"bicycle-shaped object"

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/...226678,00.html

My first, autodidactic lessons in bicycle maintenance were not happy
occasions. One issue, granted, was not having the right tools. Using a
pair of rusty pliers from my dad's motley collection at the back of the
garage, I would try to manipulate the locknut after fitting a new brake
cable. First, I nicely rounded the edges of the nut, which seemed to be
made of a metal only slightly harder than marzipan. Then, since to get a
grip on the nut to tighten it I now had to use all my strength, the bolt
simply sheared off - leaving its broken end snug in the thus completely
unserviceable brake caliper.

The real problem, of course, was not the lack of a full set of
bike-specific spanners, but having a bike with such cheap and
ill-manufactured parts that it defied efforts to maintain it. There is a
reason you see people on crummy bikes riding around with gears and
brakes that don't work, and it's not indigence, slothfulness or
incompetence on their part. These are bikes you cannot mend yourself;
take them into a shop and any self-respecting mechanic will most likely
refuse to fix them too. So you might as well ride your semi-functional
piece of scrap around until it fails completely or - better luck - some
misguided or desperate person steals it and relieves you of the aggravation.

Like as not, untold millions of these hopelessly inadequate
bike-simulacra are filling space in people's sheds, garages and lofts.
Unloved, neglected, no longer working, but too substantial-seeming to
throw out. Britain is not, pace Napoleon, a nation of shopkeepers, but a
nation of crap bicycle-keepers. You think "millions" an exaggeration?
According to the UK industry body the Bicycle Association, we bought
4.5m bikes in 2004 (the last year for which figures are available). How
many of these would you bet on being still roadworthy?

I say "bikes"; in reality, we are talking of the dreaded "bicycle-shaped
object", or BSO. As trade webzine Bikebiz points out, Mintel research in
2001 found that the average price of an adult bicycle was £107 - which,
despite EU anti-dumping rules against cheap Chinese and Vietnamese
imports being in force since 2000, is likely to be as low as £80 now.
Although there is plenty of research that shows how, say, bicycle theft
or the perception that roads are unsafe deters people from cycling, I
have never come across any about how truly trashy hardware puts them
off. Yet I am convinced that the BSO is one of the great menaces of our age.

It would be easy to blame the big chains such as Halfords for inflicting
it on the British public, but that's too easy. For one thing, its
400-plus stores account for only a quarter of the market; independent
bike dealers represent a third - the majority of which sell their fair
share of BSOs. And Halfords' internal franchise Bikehut now stocks
"real" bicycle-shaped bicycles, with high-end brands such as Boardman,
Van Nicholas and Condor.

Who is the culprit, then? Unfortunately, it is us, the consumers. When
we shop for flatscreen TVs, game consoles and MP3 players, we pay
hundreds and rightly expect excellence. But, when we're buying a bike,
somehow our mentality morphs into one that delights in buying a
"bargain" lot of nylon knickers at a street market stall.

Perhaps, all too often, it's because we're buying for our kids and we
figure they won't know the difference. But they soon will. What we need
to remember is that a bicycle is not just for Christmas.

A Muzi wrote:
David L. Johnson wrote:
A Muzi wrote:

seem odd that $1000 for a television or $400 for a monthly car
payment is generally viewed as 'reasonable', $300 for a bicycle is not.

Wait, I'm confused. $100 for a TV is reasonable, not $1000. Although
even 50 years ago, when my father bought one of the first color sets,
he paid $400.

Tourists are heard often to exclaim in our shop "Look at that! Three
Hundred Dollars for a Bicycle!!!" (we keep those near the front door).

Now I'm really confused. $300 for a bike is cheap. You want to keep
"tourists" out of your shop, put a $6000 bike by the door. Well, not
too close to the door.

In the contect of BSOs, which retail at $50, I meant that a quality bike
for $279 is quite a shocking leap for most people.
==========
That's why anyone shouldn't be surprised
to find out that a thief will try to
sell a Madone for a $100. In the
thief's mind, a bike at the max would
only cost $300.

fortunes have been made, trying to make
a diamond out of goats ass.

Where you went wrong on your rant is in this sentence:

"These are bikes you cannot mend yourself; take them into a shop and any
self-respecting mechanic will most likely refuse to fix them too. "

That's just rubbish. Bike shops make a lot of money off of fixing these
cheap bikes. They like to see those bikes come through the door.

Pat in TX

On Dec 13, 3:17 pm, "Pat" wrote:
Where you went wrong on your rant is in this sentence:



Not Vey's rant - it's that of the author of the article linked at the
top of the posting.

-snip vey's BSO diatribe-

Pat wrote:
Where you went wrong on your rant is in this sentence:
"These are bikes you cannot mend yourself; take them into a shop and any
self-respecting mechanic will most likely refuse to fix them too. "
That's just rubbish. Bike shops make a lot of money off of fixing these
cheap bikes. They like to see those bikes come through the door.

Maybe, but it varies.

There's a shop owner in this area who refuses discount-store BSOs entry
as a group, not even tire changes. Some sell only 'tune-up packages', a
virtual ban for BSOs.

You're right that most shops treat them no differently from any other
bike in for service. Vey could probably cite a counterexample.

Here, we sometimes reconnect brakes or reattach handlebars or unbend
bent gear changers or true-by-knee or similar at no charge, as the lack
of a service charge lowers the emotional level when it breaks again, in
a new and refreshing way, tomorrow.

