tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, begger man, thief

Not all of us are born into wealth, not all of us achieve good levels of wealth throughout our lives and that means that not all of us are able to choose whatever bicycle that we want.
To my mind its a good thing that I have to find a way to get the best bike that my relatively humble bank balance will accommodate. Hey I'm not about to say I dont want more money but I aint no breadfan either. Theres things I wont do for money, work for example.

So I have been on the case with finding a replacement for the Litespeed full susser that I killed. I did ask Litespeed to help me but their big corporate faceless response was non-human and told me that I would have to pay the price of at least two limbs to get a replacement rear subframe. It seems that riding it on rough terrain was irresponsible and I got what I deserved.
They are American.

So I found a discounted frame by a company called Viper from Belgium. Now one of my good mates is a Belgian and he's is an all round good egg, married a gorgeous Mexican chick and wrestles elephants for a living so I figured if a nation can turn out a bloke like that, their bikes must be good.

As always I will write some kind of poor prose to inform and educate of the outcome of this purchase but as ever I remain optimistic and full of hope. In some ways it is good to be back in Europe after another disappointing sojourn into the U.S of A.