Cambridge

Vivian wrote:
They are all university students!

And secondhand bike prices are silly-expensive. A beaten-up baker's boy
bike sells for something like 50-70 quid at a shop/market stall. Of course
you can buy a Chinese feels-like-it's-cast-iron bike for not much more that
that, but if the baker's boy will get you from A-B (by-and-large it will)
then why spend more on a flash-looking bike that'll probably get nicked?
Particularly if you arrive in October and bikes are frantically selling out.
The favoured tactic of bike dealers is to go to the landfill site/recycling
centre and buy up all their scrap bikes, then do them up.

I've always wondered about setting up a business buying secondhand bikes
from non-cycling cities and importing them. One day...

Theo

"Geraint Jones" alid
wrote in message ...
rowman wrote:
| After spending an enjoyable weekend at the Cambridge folk festival. I
| was shocked at the wrecks that the average Cambridge cyclist calls for
| the want of a better name a bike. What is it about Cambridge that leads
| the average cyclist to never use oil, change brake pads, make any
| attempt to look around at road junctions and never wear a cycling
helmet?

It's the same in Oxford. It's not /just/ the theft, nor the terrain.
It's the same anywhere where a large enough percentage of the population
uses bicycles.

Apart from the theft and the flattness, the other thing that's the
remarkable about Cambridge is that most of the people you see on
bicycles are not cyclists. They're just getting around. If a large
enough proportion of the population uses bicycles, there will be a lot
of people who use bicycles and think of them only as a means of
transport, and not as a machine.

It's the same with m*t*r c*rs in most places -- haven't you noticed
the m*t*r c*rs with rusty bodies, defective lights, worn tyres, noisy
exhausts and dripping oil?

Not as much in recent years as, say, twenty years ago. MOT tests have seen
the average standard of maintenance improve.

Hopefully something similar will be introduced for bikes.

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:21:14 +0000, ian henden wrote:

It's the same with m*t*r c*rs in most places -- haven't you noticed the
m*t*r c*rs with rusty bodies, defective lights, worn tyres, noisy
exhausts and dripping oil?

Not as much in recent years as, say, twenty years ago. MOT tests have
seen the average standard of maintenance improve.

Hopefully something similar will be introduced for bikes.

Do we really need this? What is the actual incidence of poor maintenence
of bikes causing injury or damage?


Mike