> > Oh, yeah. I've been pricing bikes lately. Holy cow, some > of them are > > pricey. ... > > Yeah, mine cost me about $950 last summer and it's far from > "high end".
Depending on what you're going to use the bike for, it's worth comparing it against the cost of other travel. In my case I could easily justify spending a huge amount of money on a bike. I don't need a car, so I don't have one, but I do receive a reasonable car allowance from. I am in a car share club (www.streetcar.co.uk) which is very cheap and convenient to use on the few occasions I need a car. So I reckon I have (notionally) at least £3000/year car money available to me. Realistically, if I were to buy a car I'd be spending about £15,000 on it, amortized over 3 years, so the actual cost would be much higher. I also spend £150/month on a 5-zone season ticket for getting to & from work, so that's another £1800/year. I could save most of that money if I cycled to work (I don't because of the lack of washing, locker and secure bike parking facilities). So I could spend up to £4,800 a year on a bicycle and still break even. The bike I have now cost me £400- 12 years ago. When I replace it, probably early next year, I will spend about £2500 on the new one, which I will have custom fitted and made by one of the 2 sepcialist framemakers who live within 12 miles of here. Given the figures above, the bike will effectively pay for itself in less than a year. I expect it to last at least 12, and probably more years, so it will cost me less than £5 per week to have that bike! And it will still be only about 10% of what I've spent on camera equipment over the last 25 years... Oh, and if I cycled to work, the government would give me 50% of the price of the bike. http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/ Expensive bikes are cheap. -- Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
