I bought my first 10-speed bicycle, a Sears Free Spirit, on 9 August 1981—nearly 26 years ago. I paid $125 for it. That was a lot of money at the time. Today, by contrast, I paid $314 for a tune-up on my Douglas TI titanium bicycle. My friends will never stay with me now.

Addendum: Here is the pertinent part of my journal entry for 9 August 1981 (the bracketed material was added 20 years after the fact, i.e., on 9 August 2001):

The bike I purchased this afternoon cost $125, with state sales tax. It was on sale, marked down from the regular price of $150. It is blue, has twenty-seven inch tires, and rides well. I like it. With any luck, it will survive my “Tour de Michigan.” [I rode this bike until 27 July 1984, when I traded it in for a “better” bike at a Tucson bike shop. During this period of nearly three years, I pedaled it 2,252.1 miles. In twenty years of bicycling (counting that first thirty-mile ride), I have pedaled 51,105.5 miles. That’s the equivalent of 2.05 times around the earth at the equator. Counting leap years (1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000), 7,305 days have elapsed, so I have ridden an aver­age of 6.99 miles per day, 48.97 miles per week, and 2,555.2 miles per year for twenty years. I hope I have at least another twenty years abike. It has been fun.]

To show how badly [sic; should be “bad”] I wanted the bike today, it took almost all of my money to buy it. To get enough money for gas during the week, I cashed in $2.70 worth of bottles and rolled up fifty pennies.

Hilarious!