Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Can’t tax this

This train wreck of an economy is startin’ to get on my nerves. I mean, seriously, it’s an unmitigated disaster. It seems like anyone who hasn't been laid off has taken a pay cut, and the oil companies haven’t even started the annual legalized gang-rape of inflated summer gas prices, so money's gonna even tighter as soon as they remember everybody’s about to take a vacation. Oops, sorry, we're supposed to call it a staycation.

Just to make things even more fun, I just sent the IRS a check fat enough that it could have covered a truly sweet new bike, if Uncle Scam hadn’t taken it. (And if I didn’t have two more pressing—and dull—projects in the wings.)

Depressing news is hard to escape. Check out the line on this mountain bike rag that recently showed up in my mailbox: Bikes you can buy with your severance check.

Actually, there are plenty of dumber ways to blow the last paycheck you'll see for a while. At least the bike can carry you away from the world's bullshit—for a few hours at a time, anyway.

Last winter, I wrote on this blog about a guy who laughed at me for referring to one of my bikes a good “investment.” Well, when I compare the value of that bike and my 401k a year ago to the value of both investments today, there's no doubt about which one has paid the biggest return.

Who's laughin' now?

6 comments:

The Old Bag said...

Oh man, I'm with you on this. The bicycle = sanity these days.

Patrick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erik k said...

a bike = always a good investment well said, yah I just sent a check to the irs large enough to fund a sweet bike. But I'm happy to know that some of it will go towards paying the guys who responded when I got taken out by a smart car and may have saved my life. thank you uncle sam and the laguna beach fire dept and the police who showed up on the scene and ruled in my favor.

EscortRacer said...

Great post! Just picked up this mag as well! And with what I just sent the IRS, it would have bought one nice FAT bike.

Banger said...

It could be worse folks. I got a fat check FROM the IRS. One that should have purchased a nice new bike. Instead it went to the fuel oil company and various other bills. Truly disappointing.

Bujiatang said...

We took our check from the IRS and bought my wife a Long Haul Trucker, since her bottom bracket was cracking on her 29 year old Raleigh.

We ride our stuff into the ground and compared to the pass times of my cohort, eg XBox and the accompanying games/online subscriptions, biking =cheap.