Re: unabashed plug, Crumpton

dustoyevsky wrote:
>
> Chalo wrote:
> >
> > Now I find myself in Joe's position, thinking in
> > regard to Nick's bikes "why bother, when you could buy almost the same
> > thing on eBay for less than the cost of materials?"
>
> You'd have to ride and compare and be honest with yourself.

Ride it?  [break, destroy, hurt self]  Mmm... no.  Some other time and
some other bike maybe.

I just wrote off a coaster brake hub last night.  I was climbing a
little hill-- the thing went "pop" and decided it was a two-way
freewheel.  This after doing the same to a SRAM 7-speed gearhub a
couple of weeks ago and crunching up a tandem cassette hub a couple of
months ago.  I have better ways to risk my hide and depreciate
equipment than to reduce somebody's precious toy to the world's most
expensive and toxic kindling.

The folks who cough up phenomenal sums for bikes like Crumpton's and
treat them like prizewinning ****h-tzus can take a chance on them.  I
know such folly would only end in sorrow if I were to try it.  Nick
probably doesn't even have access to the ingredients to make a plastic
bike I would consider safe to ride.  By the time I set it up with
trustworthy components, it wouldn't even be particularly lightweight
anyway.

> > But to my eyes, every bike with
> > 73.5 degree angles, short stays, plastic forks, too few spokes and too
> > little tire clearance is so interchangeable with all the others as to
> > become invisible.  They all make me say "meh".  I wouldn't know how to
> > pick from among them except by weight and price.
>
> You're not picking from among them in the first place.

Right; I'm picking around them.  I could get something like that in my
size, but it would be inadvisable. Even the upgraded equivalent
(tandem fork, full spoke count wheels) would suffer from inappropriate
weight distribution, lousy ride, and excessive risk of wheel damage.

But the same things that make such bikes unusable for me, make them
marginal for practically everyone.  Isn't that the point-- to s****t a
bike with bird bones and stiletto heels that isn't really cut out for
life on the mean streets?  It proclaims that you ride bike only for
leisure, not practical matters.

Chalo