How many bikes would you have if you could?



I also knew a police officer who had rentals with meth labs, whores, and even had to clean blood after suicides. He wants to sell his 10 units.

I think tenant selection is the key.
 
I also knew a police officer who had rentals...

LEO's and firemen seem to be really into the landlord thing. Years ago I almost bought a house on a lakeshore lot from a fireman. IIRC he had around 10 rental units. He had an awesome Kubota tractor that went with the house I was looking at buying...until he told the wife and I that the Kubota was recently fished out of the lake after the bank gave way...

I lost interest because of that and the fact that the lake was shared by about 5-10 properties. Screw that. Nothing but neighbor problems. That's what headed me off in search of a farm. It's illegal to kill stooped people so I figure the only way to stay out of the Graybar Hotel was to avoid them.

By that point my bike collection was long beyond ex-wives Mk I and Mk II and still growing.
 
Bikes are not investments nor are cars nor are houses. They are consumables of varying duration.

We knew an ex-mafia member who built up more than 100 units in NYC. He told me once he fixed the old buildings up, he picked his tenants really carefully. I think he preferred gays because they have so much disposable income and they fix the place up on their coin. He avoided single moms or those with limited means. I suppose business owners are not allowed to select tenants anymore.

Actually houses are investments, when you pay the house off it's yours to live in mortgage free whereas renting goes on forever. In addition over the long haul houses will at least keep up with inflation and in a lot of areas far exceed it and on a rare occasion could drop in value but even with a drop in value it's still cheaper than renting for a lifetime; and you always have value in a house if you go to sell it, with renting you leave with nothing.
 
A single off road and road bike. That's all anyone needs and I'd rather have one of each and them be high quality than lots of cheaper bikes taking up room aswell. I don't have tonnes of space to store them anyway!
 
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Maybe at least 3 bikes. You'll need your main bike, a back up, and a special bike like a tandem or something in order to bike with your friends! :D
 
5 is enough. I don't have much space for them. I would pick up different models, of course. Everything but BMX is likely to make my list.
 
A single off road and road bike. That's all anyone needs and I'd rather have one of each and them be high quality than lots of cheaper bikes taking up room aswell. I don't have tonnes of space to store them anyway!
Very good point, if you had 10 you could only ride one so why have a garage full of bikes when one will do. Even though I would add a road bike, you don't need much else.
 
I'm laughing at all this. We have people here who think no one should have more than 3 bikes, they're determining for us how many we should have, that is so communistic of them. I have several cars but between my wife and myself I should have no more than 2, I have several watches but since I can only wear one I should only have one, I have several shoes, but since I can only wear one for dress and one for casual I should only have two shoes, I have several shirts and pants but since I can only wear one of each I should only have enough to last the week then wash and wear again...see where this is going?
 
I'm laughing at all this. We have people here who think no one should have more than 3 bikes, they're determining for us how many we should have, that is so communistic of them. I have several cars but between my wife and myself I should have no more than 2, I have several watches but since I can only wear one I should only have one, I have several shoes, but since I can only wear one for dress and one for casual I should only have two shoes, I have several shirts and pants but since I can only wear one of each I should only have enough to last the week then wash and wear again...see where this is going?
Lol I wouldn't go that far, fine lets make it 365 one per day.
 
That's more like it; so I only need to get 357 more bikes to complete my one a day bike herd.
Wow, that means you have 8 bikes, very impressive. I normally don't hold on to my older bikes, but I do keep for a very long time before a change.
 
Wow, that means you have 8 bikes, very impressive. I normally don't hold on to my older bikes, but I do keep for a very long time before a change.
Those 8 bikes came from various means, only four of them were bought brand spanking new of which one of those two is 32 years old with over 160,000 miles on it and it was my last full time racing bike, the other was bought in 87 because I was racing more and needed a backup bike plus I got a great deal on it, the other is my only regret bought on impulse in 2007 while in England which technically I have sold it for what I paid for it(!) but I'm holding it for my friend, and the third was bought just 3 years ago because I didn't want trash out the older mechanicals and wanted a smoother riding bike. The ones remaining were either found in garage sales for $100 or less; and one was found in a trash can which when I get the time I'm going to clean it up a lot better and replace some items and either sell it or keep it as cannibal for another bike I have of the same brand and type, or keep it and give it to a grandkid if they become taller than me because that bike is just a tad too large for me, but it's in amazing condition considering it was in a trash can with some sort of gooey gunk over the entire thing. Those are are all road bikes than I have one mountain bike, I did have another fantastic hardtail non suspended fork mountain bike that I also found in the trash but it was too small so I fixed it up and gave it to my handicapped daughter.

