Box of Shit.

A conversation started on Facebook thanks to this image:

The dialogue made me realize that I have been hoarding all manner of useless bits and baubles.  Like dozens of rotor bolts.  Scads of tires with mebbe five rides left in them.  A plethora of steel and alloy chain ring bolts.  All over my bike room and apparently beyond.

Sunday, it was time to play closet Tetris and put all the Christmas crap back in its hole in the junk room.  A junk room that has been overwhelmed with piles of stuff and things from the bedroom killed by the falling tree (which we still aren't back in yet).

While placing and replacing and juxtaposing the various boxes and containers, I tripped over this box:

The long lost bits and pieces that aren't even worthy of being stored in my bike room.  Since it was raining and I'd decided to not stuff my injured toe (which is really become more of a foot thing) into a riding shoe for a couple days, I had time to really decide if these object need clung to any longer.

A brake booster. Kids, there was a time when our cantilever posted frames flexed under the awesome power of our v-brakes, robbing us of potential rim squeezage.  This "solved" that problem.  So did disc brakes.

So many pieces and parts of old cantilever brakes that I don't know where they came from.  I almost doubt that you could come up with a complete bike's worth of brakes out of these various bits.

I found this bottom bracket in a zip-loc bag that was so greasy that I had to dump out the contents to see what was inside.  Once again, where did this thing come from?

A Flickstand.  Don't know what it is?  Click here.  Don't care to know?  Move on.  I have.

Goose neck mounted shifters.  Brand NOS.  Where?  What?  How?

These parts were in one bag all together.  Chain, a couple cassette spacers, a single speed cog, a few chain ring bolts, one ODI lock-on grip, an eleven tooth cog with the teeth ground off.  This is a mystery.  It will remain unsolved.

Tiny bits of cable, housing, bolts, pieces of a seatpost but no post, reflector brackets, STI cable stops, cassette packaging material.

This is not the box of a healthy, well-adjusted mind.

I did realize that I was going through my past lives on January 1st, which I feared might make me a typical "human"... but it was raining.  And I promised to be nice to my foot... since I just went to the mountains the day before and beat the piss outta it.  And all my bikes were already clean.  And I didn't want to do something stupid, like wash my car.

So typical or not, it was a good thing to do.

But it did cross my mind that The Pie and I's dream to greatly downsize our lives when we become DINKs will be a bit of a challenge.  I've got enough pint glasses and coffee mugs to fill a cupboard... yet I reuse my OG 6 Hours of Warrior Creek mug every single day.  But what to do with the other ones?

Meh.

I wondered if it would be possible to "purge" three items for every single one purchased in the future (non-consumables only to be considered).  Mebbe five?

It would still take forever.  Eeeeesh.

In 1989, I was able to fit all my belongings into my Oldsmobile Delta 88, including my fish, custom tiny mattress, and my bike.  One trip.  I was never closer to "van life" than I was right then.

I will never be that close again.