Finding a little trail close to my house the other day has increased my urge to get a slightly larger unicycle more suited for rougher terrain than the 20" thingy I’ve got at the moment.
I’m feeling the urge to get a 24" unicycle, but I can’t get over the fact that on this, my placement year from uni(versity), I really should be saving money rather than spending it all on unicycles!
How can I convince myself a new unicycle is a good investment, given I’ve only had the one I’ve got now for a few months? A student having two unicycles feels a bit… excessive…
And how can I stave off the inevitable question when I go home and the parents say “Another one? Isn’t that a lot of money…”?
i need to sneak the 5ft giraffe past the girlfriend at the end of this month
fortunately i’ve landed a uni’ing job for the 18th of next month that’ll cover about 70% of the cost
that’s my suggestion
get a uni-job, let it pay for itself
e.g. “I won it in a bet”
“I found it in a skip” (hey, it happens, just read one of the earlier posts)
“I built it as part of a course project. Oh, didn’t I tell you I’d transferred to a practical metallurgy course?”
This will all depend on your acting ability/your parents’ gullibility. Or do what a friend of mine did at uni, he stopped going out drinking for a month or so (a major sacrifice for a student) and bought himself a £1300 bike. I think this says one of two things-
He drank a hell of a lot more than he let on, or
He had a poor grasp of arithmetic.
Personally I’d just buy the thing and live with the consequences. Remember, it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission (even from yourself).
“phil” <phil.6jpvy@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote in message
> How can I convince myself a new unicycle is a good investment, given
> I’ve only had the one I’ve got now for a few months? A student having
> two unicycles feels a bit… excessive…
Well, a 20" isn’t good for distance but a 24" is not too bad.
Think about all the money you are going to save on busfares
when you cycle to lectures. Or all the money you will make
busking in the town centre.
It doesn’t matter if no actual money is saved or earned: the
potential alone is sufficient self-delusion… er… justification.
Didn’t another hard-up student recently sell his soul on e-bay?
Perhaps you could try something like that to make a few bob…
Mind you, I don’t think he got much for it.
As for your parents: Let 'em ask. You are in your majority, right?
There’s always my favorite excuse for buying a new uni: It’s Thursday.
Secret Hint #1: You can replace “Thursday” for any other day of the week! (Just be careful when trying to insert “Wednesday”, because sometimes the sharp edges can get to you).
Secret Hint #2: With practive, you can use this excuse for things other than purchasing a uni… though who would want to?
I’d go to campus on it anyway, whatever size it was… it’s not far. As for busking in the town centre… I’ve never taken it into town, but I can see people standing and watching or trying to give money even if I’m not intentionally busking, just passing through… how would you explain that one?
As for dealing with the parents… I’m too much of a goody-two-shoes to spend recklessly. Well, spend recklessly on things that can’t be hidden while they’re around. Computery bits, Gameboy Advances, yes, but I can’t hide a unicycle in a drawer…
My edjumacation won’t suffer either way, to be honest; I think if I got another unicycle I’d probably (shock, horror) sell the one I’ve got now; I don’t see that much point in having two such unicycles with what I do now. I can’t ride them both at once.
Hmmm… now there’s a challenge…
It’s definitely moved off the back-burner and towards the front of the hob, but it’s on a low gas mark at the mo. I’ve been having a quick sneak peek at unicycle.uk.com at their budget 24" unis. I think I know more about what I’m actually after than when I got my first; ie. this time it’s not “woo, a unicycle! And it’s shiny too!”…
Hmmm… this is made harder by the fact that I don’t drink anyway. What do I do now? Start, just so I can stop for a month? Stop eating? Actually that is expensive… I’ll put it on the list…
Hmmm… I must remember that!
To be honest, I don’t know why I asked. I don’t have any willpower; like it or not, it’s only a matter of time… I’ll keep looking at unicycle.com, and sooner or later I’m going to go into ‘autopilot’ mode and before you know it I’m down lots of money but up one unicycle…
>Or do what a friend of mine did at uni, he stopped going out drinking
>for a month or so (a major sacrifice for a student) and bought himself a
>£1300 bike. I think this says one of two things-
>1. He drank a hell of a lot more than he let on, or
>2. He had a poor grasp of arithmetic.
Or 3: The bike cost way more that the sacrificed drinks. I note that
the two phrases about your friend are connected with a simple “and”.
That sounds scarily similar to my buying behaviour, although sometimes the “matter of time” part can be over a year. I’m going through the same process at the moment with a Miyata saddle. The main reason I haven’t bought it yet is the thought that the pain reduction in comparison to my Viscount saddle will be more than compensated for when my wife kicks me in the nads for having spent the money*
Have fun!
