I used to think that the tired old cycling cliché of “N+1” was sort of silly and elitist, but I am coming around to the unintended wisdom of owning a couple of bikes, or more importantly, a few sets of parts. If you’ve been to the bike shop and tried to buy much these days you’ll know what I’m talking about – there is a worldwide shortage of all sorts of important things. Take this example:

A few months ago I was spending time in my LBS and overheard a guy asking about buying a SRAM cassette. The owner told him that he’d have to wait at least 9 weeks. I immediately started feeling like I did when the toilet paper ran out in 2020 and wanted to know if I could get my hands on a Campy cassette. No, all they could get was the gravel one – no use to me.

Since this time I’ve heard all kinds of stories of shortages of you-name-it: wheels, groupsets, whole bikes (especially e-bikes, it seems). I know this isn’t news and cars will be next, I guess, with the lack of semiconductors everywhere right now.

I’m just glad I’ve got two bikes, 3 or 4 extra cassettes, and enough toilet paper to get me through retirement.

Have you run up against this, dear reader?