My son ended up with the aluminum mass marketed bike as his first purchase from his first real job. I was real proud to see him buy it on his own, the only thing I did to help was allow him to make payments over a month or so - but he paid retail!
I did NOT want to influence his taste, this needed to be his choice, even if his preferences were for carbon fiber and 27 speeds. The part I liked was putting both bikes on the roof of the Buick and going off somewhere to ride and *talking*. This is something we can do together.
Sometime last fall he started to show an interest in the bikes I was playing around with and he began to ask a lot of questions about the bikes that interest me. He has gone dumpster diving a few times and brought home interesting treasures. I still can't quite get him on down tube shifters, much less friction. He likes the idea of hot rodding something older, but gee, thats what I was doing at his age, it was just era when I did it!
Ann
>Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 11:35:30 -0600
>mitch harris says:
>How many of you who have cycling offspring help set them up on a
>classic-style bike? Don't mean a real classic that you'd worry about a kid
>taking care of, but something in lugged steel that helps develop a taste for
>the classics? How about components? For example, how many offspring of CR
>listers are set up with down tube friction?