Sure, it's great for finding oddball stuff here and there or getting a deal on last year's whatever, but it brings about a torture no other shopping experience can.
Let me back up a bit...
If you don't know me, I'm short. Not "kinda short for a guy" short, but straight up short. 5'3" to be exact. I'm outside of the bell curve on just about anything that involves sizes, so almost anything I have to buy that's sized has to be bought sight unseen on the internet. Shirts I'm usually OK buying off the rack, but that's kind of difficult also in that they're not cut for someone with a thin, somewhat athletic build and end up looking like a parachute if I'm not picky. Shorts I'll buy off the rack also, since they almost fit. But jeans, pants, shoes, stuff like that... Online since nobody stocks pants in a 29W 28L size. Or shoes in a 6.5.
Running shoes I can sometimes find in an outlet store. If I find a shoe I like I'll buy copies online though since outlets are so hit and miss on inventory. I went to a local running store to buy shoes once, did the whole gait analysis thing, got a recommendation only to leave empty handed because my size isn't one they stock and they'd "be glad to order for me". Well, I can order it myself and have it delivered to my house. Thanks anyway. At the expo for the Rock N Roll Marathon in February, Brooks Running set up a huge display where they shot a video of you running on a treadmill, showed it to you and explained what kind of gait you had, then recommended 2 or 3 models of their shoes that would work for you. My buddy and I did this and got recommendations. We walked over to where they were selling the shoes. He told the salesperson what he needed and in whatever size he wears, got the shoes, tried them on, and bought them. I got "sorry, we don't have anything that small in stock here". Blah. "But we can order them for you and you can pick them up at the store. :)" Double blah.
I never did get those Brooks shoes. I'm running in Nike Pegasus 29s I got at the Foley, AL outlet mall. I grabbed every 7.5 running shoe they had and went through them all to pick these.
Every size 7.5 running shoe in the store translates to five (5) pairs of shoes.
Yea.
So anyway, back to eBay...
A few months back after I got this idea of doing triathlons in my head, I found a bike on eBay that would work for a fairly reasonable price and bought it. It was a fairly old design though and not particularly pretty, but it's aero and pretty fast. I tuned it up, made some sizing adjustments to try to get it to be comfortable, and have ridden it a few hundred miles and in two races. It doesn't have the sex appeal some newer tri-bikes have, but it serves its purpose well.
One drawback to the bike that's related to my (lack of) height is that it uses 650c wheels instead of the standard 700c size. So it's not common to find tires in local shops (recurring theme here), or fancy wheels. Periodically I'll get on eBay to see if I can find a cool wheelset or tires or something, but haven't come across anything yet. But the other day when searching eBay for "650c wheels" something came up that was even better than wheels.
It was a Cervelo P2 49cm frame and fork. Like this:
Ooh... purty....
The auction price started at $500 with $70 for shipping. The pictures of the frame were clear and there was some normal use scuffs and a couple chips, but it was in really good shape. That got me thinking...
I've got my tri-bike that I could use the parts off of to build this frame out and I'd be on a modern TT bike for way less than half the cost of a comparable new bike. And I'd get to build it. I love to build stuff. This is too good to be true! I put the frame on my watch list and started doing some homework. Over the next couple days I'd probably built and rebuilt this bike in my head a dozen times. I'd found an aerobar I liked, a hydration system I liked, figured out what components I'd reuse, and what I'd replace, and decided I wanted to buy the frame. I use a sniping program to bid on eBay, so I loaded it up with the auction number, put in my max bid for the frame, and told it to place the bid with 15 seconds left on the auction. All I had to do at this point was wait.
While I waited, I distracted myself by looking at bike parts on eBay and reading threads on the Cervelo forum. I'd already assumed I'd be buying the frame for $500 since nobody else had bid on it and there was only a couple hours left in the auction. And each second that ticked by convinced me it was mine.
Then my bid got placed...
I'm not sure what happened, but in 15 seconds I went from scoring a killer deal on a great frame to utter disappointment as I got the email saying "Sorry you didn't win".
Apparently the whole "use a sniping program and don't bid until the last second" strategy was in place by another vertically challenged triathlete with a bit more disposable income than me.
Stupid eBay.
"It never gets easier, you just go faster." ~ Greg LeMond
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