Much though we span the full gamut of products (and product quality)
here, vey makes a point that the lowest level of current Chinese BSOs
really can be virtually irreparable after a few month's normal use. I'm
wan to assign 'blame' for that, it's just the world we have today. Does
seem odd that $1000 for a television or $400 for a monthly car payment
is generally viewed as 'reasonable', $300 for a bicycle is not. Tourists
are heard often to exclaim in our shop "Look at that! Three Hundred
Dollars for a Bicycle!!!" (we keep those near the front door).
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

A Muzi wrote:

seem odd that $1000 for a television or $400 for a monthly car payment
is generally viewed as 'reasonable', $300 for a bicycle is not.

Wait, I'm confused. $100 for a TV is reasonable, not $1000. Although
even 50 years ago, when my father bought one of the first color sets, he
paid $400.

Tourists
are heard often to exclaim in our shop "Look at that! Three Hundred
Dollars for a Bicycle!!!" (we keep those near the front door).

Now I'm really confused. $300 for a bike is cheap. You want to keep
"tourists" out of your shop, put a $6000 bike by the door. Well, not
too close to the door.

--

David L. Johnson

"What am I on? I'm on my bike, six hours a day, busting my ass.
What are you on?"
--Lance Armstrong

David L. Johnson wrote:
A Muzi wrote:

seem odd that $1000 for a television or $400 for a monthly car payment
is generally viewed as 'reasonable', $300 for a bicycle is not.

Wait, I'm confused. $100 for a TV is reasonable, not $1000. Although
even 50 years ago, when my father bought one of the first color sets, he
paid $400.

Tourists are heard often to exclaim in our shop "Look at that! Three
Hundred Dollars for a Bicycle!!!" (we keep those near the front door).

Now I'm really confused. $300 for a bike is cheap. You want to keep
"tourists" out of your shop, put a $6000 bike by the door. Well, not
too close to the door.

In the contect of BSOs, which retail at $50, I meant that a quality bike
for $279 is quite a shocking leap for most people.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Dec 14, 1:17 pm, A Muzi wrote:
David L. Johnson wrote:
A Muzi wrote:

seem odd that $1000 for a television or $400 for a monthly car payment
is generally viewed as 'reasonable', $300 for a bicycle is not.

Wait, I'm confused. $100 for a TV is reasonable, not $1000. Although
even 50 years ago, when my father bought one of the first color sets, he
paid $400.

Tourists are heard often to exclaim in our shop "Look at that! Three
Hundred Dollars for a Bicycle!!!" (we keep those near the front door).

Now I'm really confused. $300 for a bike is cheap. You want to keep
"tourists" out of your shop, put a $6000 bike by the door. Well, not
too close to the door.

In the contect of BSOs, which retail at $50, I meant that a quality bike
for $279 is quite a shocking leap for most people.

My boss is a millionaire.

Not just a millionaire but a multi-millionaire.

In fact, I've got no idea how much money my boss has other than
buckets and buckets of lots of money in whichever currency you feel
like calculating it in.

When I first started working for him he asked me to someday help him
buy a bike. We've never gotten around to doing it because I suggested
he start in the 4000rmb range (about US $500).

I've seen him spend more than that on a single business dinner. His
habit of meetings running over into lunch time and taking the entire
office out to eat means that I've personally eaten more than that on
his dime. With people he wasn't trying to impress who he was taking
out for his idea of cheap food.

But the suggestion that he spend any kind of real money on a bike for
him, his wife, or his kids, has consistently been met with extreme
resistance. I haven't even taken him to the bike shop yet because of
this. Because I've seen the kids' bikes. Rusting in the foyer.
Unrideable. Unrideable before the tires went flat from neglect. The
best of the bunch was 200rmb new. I know that bike. I know that
kid. I spent almost that much on a small gift for that particular kid
before he went back to Germany for school.

He can pick up my bike with one finger and exclaim how light it is.
He brags about my on bike accomplishments more than I do. An integral
part of his worldview of me is "the girl with the bike" and the
version of me that is presented to everyone in business long before I
meet them is "the girl bike racer," "the girl with the friends on Team
China," so much so that not a single one of my Beijing colleagues (who
I had never met before) was the slightest bit surprised to discover I
had taken my bike with me on a business trip 'just in case'.

I can get him into a meeting with a team to discuss a potential
sponsorship deal but I can't convince him that if he wants to start
exercising and wants to own a bike he has to start with something
that, at a bare minimum, costs more than the lunch buffet at the
Sheraton.

-M

Andrew Muzi wrote:
David L. Johnson wrote:
A Muzi wrote:

seem odd that $1000 for a television or $400 for a monthly car
payment is generally viewed as 'reasonable', $300 for a bicycle is not.

Wait, I'm confused. $100 for a TV is reasonable, not $1000. Although
even 50 years ago, when my father bought one of the first color sets,
he paid $400.

Tourists are heard often to exclaim in our shop "Look at that! Three
Hundred Dollars for a Bicycle!!!" (we keep those near the front door).

Now I'm really confused. $300 for a bike is cheap. You want to keep
"tourists" out of your shop, put a $6000 bike by the door. Well, not
too close to the door.

In the contect of BSOs, which retail at $50, I meant that a quality bike
for $279 is quite a shocking leap for most people.

I think one month net wage is a reasonable price to pay for a excellent
bicycle, two weeks net wages for a merely good bicycle, and one week net
wage for an adequate bicycle.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"Localized intense suction such as tornadoes is created when temperature
differences are high enough between meeting air masses, and can impart
excessive energy onto a cyclist." - Randy Schlitter