I said goodbye to an old friend this weekend.

For a couple of weeks now, my wife had been making noise that my daughter had outgrown her old bike. And my wife was getting a little tired of hers.

The plan was to get my wife a new ride, then her old bike would become my daughter’s new one.

So, we decided to pay a visit to the Lawrence Re-Cyclery, a cool bike shop not even a block from my workplace that sells new and, especially, used bikes. We were assured we could bring in my daughter’s old bike as a trade-in.

But I knew that, while it was a capable ride, it also wasn’t worth much. And since our family bike budget seems perpetually depleted by, well, me, I was afraid our trip to the bike shop would prove futile at worst or expensive at least.

After debating with myself and more than a little soul-searching, I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice: I’d offer up one of my old bikes so my betrothed could get a newer one.

I had a few from which to choose, but, honestly, I ride all of my bikes. I don’t believe in bikes as wall art.

That said, I had one bike I had a hard time justifying.

A couple of years ago, I got a wild hair to acquire a cyclocross bike. I figured it could serve as my back-up road bike and my back-up commuter bike. It also was going to be my primary bad-weather ride, especially in winter.

Since I had a lot of parts already — take-offs from my other bikes, bike-shop bargains, etc. — I figured I’d get a frame and build it up myself.

After a couple of months of trolling eBay, I found a nice used Bianchi and, over several weeks, built it up into a pretty decent little ride.

It was my first attempt at a ground-up build. I had changed out components before, tweaked things here and adjusted others there, but I’d never attempted a soup-to-nuts build before.

I vividly remember the shake-down ride. I pedaled around the neighborhood amazed that I actually had put something like that together and, best of all, it wasn’t falling apart beneath me.

But a funny thing happened.

Even though my Bianchi had some pretty nice parts, it didn’t get ridden much.

It wasn’t as nice a road bike as my road bike. It was a little much as a commuter. It wasn’t as good a trail bike as my mountain bike.

When the bike I had on the trainer in the basement broke, the Bianchi went downstairs for ignominious trainer duty. Eventually, it came off the trainer, too, and sat around gathering dust.

Though I hadn’t ridden it at all in months and not outside in years, I still had a hard time deciding to part with it.

Then I thought about my other bikes. I have fond memories of my road bike: my first century, my first group ride, my first real road bike. I happily recall riding my old mountain bike everywhere, when I first started riding semi-seriously and it was my do-everything, go-everywhere transport. I have similarly cheery memories of my fixie, my single-speed crosser, my newest road bike …

But the only real memories I made with my Bianchi were inside the garage as I was putting it together.

So I cleaned it off, topped off the tires and wiped the chain and headed off to the Re-Cyclery, where I was given a fair deal. It was a small fraction of what I had spent on it, but it was a used niche bike with nice if obsolete parts.

In exchange, we walked out with a new bike for my wife — who was so proud she promptly told the world on Facebook — and had enough left over to get a new bike for my son, too.

So, yeah, it was the darnedest weekend. Everybody in my house got a new bike, while I got rid of one.

I hope they all like their new ones as much as I liked my old one.