This question was provoked by my behavior yesterday.

I bought my daughter some roller skates for a birthday. I used to do a lot of skating myself, but haven’t done for years. So we pottered off to the nearest roller rink yesterday, to get her up and going.

We really really enjoyed ourselves. Had a great afternoon.

Anyway… Somewhat predictably I immediately decided I need another set of skates. Not want, NEED. But… not just any skates. I know exactly what I want. I’m already speccing them in my head, before we’d even left the place. So I then got online and start pricing up which boots, wheels, bearings. And its not going to be cheap

The better half was looking at me with a look of, well… more pity than contempt really. She asks ‘what is it with blokes? You’re pathologically incapable of being slightly into something. As soon as you discover something, you’ve immediately got to spend a fortune, and buy all the best gear, and then you become completely obsessed. You’re just like this with your bikes. You’re mad!”

The thing is, I’d love to argue with this. But I can’t. Because its all true! 😳

So… taking your bikes as an example, are you, as Zoe Williams reckons all blokes are…. functionally autistic. Getting completely obsessed with stuff? Or do you keep a sense of proportion?

And ladies… do you do this too? Women don’t appear to be as bad. They tend to have a wider range of interests, which they don’t appear to be as evangelical about

Your thoughts oh STW wise ones…..

Guilty as charged sah!

* is shamefaced by quantity of Twin Peaks memorabilia, random bike bits and ancient jazz guitars cluttering the 16 household *

But… mrscamo16 gets her own back in the bags/wardrobe dept.

Guilty!! Think yourself lucky your good lady understands the male psyche so well 😆

guilty to a degree. the wishlist with any new hobby is a fun thing to build, but i’ve learnt from previous purchases that entry level is there for a reason.

the idea of a hobby is sometimes better than having the hobby, plus once i’m happy with my proficiency at something i tend to get bored and want to learn/start something new.

very bad case here.. 😳

Holds hands up (having just bought Olympic weight disc set and bar last night)….

erm….functionally autistic. that’ll be me. Who is Zoe Williams?

Guilty – stares misty eyed at the piles of “stuff” in the garage form hobbies-gone-by.

A couple of my friends have been trying for a few years to get me to go and have a round of golf with them. I daren’t!

mt – she’s a journalist. She wrote a very funny article on this subject. I’ll try and find a link

yup. I spend more time “researching” hobbies than actually doing them.

Not so much obsessive as impulsive… like wanting to buy a trials bike after seeing the latest Danny MacAskill video, or randomly deciding I want a pair of inline skates for no good reason then spending ages researching them.

not very tbh yah saddos
Some main hobboes – MTB,campling, music and guitar cost some money but i dont have upgrad fever

well i did just buy a new frame but a shhh on that one

Another guilty plea from me 😳

Me me me.
I obsessed about horses and horse riding as a child, so much so I saved up and bought my own horse.

Obsessed about mtbing, so much so that I nagged, bribed and pushed hubby into the sport when he was a new boyfriend.
Never had the money to buy all the gear or the best equipment, however would have if the funds were available.

yup, this is me.

I really dislike Zoe Williams ,but I am functionally autistic. 🙄

Limited by funds and time, but otherwise true.

I do have 40+ Scalextric cars though.

I must be a girl. Perhaps me and Bunnyhop have been transposed.

I like nice bikes and that but I’m far from obsessive about it, I don’t enjoy maintenance and cleaning them so I just do it when I have to, I’m equally happy going out on the 50 quid dog as I am on the £1500 mountain bike. And I can take it or leave it. I spend a lot of time on a bike but I’m also prone to waking up having oplanned for a bike ride and deciding to just forget about it. I have absolutely no real desire to have the most expensive kit, it’ll only wear out. Reliable kit that lasts is far more valuable to me.

Even outside of cycling, I’ll only ever buy mid-range kit. I’m still drawing with the first mechanical pencil I bought for a few quid rather than the very expensive pencil I got as a present.

guilty as charged M’Lud.

Radio control gliders. Windsurfing till injury made it painful.

Funnily enough I am far less bothered with the latest must haves and technical nuances of bikes. Although a quick look at my CRC account tells me I average about 200 per month in “bits and bobs”.