Graeme
*only kidding, she wouldn’t do that. I can run faster than her;)
When I look at where I spend money one thing always stands out: food. Students spend a large amount of income on food. What if you didn’t have to spend money on food? You would have like $500 per month extra. Now I like food pretty well so I lack the discipline to not eat for a month to “save money” But if you spend the money first, then you have no money to buy food and it makes the discipline part of the deal easier. Plus you have a new uni to help ease the pain. now a few tricks to spend no money on food. 1. Eat white rice. When I go on to the no food mode I kick it off by buying a 5 lb bag of white rice. “Isn’t that food you say?” Anything that costs $2 for five lbs and can be prepared by someone as dumb as me is not food. Besides, the goal here isn’t not to eat it is to not spend money to eat. Five lbs of white rice can feed like 10 000 people for a month I am pretty sure. When ever you are hungry, just fire up some of that rice. Pretty soon you will be so sick of white rice that you discover ramen noodles. This is a little bit of a splurge, but if you are willing to clean pots, then you can enjoy a tasty dinner for like 21 cents. You will enevitably tire of this too so that is when I employ trick number 2: When at college there are so many opportunities for free food it is rediculous. First, people hold boring meatings EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. Nobody wants to go to millions of meatings so they offer pizza, subs, cookies, and stuff to go. Go to these, who cares what they are about. I went to some rediculous meatings that had less than nothing to do with me when I needed some free food. Besides, your starving ass will be so hungry you won’t even hear them as you stuff your face for the duration. The best manuver is when they have the food before the meeting, because you can eat like crazy then slip out before it starts. I had a good friend who slippid into some hotel meeting with business people. He was dressed in a t shirt and shorts. Everyone else in the room was wearing a nice suit. He fixed himself a plate of shrimp, and proceeded to strike up a conversation with his new friends. He said it was a little awkward at first but it was genuinly a good time, and the worst that can happen is you can be kicked out, then you are just where you started. Anyway, one last manuver, is the left over manuver. If you see someone you know that is coming back from somewhere with a doggie bag from eating out, they are like low hanging fruit; it is really easy to to talk your way into free food. They are really full and not wanting to think about food, and they probably just took the remainder of their dinner to not feel wasteful. If you just ask them what they are oing that night, blah blah blah, and "oh where did you eat? … that sounds really good. What did you have there? … huh that sounds really good. " If they don’t offer immediately you will eventually ask. Reading this you may think you won’t, but when you are 20 days into white rice you will consider directly asking a much better option than knocking your friend down in the streat and biting them on the arm until they let go, which is what it will come to.
Anyway, this may all sound a little extreme, but let me tell you when I ride my giraffe around that I bought with food money, then comeback and watch a movie on my dvd player bought with food money, go on a ski trip funded by food money, and enjoy a nice meal, I chuckle at all the suckers that waste money on food. You see, right now, I can go eat just as well as you. maybe one month ago I was hungry, but that was then. Now I have money and good food, and you just have good food.
-gauss
Hey, Jeff now has a couple other unicycles hanging…such as the double wheel uni( looks like: >-OO if rotated 90 degrees(the > is the seat)) which is the most insane thing i have ever seen
Oh yeah, if you are trying to fund a skiing trip there is this classic trick that works in the lodge, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in a truck stop, or other places for uni. Convince a place to give you a few katsup packets and a cup (not hard to do, although sometimes they try to make you pay for the cup if you look too much like a slob) then put the katsup in the cup and add some water. Fire that thing into the microwave, add a dash of salt and voila: Free tomato soup.
enjoy (if you can) and know that you suffering your way to a profile hub. It helps to look at all the folks around you. remind yourself that in four hours they will be hungry and so will you but you will have 5 dollars that they already spent.
-gauss
> enjoy (if you can) and know that you suffering your way to a profile
> hub. It helps to look at all the folks around you. remind yourself
> that in four hours they will be hungry and so will you but you will have
> 5 dollars that they already spent.
> -gauss
>
funny you should say that because i’m currently saving money for a splined
hub through the process of beer depravation. it does work, you just need to want
that hub verry badly.
i don’t do food depravation though, i normaly drink too much so beer depravation
works well enough,
last year i managed to save £1000 through mild beer depravation over a few
months in order to visit a girlfriend in america for two months and split up at the
end of it. (just think of the unicycle i could have bought!) this time i’m going to
get something that lasts a little longer.
