New Bike

I have been drooling over a new bike for ages and I am within a hairs breadth of getting it. I have been looking for about 4 or so months and I am nearly ready to part with the cash. Bike buying is a very drawn out event, but it needs to be. I am going to spend a fortune of this beasty. I am going to spend many hours in the saddle and I want it to do lots of specific things for my riding.

I have just been onto Yahoo Answers again. There are questions like, what size bike should I buy or is this the right bike for me? How should I know? I can tell you how to size the bike and a bit about set up, but as for knowing if this is the bike you should be riding?

It is a sad fact that many people buy bikes without actually thinking about it or finding out a bit about the model or style. If they are buying a car or a motorcycle, then there will be a fair amount of discussion, looking through magazines, talking to freinds and test drives. But a bike is just something you sling your leg over and turn the crank on.

There is a thread on MBR going on at the moment about a commuter bike that one of the readers found chained up outside an office. By the amount of rust on the chain and gears, this has been left outside and not ridden much. The concern was that this was £1000 worth of Specialized hardtail mountain bike. The problem is that it has no chance of getting anywhere near XC. But this is what people do. It is the equivelent of the Chelsea Tractor. A 4x4 driven by people in afluent London addresses who will never take it off road. This mountain bike is the same, an expensive fashion statement that will never be ridden properly.

The other day a colleage was sharing her thoughts on buying bikes for the unemployed so that they could commute to work without having to rely on the bus. She seemed quite pleased that she was contemplating spending a lot, in order to get a good quality bike for them £100. I didn't tell her how much I will be spending on mine.

The point is that, when I was looking at my next bike, I put a lot of thought into it. What sort of riding do I want to do? What do I want the bike to be able to do? How much is weight, travel an issue?

To answer these questions I poured through magazines, talked to all of my local bike shops and then arranged a test day, where I could just turn up and ride several bikes (5). I then went away and reflected on the ride, read some more reviews and looked at the spec sheets, but by that stage I already knew. The bike that I would be spending the next few thousand miles getting aquainted with and exploreing it's finer points, was the Giant Anthem X2.

But I suppose that, although I put a lot of work into my choice of bike, people still order bikes from supermarkets without even sitting on them. They spend a fortune of a machine that is just going to spend it's life left in the garden or chained up at work, half a mile away. What a waste.

Oh well, rant over.

Luck