United shops at last?

My husband and I have had different bike shops now for a number of years. I
take my bike into mine, where I bought it, and he takes his, where he bought
it, to his.

The yellow tandem (AKA, The School Bus) had some long-standing maintainance
and repair needs. We bought both our tandems used, so there's no loyality to
either place for those two bikes. Yesterday, first I called my shop to see
if they could do the work. The weather's unusually fine, everyone's out
there riding, and they were going crazy, and they said they'd call back. So
then I called the other shop. The guy who answered the phone, after I talked
for a bit, said, "is this Claire?" I was surprised he could identify me when
I was not talking about my bike, but another one he hadn't seen before. But
yeah, it was Chris, one of my favorite mechanics from my shop, who has now
made the jump to my husband's.

Well, gee, if Chris is over at my husband's shop -- yeah, I still love Jim,
who just rebuilt my wheel -- but even so, it'd make things easier if we were
just in one place. So, we turned in The School Bus for a new cassette and
chain, and I got those Terry Butterflies (see Saddle question thread), and
we got new tires all around for the tandems (see that follow-up post to the
pre-teen/tandem team ride), and a couple of other items, you know how it
goes, and before we walked out of there, we had spent $330.

If my husband and I actually can take our bikes to the same bike shop, it'll
feel like the day when we merged our record collections.


--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

Claire wrote:
...I called the other shop. The guy who answered the phone, after I
talked
for a bit, said, "is this Claire?" ...

Scarrrry!

Someone recognized my voice recently. She'd only seen/heard me at
Civil War re-enactments (where I call dances) and this was in a
downtown copy shop during a snowstorm (needless to say I was wearing
different attire). Makes you jump when it happens.

--Karen M.