Actually, a quick scan of my mother's basement bicycle storage room in NYC indicates that certain bikes tend to get used a lot. Strangely the Carbon Fiber expensive bikes had their tires pumped up rock hard and everything looked greased up and ready to go. Another kind of bike seemed well used too. There were several old steel bikes in similar street warrior condition. One was a Peugeot PX10 with tires that looked to be the standard touring size rather than the slim racer's tires. Two others were chipped and scratched, well used old low end classics set up in street fighter mode. The heavy suspension mountain bikes feel like ponderous behemoths and I think the average person quickly looses heart on them. The excercise equipment that seems to bore people the most are the multi cable bench based wonders, the Bowflex, the Susan Sommers inner thigh excersicer, anything that Tony Little makes and anything that involves abdominal crunches which are a movement designed in hell strictly for masochists. Bicycling, yoga, frisbee, walking and sex are physical activities that the most number of people seem to never tire of. Whereas you might be able to pick up a discus from ancient Rome still in it's original wooden storage container and complete with instructions in Latin .... practical sport bicycles always seem to get used by someone. While only a glutton for punishment will get on a stationary bike, a lightweight bike of the kind we prefer will move effortlessly at reasonable speeds up to 13 mph or so. I often marvel at how efficient these devices are at those kinds of speeds. It's only when one wishes to travel at 15 mph or up that the heart starts to labor. This is the main reason why lightweights are such a thrill. For very little expenditure of effort you can feel the wind in your face, watch the terrain quickly change or easily beat the crosstown bus. The kind of bikes I would most enjoy owning often have more miles on them than I would like by the time I get my hands on them. I can't tell you how many people I've introduced to lightweights whose first reaction is something like ..." Wow - this bike seems to go all by itself! I barely have to do anything!"
Garth Libre in Miami Fl. USA
ORIGINAL POST *********** I suspect there will be a goodly number of today's plastic framed bikes still in good condition in 50 years time given the fact that many bikes are purchased as an impulse buy and once the reality sets in that using the bike requires physical work, the bike gets thrown into the closet/garage/storage along with all the other exercise equipment that seemed like a good idea at the time but as is often the case, the couch and remote seem an even better one. There are at this very moment probably five or ten multithousand dollar perfect replicas of Lance's TdF Trek being stashed between the Bowflex and the tennis racquets in someone's garage, never to be used again, and there are probably barely used 2000 year old fitness devices (As advertised at the forum! No payment until 28 BC!) buried under Rome. Human nature is timeless.
We should be glad people are that way too, it accounts for the apparently almost inexhaustible supply of barely ridden classics that often supply and sustain our hobby.
Kurt Sperry
Bellingham, Washington
USA