It's pretty in my living room

If it weren't so late and I weren't already in bed* when this grand idea struck, I would take a picture to illustrate what I'm about to blog, but I am in bed and sleepy, so the picture will have to wait.

*What? You don't sleep with a laptop?? Are you some kind of freak?

My living room is a sporting goods store. True, a very specialized one, but it might as well as have a sign on it that says "Kathleen's Stuff for Good Times." Why? Because here's what's taking up most of the space:

2 paddles
3 bikes
4 saddles

A breakdown of a what I've got:

The paddles are both made by Dagger and one is a kayak and the other is a canoe paddle. I got them in the very early 80's when I worked on the Ocoee River in Tennessee as a raft guide and spent my free time kayaking and canoeing. They're wooden and hand made for me and very pretty. Dagger no longer makes wooden paddles, just composite ones. I've got antiques.

The bikes are a Trek 930 Singletrack with slicks, year unknown, but from the mid 1990s; a 2001 Klein Adept Race and the Prettiest Bike on the Planet (TM me; see pics of it in the sidebar to your right) and my latest bike, a 1973 Peugeot 10-speed road bike I bought a week ago and I've taken it out for two short spins. Like my paddles, my bikes are antiques.

The saddles are all English. I have two Stubbens, one a Siegfried that was used when my parents bought it for me when I was fifteen (more years ago than I want to fess up to now, but let's just say that it's old ;), and the other a Stubben dressage saddle that is also ancient that Jann bought off eBay from a seller in Germany and had shipped to Brazil. She gave it to me when we visited there two years ago. The other leather saddle is a Kieffer forward seat that Jann also bought used in Germany and donated to me last year. Both Stubbens are 17" saddles, while the Keiffer is 18". The final saddle is my newest, a Wintec All Purpose 500 with Cair that I bought from Dover for the Princess of the Universe. It's got an interchangeable gullet system, which just came today. The saddle came last week. I started trying to buy the Wintec with a trip to Dover on January 2nd, but Wintecs in brown with Cair are pretty darn rare and it took them this long to get one. I'll take it out Friday to try it on the POTU and see if I need to change out the gullet.

In case you're wondering, I have another Stubben Siegfried that's out at Katie's that I use on Asia and until just recently, it's been India's saddle too, but POTU is not built like her dam and the Siegfried is too narrow for her Foundation QH frame. This Stubben is also ancient. I bought it off eBay about four years ago and got a really good deal on it. It's about the same age as the one my parents bought me 35 years ago, but it had much less wear and tear on it being practically unused when I bought it.

Other than the Wintec, my saddles are all antiques.