Happiness is...

@vrao81 100% - being happy with your lot in life, which for me is owning some kind of tube amplification, hence my Audiogon name.  
 

Unfortunately, that concept can be a real struggle when the itch - the bug - upgraditis rears its head and you’ve gotta make some changes in your system.  Whenever I own tube gear, I’m much more content for longer periods of time.  Whenever I own SS amplification, I find myself wanting a change in less than a year.  5 years is usually tops for me to hold onto any amplifier set up.  
 

But a turntable, cassette deck, or cd player I can be content to hold onto until it needs repair or croaks.  Tuners, I like to change up often and now I’ve been without one for the past 3 years with no regrets….

Happiness is a major CraigsList score - Paisley Research AE500’s for $75, that I swear could hold their own with $3K ProAc Response 2’s & $3500 Celestion SL700’s…. 

Nearly 40 years ago, my best friend and I were on a long bike ride, about 40 miles down some country roads in Delaware County, SE Pennsylvania.  I had a good scenic loop for us to do.  
 

Mid ride, down this 2 lane country road in farm country, the road came to an abrupt end.  We saw the signs but I hoped our turn off was going to be before the road ended, so we continued on.

The choice was to carry our bikes 20’ across a steel ‘I’ beam that was 15’ above a creek, or turn around and go back.  My buddy went first.  He held the center stem of his bike with 1 hand at shoulder height and put his other arm out straight for balance and shimmied across the beam.  I thought to myself, that’s totally not the right way to do it because all the weight was on one side of his body and I thought he was going to fall into the creek  Nevertheless, he shimmied across the beam in like 5 seconds.

Now it was my turn.  He was now already safely on the other side and waiting for me.  So, I held the bike in both hands in front of me, equalizing the weight, like the Great Walenda crossing a type rope, and it nearly took that long too.  With the bike in front of me, I had better balance, but I also couldn’t do this quickly like he did.  It was the longest 45 seconds ever with lots of curse words in between, but I finally made it across and we continued our ride.  Happiness came from an unexpected challenge met head on and successfully conquered.