The list of bikes I have or had was this:

13 Lynskey Peloton (bought new, my weekend bike)

08 Kuna Lava Dome (dumpster find which was also in surprisingly good condition, this is the one my daughter has)

07 Mercian Vincitore with Campy Athena (this is the one bought in England new which I've now sold)

88 Miyata 712 Shimano 105 SIS (garage sale find for $40 about 20 years or more ago, my current commuter and vacation bike)

87 Miyata Team Shimano Dura Ace (this was the new one I got for the back up for the Trek)

87 Giant Rincon Shimano XT (bought new but a weird bike, lowend frame and wheels with XT? another camping bike)

84 Schwinn Voyager Shimano Dearhead XTR (dumpster find, this is the one that is bit too big, not sure about condition of components yet but the paint cleaned up well)

85 Schwinn Le Tour Luxe Suntour Mountech (Bought this used for $60 in mint original condition! only 250 miles on it when I got it, had it overhauled due to old stiff grease, my touring bike)

84 Fuji Club Suntour ARX (bought used for $100 in new and original condition, only ridden 5 miles before I got it, haven't had it overhauled yet but for some reason the grease seems fine, this bike was so new the rear derailleur wasn't broken in, it took me riding it for about 50 miles to loosen it up and now works great)

84 Trek 660 Suntour Superbe (bought new, this one has over 160,000 miles on it and was my primary training and racing bike back in the day and used it for many years after all that ended)

Couple of the bikes I mentioned I don't have and one I'm holding for my friend but my 8 count didn't include those which technically I can't which is why I didn't! The Kona if for some reason my daughter decides she doesn't want it would give it back to me, but right now she wants it even though she doesn't ride it much.

Hopefully I shed some light on why I have all those bikes. There are people here that have much more expensive and larger collection than me, I'm just not into having a lot of expensive bikes and only buy used ones if I get a crazy deal that I can't pass up, but paying $500 plus for a used bike is not my cup of tea, nor is spending $4,000 plus for new bike my cup of tea either.
 
@Froze I am impressed, I am not going show the list of bikes I have had, I don't want to embarrass myself, but If I had a third of those bikes I would be gleaming with pride.
What confuses me is how can people just simply throw bikes away, there are tons of people that would like to have them. Why don't they give them away, all they have to do is hang a plaque on it with free bike written on it. I'm sure there would be a lot of takers.
 
I also cannot fathom throwing a bike away, but I have also never bought a bike in the first place. I guess when you make your own bikes, you get a bit more attached to them...
 
I have 2 MTB's, an old BMX from when I was a teen, and recently I bought a used MTB jr size, which I gave to my youngest son. So that's 4 bikes in total.
 
@Froze I am impressed, I am not going show the list of bikes I have had, I don't want to embarrass myself, but If I had a third of those bikes I would be gleaming with pride.
What confuses me is how can people just simply throw bikes away, there are tons of people that would like to have them. Why don't they give them away, all they have to do is hang a plaque on it with free bike written on it. I'm sure there would be a lot of takers.

Thanks, of course most of the bikes I got are used. Since I wrote that post I found another bike in a dumpster! It's a Dawes, not sure what year it is, and the model name and some line graphics is missing from the top tube but it doesn't appear the paint is damaged so not sure how the decals came off without damaging the paint. I think it's a late 80's because it has painted fork instead of half paint half chrome; and looking at images on the internet I think it could be a Galaxy because the one I saw in images doesn't appear to have any decals on the top tube either. This bike is missing parts and has no wheels, the only components left is the Dia Compe NGC 500 brake levers (not the drilled version, and not cantilevers which makes me wonder if those brakes are not original) and calipers, plus it has one hub but it's a track hub made by Sunshine which I'm positive that's not original, seatpost and handlebars are still on but nothing other than the brakes for components; it has Reynolds 531st tubeset; so it's going to be my retirement project.

