.5?
