By Uncle Chad

Upgrade. n. (noun). To pay extra for something that you should have gotten with your original purchase. syn. sucker, chump, fred.

Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. That’s all I hear lately. I write this to you, (with a sweat ball dripping off my nose), as I wish to warn you what may come to your local bike shop. The issue is the marketing term “upgrade”. Like the suckers in the local Saturday ride who just follow some shmuck time-trialing away at the front instead of just letting him go, so have the marketers of almost every company followed this deceiving concept of the sales practices.

While house shopping, I asked why there are no ceiling lights in any rooms. The con-artist said that was an “upgrade”! Seems like a necessity to me. At the car showroom, I asked why there was no automatic in the lease I wanted. The shyster said that was an “upgrade”. And everyone knows the cell phone companies. Everything is an upgrade with them!! Even if you cancel your service, they probably call that an upgrade too! If they could only provide better service for the increase in costs, THAT would be an upgrade. The airlines started it, but what if the bike shops started doing it!

The great thing about cycling is that the more you pay, does not necessarily guarantee you better performance. (Unless you ride a Cervelo R4, with Campy Super Record and Carbon Fulcrum wheels, cause that SHOUDL make you better). Face it. We all like to buy nice bike stuff, because it makes us feel good. The marketers say we can get something more expensive and call it an upgrade. That also makes us chumps feel good. Then we feel so good, we take all our fancy stuff on a group ride, and get dropped like a stone, (or fine granite if you went with the upgrade)

For every action there is a reaction. For every reaction, there is a consequence. Now we don’t feel so good, go home, and order a large pizza, and feel worse. In the morning, you wake up all bloated, feel even worse, and then blame it on the cold weather. Next thing its Thursday, you feel even worse for not riding all week, and by Saturday, most of your fancy items are on Ebay, which of course, got you to upgraded your listing.

Till next ride
Uncle Chad