Surprise! Backordered.

Over the summer I bought a bike from a guy who works with my dad.  It has clipless pedals and I didn’t have shoes for it so I went to a few bike stores to figure out my sizing in a few brands (and to figure out how European sizing worked).  I wanted to get the most for my money so I checked out nashbar and performancebike, two cycling supply sites for deals on shoes.  After checking cleat compatability and comparing various offerings, I finally found a pretty good shoe for roughly $100 off the usual price in my size.  I ordered the shoes and the cleats I needed for my pedals, excited to go for a ride without as much foot-bouncing-on-pedals action.

The cleats arrived that week, but the shoes didn’t.  Strange.  They hadn’t been listed as backordered on the site.  I called Performancebike a few days later and they told me that the shoes had been surprise-backordered.  How does that happen?  Is it some sort of warehouse prank where they hide the stock or ship it to another warehouse and then say: “Surprise!  Everything’s backordered!”

The long-awaited bike shoes.

After another week and a half of Performance not having the shoes and USPS having janky tracking and possibly slow driving, I finally got my shoes.  Right when I was moving back to campus, which coincides precisely with me having much less time for rides.  I still want to try to fit them in though, so right now my bike is shoved into my tiny dorm room.  I need to move it back and forth between my fridge and closet when I want to get into one of them.

My bike blocking my fridge.