With the warm weather (hopefully) just around the corner, I started thinking about riding my bike to work again. Some new road construction last year has made for what appears to be a fairly safe and easy 9 mile commute.
So which bike do I use? I currently have a 10 year old mountain bike with a bouncy front suspension that doesn’t lock out and my road bike which when fitted with my aero bars and fast-forward seat post doubles as my tri bike.
In my local Performance bike store the other day I saw a single -speed bike from SE Bikes on sales for $179. That sounds perfect. The simplicity and ease of a single-speed nicely contrasts my typical “geek out everything” approach.
So I hit the web to find out some info on this single-speed. After reading some reviews I feel that if I buy this bike, they’re going to add me to the “chump” list that gets mailed to the scammers in Nigeria; I didn’t find one good thing written about this bike. Well then, I’ll look at what else is out there. Can you say sticker shock!?
I understand and appreciate the precision detailing in bikes and I know that my $1400 road bike isn’t anywhere near the high-end but I want a single-speed cro-mo frame with NO bells or whistles. $600 to start? Really? Ok, let’s break this down. My road bike was $1400 and has 20 speeds. $1400 / 20 = $70. I should be paying $70 for a commuter bike. Conversely, if I follow their pricing, $600 per single-speed x 20 means I should have spent $12,000 on my road bike.
Are there any good options somewhere in between?
October 27, 2009 at 4:42 am |
its pretty simple answer all though probably not one youll want to hear, one bike is more expensive than the other bike because why????????? name,,, everything comes down to name, hence why they plaster it all over bikes with stickers and what not. so basically you can have a ford escort or a ferrari scag,,,, both cars, both go forward, both will most likely get you from point a to point b which one would you rather be seen in,,,,, 9/10 the ferrari, so basically if you have a 100$ single speed, you know theres some dumb ass out there saying hmmm if we sell ours for x amount more people will think our car is better, its definiately not materials, some of the carbon bikes ive seen 4000-10000 dollars, and have less material than carbon/kevlar quarter panel for a car lol infact i can get a whole entire body kit carbon/kevlar AND a turbo installed, for a 350z cheaper than some mountain bikes,,,,mind you the car is designed to go 160+ and the body kit STAYS ON!!!!! so how can a bike with a 50-70% less material than a car quarter panel cost 5000+ dollars, simple young contractor.doctors lawyers ect ect with too much money and no sense throw down 5000000 dollars on a bike seat and the market explodes ^^ hence why you rarely see under 25 yrs riding any good bikes or riding at all, least where i live, all older people so in nutshell, when ever you see something where you know there isnt enough material to make that expensive, you can thank young rich stupid people ^^ now ask yerself,, howd did they get rich lol