Sunday night I was browsing Craigslist.com and saw someone looking for a stationary bike. We have one that we hardly use (in fact, its dust is quite thick). I asked John if he’d care if I responded to the person’s post, and he gave me the go-ahead. I replied and offered our bike for $55. Then, on a whim, I decided to also post the bike for sale under sporting goods for $60.

The next afternoon I got an email about the bike. At first I thought it was the person I had offered the bike to for $55–but it wasn’t. It was someone responding to the ad for $60. He asked if the bike was still for sale (a whopping 12 hours after the ad had posted) and wondered if he could come look at it that evening. I said OK.

Last night John and I carried the bike downstairs for the guy to see and we discussed how much we’d be willing to haggle in price if he thought $60 was too much. We bought the bike used for $50 last year, and we decided that breaking even would be okay if that was the best we could do.

The guy turned up with his wife and had a quick look at the bike. And I mean quick. His wife had broken her back and needed some way to exercise that didn’t make her back worse. She got on the bike, pedalled a few times, said she thought it felt okay. We showed her how to adjust the seat and tried to point out all the features on the LCD display. But we probably didn’t need to. The husband was already pulling out his wallet and handing over $60. No questions asked. No haggling attempted. They carried off the bike and we made $10.

(In case you were wondering, I never heard from the person who actually had been looking for a bike in the first place.)

Not bad for my first time on Craigslist.