jimmyodonnell

I was clueless of these market forces when the pandemic hit. I just found myself suddenly with no work travel and no commute to office, working only from home I had more time to organize my riding schedule and figured it was a chance to spend more time on the bike. Honestly, I thought "it's a good time to support the local shop", I thought places would be closed and laying off their guys, etc etc . . . I didn't connect the dots on the demand side (more folks grabbing their bike just like I was) or on the supply side (with all the materials coming out of China and Taiwan). I had planned to buy bikes for my kids for the summer anyway, and in the course of evolving from browsing to shopping to buying I started to understand how acute these shortages really are.

So I identified a couple models that interested me, and not being the most patient guy to start with, I started getting a little more active in locating what I wanted. A couple discussions with the local shop enlightened me that a bunch of folks were ahead of me, the store was selling out their inventory and telling me they were unsure when they'd have new supply, etc. As I better understood how severely the supply lines were being impacted and how long it might take to catch up (late summer at best-case??) I decided to increase what I would spend to get the bikes while I still could. On a positive note, my kids now have cooler bikes than any of them deserve as they're not geeky about bikes like I am, and I've increased my road mileage substantially, launched into gravel riding after pondering it for months, and lost 27 pounds (and counting) since mid-March!