this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Year-round bicycle fun
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It's the cool season, not the off season.
Winter cycling only seems crazy if you haven't tried it before. With the right gear, it can be enjoyable and very rewarding.
So let's share our experiences, and please feel free to ask questions!
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Yeah bikes are only cheap compared to cars when you factor in insurance and fuel and repairs etc. I have never spent more than 5k buying a car (used) and it's initial tune up/fixing of problems, and each has lasted me at least 200,000 km. The spending during those kilometers ends up being insane, and even my parents new (in 2011) van ended up needing more repairs than any of my used cars.
The bike I'm still way under the cost of a single car over it's use time but nowhere near that amount of travel yet. The tech is fairly stifled and new stuff is stupidly expensive. SRAM's high end transmission is still just exposed gears and chain and super expensive. If I want any of the sealed transmission types with belt for bike like IGH CVT at the wheel or pinion gearbox at the cranks it's either more than double my bikes initial cost or even more than my longest lasting car. If not that then just straight up unavailable.
Yeah, I have owned a few race bikes, a couple hardtails, and I currently own a recumbent and a Cannondale Habit 4. I've always felt that bicycle stuff is over-priced. The bike shops will quote economy of scale principles to you, but these bikes are built at a huge scale, so that's kind of a silly argument to me. I get the R&D side of things too, but realistically I think there's enormous markup on premium bicycle components. Which brings us back to the original comment. Nice rims are heckin expensive, so owning two sets sounds expensive. Haha. It's a good solution though, and like you said, it's still a lot more affordable than a car.
Oh that's the other catch, I wouldn't call my rims nice lol. They are just looped aluminum extrusion and the weld is almost a corner instead of being round. I'm actually shocked at how decent it is after dialing in the spokes. I just put the much nicer winter tires on the stock rims which while not marked for tubeless in any way, do work tubeless.
If I had money to burn I'd also get a recumbent but they are freakishly expensive. If my welder didn't get stolen I probably would have made my own by cannibalizing the kid bikes my parents never got rid of when we outgrew them.
Haha. Yeah that's one way to do it. 'Not nice' bike components are pretty affordable.
I found my recumbent at a yard sale. It was hand made by some local bike company in Seattle. The guy wanted $500 for it, but I had a Scattante race bike with a carbon fork and a Shimano 105 groupset that I didn't want, so we traded. I bought the race bike at Value Village for $185 and commuted on it for a couple years before trading it, so I got an all-around great deal, and he got a sweet race bike that he wanted.