Shopping For A Race Bike Concludes

I bought a new custom made race bike recently. It's from a local company founded by an Italian immigrant who established himself as one of Quebec's top bicycle builders.

My Gardin (another now-defunct Italian-Canadian manufacture with Shimano 105, Columbus frame) is now 23 years old and was in need of an upgrade. Won't be getting ride of this bike. I worked a whole summer in 1990 to buy it - I think it was something like $1000) and there really isn't any point in getting rid of it.

I shopped around quite a bit and had settled on Masi (once an Italian bike now operating in the U.S.), a couple of U.S. based bikes with Sram parts and Ridley (Shimano or Sram) out of Belgium. There were a lot of choices with nice-looking American and Japanese bikes I must say making it hard to settle on one. It took a few months to decide. 

All were solid bikes but I decided if I was going to spend $1500 may as well get it customized.

I didn't go with the high-end parts (frame (chose steel over aluminum for comfort), chain system and derailleurs, pedals, handles etc.) but I got myself a solid upper-tier bike with good quality Italian parts (Campagnolo gear system, Italian made seat) at an affordable price. Top notch Italian bikes will run you $3000 at the minimum and up. I'm not a pro racer nor am I anywhere near the stamina levels I used to have. So I went for half the price.

In order to fit my back to my height and specifications I had to buy a pair of cycling shoes. Again, I opted for a hybrid pedal I regarded to be a good price to quality ratio relative to my needs. The shoes they have in stock didn't fancy my taste for the price. There was a pair of Vittoria's for $100 but they didn't have my size and wasn't crazy about a black pair going for $125.

The guy fitting my bike suggested I go out and by a pair and come back. Rather than go around town looking for shoes I simply went online. Lo and behold I found Diadora shoes (also made in Italy) at reasonable prices. On Amazon I spotted a pair I really liked for $86 but, damn, again they didn't have my size.

So I continued my journey. Psychologically, I wanted to break the $85 barrier. I found more Diadora's this time at $70 and $50 dollars but both were black. Nonetheless, at those prices I had them on my list.

I looked some more and found a pair of Diadora Aerospeed regular $180 (retail in Canada) in clearance from a store based in Toronto. It wasn't the color I wanted (my bike is silver, light metallic green and black with a retro-contemporary look), however, at $49.99 it was simply too good an offer to ignore. How rare is it for a Canadian company to have better prices than U.S. counterparts on the internet!

All told I paid $70 (taxes and shipping) for a $180 shoe as opposed to about $115-$140 depending on the model selected.  

It was win-win. It's nice to not have to ship to Plattsburgh and go pick it up. Where feasible, it's a bonus to support a Canadian company. It's not a criteria of mine since I'm a price-based shopper, still.

My point is, I'm a pragmatic and realistic shopper. Sure, I didn't get the color I was hoping for (sharp silver), I was going to break my head over it either (red, black and white is nice enough). Not for an expensive shoe selling at such a deep discount.