Let's redecorate the living room.

It was just about a year ago when my now ex-wife revealed the first of many reasons she had for needing to leave me (ultimately there were more than 20; I kept a list). In October 2024, about two weeks before she actually got around to telling me that she didn't love me anymore and was moving out, she told me that it was deeply upsetting to her that “everywhere I look around here, I just see your shit. Especially the garage!  Oh my god, you have completely taken over the garage!"  

True, I'll admit, but only to a point.  Lots of bikes and skis, workbenches and tools out there.  Hard to be a bike rider without owning a few bikes, or a skier without a quiver of skis...

But, in my own defense, I am compelled to point out that she neglected to give me any credit for the fact that the garage has always been well organized and accessible, not just a dumping ground for a bunch of our cast off possessions... proof-of-concept: year-round, no matter what, there was always ample space for her to effortlessly park her car inside. Likewise, the tools have been used on the regular to service and repair not just my shit gear, but likewise all the other things that needed fixing or tending in and around our house, our landscaping and our outdoor living spaces, too.

With this bleak anniversary in mind, I set out the other day to move few bikes around. Ended up bringing three of my oldest and favoritest handmade rigs out of the garage and into the house where I can see and admire them more often, on the daily in fact, to hang on the walls along with all the other pictures and paintings I love, as the legitimate works of art I will forever insist they are. On first impression, I hope they evoke in my guests a less gruesome but nonetheless similar vibe to the taxidermied trophy kills that are often on display in wild game hunters' homes.

Retrotec Classic circa 1993

Ibis Mountain Trials circa 1991

Rock Lobster singlespeed circa 1985

In this moment, as I look around my newly redecorated living room, where my shit is now quite literally (and also, I'll admit, completely ridiculously) everywhere, it's beginning to feel like I've exorcised at least one haunting demon left-over in the still-smouldering ashes of my failed marriage.  I think, ridiculous though it may be, I've taken an important step forward in acknowledging sole possession of what is now exclusively mine: this house. 

It's fricken lonely here these days, and too quiet, too... figuratively it's also a lot darker than I'd like it to be, especially at night.  

Nevertheless, it is henceforth and inarguably my space.  

This is my home.