Where Is That Stuff?

"Furry Lewis" stripped down for MTB'ing

When the cycling season changes and we head into winter, I often find myself in the predicament of finding all my cycling gear.  Have you ever found yourself in a rush to head out the door but you can't find your long fingered biking gloves?  Or "Where is that helmet cover?"

What complicates things is having five bikes, two different sets of panniers, three pairs of cycling shorts, three bike tools, two compressed air inflaters, two pairs of short fingered bike gloves, one neck tube, one balaclava and...

Add to that the fact that most of the bikes are configured differently.  Two mountain bikes (the MOAB and Furry Lewis) have pannier racks, but the road bike (Mississippi 'Red) and the folding bike (Foldey Hawn) don't have any kind of rack.  The 1963 Triumph and the tandem both have a rack on the back but the panniers don't fit them.

So it easy to understand how I can be stumbling around the house in the morning dark trying to find my helmet cover or my winter mitts to put over my cycling gloves.  I will have already looked at the outside temperature station to determine what I need to wear and if it is cold enough, I will begin my search for missing items.

I tell myself that when I get home from work, first thing I'll do is organize my stuff for the morrow but then I discover that my daughter and her boyfriend are staying for dinner and nothing has been started.  My own hunger from my commute will propel me into the kitchen where I'll be grabbing vegetables and trying to find the rice since our guests are vegetarians. While I'm cooking, I tell myself that after supper I'll gather everything together but after dinner Roy calls and we spend the rest of the evening planning next year's bicycle camping trip and then...