Sadly I often stay away from trying new things as I know if I enjoy it there is a slippery slope not far away.

very much that way sadly, however I have now been able to spot when the idea of buying/owning the kit takes over the desire to actually ‘do’ the sport/hobby. If that is the case then I tend to just abandon it altogether.

I learnt my lesson from my Motocross days. During my peak (early 20’s) I’d spent £33,000 in a year on bikes, kit etc. It was out of control, never again.

If i want something i usually have it by hook or crook within a week or so. Enjoy the panic trying to flog to finance

Yeah guilty as charged.

It used to be Hi-Fi’s, spent years reading hi-fi mags and obsessing over upgrades

It was PC’s for a while – spent years reading PC mags and obsessing over upgrades

Then mountain bikes, spent years reading bike mags and obsessing over upgrades

Just bought an Android tab and found out it can run emulators, currently obsessing over the best SNES emulator and the best games to download.

Its a never ending cycle!

😳

I’m definitely obsessive about certain things and that includes having some very nice bikes.

Added to this I find myself researching loads on the history of villages and monuments that I come across when riding. Naturally this leads to books and have discovered a wonderful website with second-hand books on ley-lines, prehistoric trackways etc.

Oh yes, it all involves more map buying leading to more route planning.

Jeez, I’m getting weirder as I get older. 😳

Guilty.

But at least I’m a ‘serial’ hobbyist rather than a ‘multiple’ one. And the hobbies seem to be getting cheaper as I get older, to the great relief of Mrs. Perth

I’m proud to say i can multitask. No matter what I’m doing, in the back of my mind I’m thinking about bikes: speccing up future builds, planning routes, designing bits to fix problems, making a “to-do” list of maintenance tasks or plain old day-dreaming of rides gone by.

I can now control my urge to hold an imaginary set of handlebars whenever I go for a walk though 🙂

I’m in a similar boat to the OP

Currently wasting man hours on the internet looking for skateboards to get back out there and break some bones after 20 years of not skateboarding.

Tomorrow it’ll be something else I’m sure. I sometimes wish I could be more like my wife who seems fairly happy without any real hobbies to speak off. I, on the other hand, require something to do with my time (or at least the idea of it)

A guy’s idea of heaven is to pursue hobbies. That’s a fact – pretty much.

I’d like to triplicate myself, so dull camo stays in work, super camo goes out riding all day and contemplative camo finally finishes the painting of my son which I started a year ago…

A lady’s idea of heaven is to pursue hobbies. That’s a fact – pretty much.

FTFY. 😉

😀

Binners
+
Skating

No offence binners, have you erm ‘come out‘?

Or are you French?

Guilty here too….Did skateboards a few years ago……much to the amusement of the kids…..latest one is field archery….there are some lovely looking field bows 😀

the idea of a hobby is sometimes better than having the hobby, plus once i’m happy with my proficiency at something i tend to get bored and want to learn/start something new.

This is very true. I tend to throw myself into something, and lose interest a bit when the challenge goes off. This has been true with most things except MTB’ing and Motorsport.

Hora – skating as in street hockey and half-pipes, rather than hot-pants with matching colour co-ordinated knee pads, as you mince down the boulevard.

Though, actually…. now I think about it…..

The thing that moderates me is that I can’t abide the idea of some lovley piece of equippment lying idle, not being used to its full capability.

So I only buy gear that’s going to get proper use, and then if I do buy it I make sure I do use it. Therefore there are obvious limitations on what I can ‘get into’ because of time.

Err no not really, i have stuff and have things im interested in but im not obsesive about anything, I’ve long gone past the finding the best bits and having loads of essentially the same thing (i only have one bike!). I’m not suprised by some of the posters on here admitting to being an bit obsesive though judging from the way they act on here 😉

A couple of my friends have been trying for a few years to get me to go and have a round of golf with them. I daren’t!

Don’t. Golf is an absolute nightmare.

I have an addictive personality.

First it was computer games. Not just playing them though, statistical analysis of pretty much every aspect, fine tuning everything the the nth degree.

Thankfully I got in to drugs and that got me outdoors 😉

Absolutely obsessive about bikes now though. On holiday with the family and still managed to buy a second hand set of forks off here.

3 weeks off the bike due to injury so far and I now have all the bits required for a new hard tail.

Crickey, you lot are a marketing man’s wet dream!!!

Here definitely no.

I used to be OCD with my hobbies, now I’m CDO , oh well at least my albums are in the right order !!!