Re: Seeking advice on a purchase

EasyCompany said:

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 13:08:06 -0800 (PST), landotter

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See which one makes you smile.

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Believe me it's worth it. You get incredible bang for the buck. The
only modern item with more is a desktop PC, probably.

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Try a Trek 1000, and a Trek 5.2 Madone (or equivalent) before you buy
the steel frame. It's only $100 more for the 1000.

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The 5.2 might be $1200 more (on sale), but it's worth every penny.

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And the OP said:

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"I live in Manhattan and I'm looking for a commuter / shopping bike,
not something to go 100 miles in regularly and if I do 100 miles, I
don't care if I win the race. "

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Hilarious!

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Here's a sub $400 bike in the spirit of 80s "sport" bikes, that can
take fenders and a rack:
http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/dawes/lt1000.htm

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The components will last until the Manhattan bike thieves get to it.
Last I checked, it's hard to put Wald baskets on a Madone.

Guess I got carried away. But hey, why not try a number of bikes, even
if you have no intention of buying the high end models?

My intent was to promote comparing a number of different rides. What
if he fell in love with the Madone and became a hard core biker? Ya
never know.

No reason to not have a bit of fun, to be sure--but a well dialed in
Shimano 2200 equipped bike is going to run and shift impressively
enough for anyone to discover their inner Lance. Unfortunately, the
spectacular value of low-end Shimano is usually mated to poorly
assembled bikes.

The idea of a Madone sporting a Wald paper-boy basket does amuse me.
Ha! Now, I do like to suit up and grind out fifty fast miles on my
sport specific fixed gear--but my love of cycling is fanned just as
much when I ride the 35# Kona Dew down to the redneck liquor mart and
buy a pre-chilled Heaven Hill half-pint for my saddle bag.

landotter said:

Quoted message said:

My intent was to promote comparing a number of different rides. What
if he fell in love with the Madone and became a hard core biker? Ya
never know.

No reason to not have a bit of fun, to be sure--but a well dialed in
Shimano 2200 equipped bike is going to run and shift impressively
enough for anyone to discover their inner Lance. Unfortunately, the
spectacular value of low-end Shimano is usually mated to poorly
assembled bikes.

The idea of a Madone sporting a Wald paper-boy basket does amuse me.
Ha! Now, I do like to suit up and grind out fifty fast miles on my

Well, presumably, in the future, all bikes will be build of a very
light material, like carbon fiber, but it will probably be a lot more
robust, and very cheap.

What is a Madone, but just a light road bike without fenders? Of
course you'd need a basket fore and aft, or the bike would surely tip
over forward. But since in the future, we'll all be using our food
synthesizers and have eliminated newspapers, what will we carry in
them? 🙂