[email protected] (Carl Fogel) wrote in message news:<
[email protected]>...
> "Pete" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
> >
> > Would you consider a Yugo to be a valid car purchase?
>
> Dear Pete,
>
> A Yugo? Thirty years ago when they were inexpensive?
As opposed to now, when they are unavailable?
> For a four-mile daily school commute?
Clever.
> Linda's Yugo worked fine at Colorado University in Boulder, but Steve hated to change its oil
> because it took an enormous hex wrench.
Where is it now?
As with anything else that is low in cost, there were compromises with build quality and materials.
That's why you see very few of these beasts these days. IIRC, it was less than 20 years ago that
these beasts were first available in the U.S.
I'd bet that my first Audi quattro (1984 4000 model) is still puttering around out there somewhere.
I put over 100k miles on it myself. While the price difference between it and a new Yugo was huge, I
would suggest that there were actual, real differences between the capabilities and capacities of
the two vehicles.
> Please don't misunderstand me (easy to do).
It would be easier to understand you if you didn't feel the need to create strawmen to knock down.
> If he rides a used bike from a garage sale or a $100 department store bike, I think that he'll be
> fine. Millions and millions of people in Asia seem to do fine on rougher roads and cheaper bikes,
> none of them assembled with loving care by Western local bike shops.
I would suggest that you have very little actual knowledge about these Asian bikes and their
maintenance status.
> I don't think, despite dire and explicit warnings about shrubs tearing mis-installed quick-release
> skewers off that the original poster will die a horrible death if he fails to pay more. And he'll
> have $700 if various posters convince him that he needs to push it by hand to a local bike shop
> for expert and detailed rehabilitation.
100% hyperbole. For shame, Mr. Fogel.
> Hell, he may realize that bicycling bores him silly, never go on to join the club that he had in
> mind, and find that girls are easier to meet when he walks or trots to school.
Indeed. And, if he were to take my implied advice, he'd be out the $100 for a decent, used LBS bike.
How much less would he be out buying a *Mart bike, again?
> (Most people in the U.S. and U.K. don't commute by bicycle. The ones who do usually don't begin in
> college.)
At this college, and some of the others I have worked at previously, parking is scarce and
expensive, so commuting by bike is actually somewhat popular.
> If he bags it after seeing how it turns the lot of us into loonies, then he's about $700 ahead of
> the game.
If, of course, the choice is between *just* the *Mart bike and the $800 one. However, there are
other alternatives, and they have been pointed out.
> If not, he can put $700 in the finest contraption that we can come up with and still have a
> beater bike.
Or, he can have a higher-quality "beater" and still have $700. This game is fun - shall we play
some more?
> And remember, wild dangers were what some posters were warning us about at great length,
> apparently quite seriously.
It's fun to create strawmen, isn't it, Carl?
> Do any accident, injury, or fatality statistics back up the claims that bicycles not purchased
> from local bike shops are clear and present dangers?
Find a quote for that, si vous plait.
> Come to think of it, while all local bike shop owners and employees who post on rec.bicycles.tech
> are infallible gods who invariably agree with each other, aren't there an awful lot of other local
> bike shops routinely trashed here as being ignorant, incompetent, greedy, careless, and so forth?
Shameless hyperbolic rhetoric.
Are there any shades of gray in your world, or is everything black and white? I suppose, in the
computer world, "on" and "off" are the only settings that matter...
> For you in hindsight, spending more on a first commuting bike on a college student's budget makes
> sense. But realistically, how many tires, tubes, chains, gears, and brake pads do you expect to
> wear out pedalling twenty miles per week? What kind of expert maintenance is needed for what
> amounts to no more biking than I did as a kid?
If one only goes that far, then not much. Hell, the tires and brake pads would last damn
near forever.
They would on a used LBS bike, too. For the same money.
Now, if the person actually starts to ride the thing for pleasure, that $100 *Mart bike money might
have just as well been set on fire.
> They actually roll along with rattly bearings, creaky pedals, loose chains, low tire pressures,
> and the tiny noises that lead to long threads here. We just can't bear to admit it without a
> struggle.
Some do, and some don't. The bikes I have seen around colleges seem to be in relatively decent
shape. From casual inspection, of course.
If the choices were merely between a $100 *Mart bike and an $800 LBS offering, or if the *Mart bike
and the low-cost LBS offering were of exactly the same materials and build quality, then your point
would be well-made.
But they aren't. And it isn't.
> It's a little like fishing. Fifty feet of line, a hook, and a worm will often do as well as a
> carbon rod, hip-waders, and a tackle-box full of hand-tied flies, particularly when you're
> interested in eating the fish, not size or catch and release or seeing how light a line you
> can use.
Or like golf. When you pick up some used clubs at a garage sale, and take them out to a muni course
for a little afternoon fun with some pals, who cares? Ooops, that's *my* point. Sorry about that.
In every hobby, there are those who feel that if you don't have the lastest and greatest gear, or if
you aren't being served by the best professional in town, that you are rube in need of education.
Bicycling, golf, fishing, softball, tennis, shuffleboard, badminton, etc. etc.
> A four-mile round-trip college commute is hardly impossible or dangerous on an inexpensive bicycle
> that costs less than the shoes and pedals for what most of us consider the bare essentials.
And some of us would steer such a person to an LBS, and inform them that the used bikes are often
good deals. The fact that you vehemently object to this line of reasoning is strange.
Frivolously,
R.F. Jones