I have thought about stripping the Schwinn Voyager I found in the trash and transfer the components from it to the Dawes since I think the Dawes may have come with Shimano Deore, and the Schwinn frame is too large for me, soooo...a swap may be in order.
 
I guess if money weren't an issue, I'd probably go for four quality bikes. I'm thinking two road bikes and two mountain bikes.

Currently I only have one mountain bike, which has been serving me well, but it's been acting as my "all purpose" bike which isn't really all that optimal. But in any case, I'd rather take a mountain bike on the road than a road bike on a mountain trail.

Anyway, the whole idea behind having two of each is in case one is out of commission, I'll always have a backup to rely on.
 
I guess if money weren't an issue, I'd probably go for four quality bikes. I'm thinking two road bikes and two mountain bikes.

Currently I only have one mountain bike, which has been serving me well, but it's been acting as my "all purpose" bike which isn't really all that optimal. But in any case, I'd rather take a mountain bike on the road than a road bike on a mountain trail.

Anyway, the whole idea behind having two of each is in case one is out of commission, I'll always have a backup to rely on.

The only reason I have multiple bikes is because I've always had a beater bike to take to college and ride in the wet Pacific sand which meant the bike got hit with a lot of salt water surf, not something I wanted to expose a nice bike to, then when I was racing it eventually got to the point where I needed a backup bike in case of accident that could destroy my main bike, so in that time period I had three bikes; later I wanted to start goofing around with mountain trail riding so a mountain bike was necessary, now I was up to 4 bikes during the early years. After that I just ran into good deals at garage sales or dumpsters! My last new bike was purchased in 1985...I waited until 2013 to buy my next new bike. There was a new bike I bought in 2007 but I sold that to a friend for the price I paid for it about 2 years ago because I never rode it and because it was such a work of art I was literally afraid of damaging it! So now someone else has it and I don't care if it gets damaged.

In reality most people don't need as many bikes as I have or others have, the most anyone person needs on average is one bike, unless you don't own a car and count on a bike to get you to work, or your racing than you should have a back up bike.

A mountain bike isn't really necessary unless of course you do trail riding even then a hybrid bike could handle the job of both, trail and road. Most people who ride trails never encounter anything highly technical that a hybrid or even a cross bike can't handle. The mountain bike I bought doesn't have any suspension parts on it, and I could handle some pretty technical trails with it, suspension parts are really only necessary for highly technical high speed downhill use, so save the money and get a totally rigid bike.

Since you have just one bike, a mountain bike, you can make that bike more suitable for road use rather cheaply. The cheapest way is to find a pair of smooth tread tires and the narrowest size you can put on the rims. The second cheapest way to transform the bike into a faster on the road bike is to buy a set of narrower, lighter rims that will fit on that bike and then put on a set of smooth skinner tires. The second rim option is interesting because then if you decide to do some trail riding you can switch to the beefer fatter trail rims, and when you go back to riding roads and ignoring trials for awhile simply put on the other rims and your road speed will increase and your effort will decrease. So you could effectively have basically 2 bikes for the price of one. And decent wheels can be found for less than $250 for the pair at most if not all bike shops. Sure for $250 or less you're not going to get uber light wheels with aerodynamic spokes and rims along with super smooth fast rolling hubs but your not racing so it's not an issue.

Even my best wheelset which is on my 2013 Lynskey Peloton retails for only $300! I could have bought lighter wheels so why didn't I? I wanted reliability over lightweightness, and the wheels I got are bomb proof, I ride on rough roads and didn't want the hassle of constantly truing the wheels or deal with cracking rims etc that friends that I know had to deal with on their bikes, and after 8,000 miles on those wheels I haven't had to true them once!
 
I will own A LOT of bikes if I have all the money in the world. Realistically though, I think I'll cap myself at 4 - 1 mountain and 1 road bike and a backup for each in case anything happens.
 

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