I find myself hemorrhaging my student-life budget into cycling, and have basically my whole life. Whether it's a new bike, or new gear (GPS today really hurt!). That said, I do think that for a certain demographic (namely the younger crowd, without a career yet) the "if you want to make it happen" motto applies. I paid tuition and rent in Vancouver, and happily rode the whole time. I worked for it, and took no holidays or weekends between work and school for most of my teenage years, but it's possible.
Currently I'm on a steel HT MTB and aluminum road bike. They're quite nice, but not super-wagons, and I have fun. I'm not entirely convinced full-suspension is necessary, and I'm pretty certain most people are way over-biked (which is fine), point being you can have fun on what you can afford.
That said, the other day on Facebook there was a discussion about bike price increases. I'd love to see something that quantitatively compares what you get now for what you got years ago, taking into account things like inflation and commodities (even if rough). Some quick math pegged inflation as contributing roughly 20% to the cost of a bike in Canada over the last 10 years. I'm not sure, but maybe bike prices have stagnated relative to the broader economy but salaries have stagnated? I'd love a quantitative investigation into the bike cost increase "trend" from NSMB!
July 17, 2018, 5:50 a.m. - Sanesh Iyer
I find myself hemorrhaging my student-life budget into cycling, and have basically my whole life. Whether it's a new bike, or new gear (GPS today really hurt!). That said, I do think that for a certain demographic (namely the younger crowd, without a career yet) the "if you want to make it happen" motto applies. I paid tuition and rent in Vancouver, and happily rode the whole time. I worked for it, and took no holidays or weekends between work and school for most of my teenage years, but it's possible. Currently I'm on a steel HT MTB and aluminum road bike. They're quite nice, but not super-wagons, and I have fun. I'm not entirely convinced full-suspension is necessary, and I'm pretty certain most people are way over-biked (which is fine), point being you can have fun on what you can afford. That said, the other day on Facebook there was a discussion about bike price increases. I'd love to see something that quantitatively compares what you get now for what you got years ago, taking into account things like inflation and commodities (even if rough). Some quick math pegged inflation as contributing roughly 20% to the cost of a bike in Canada over the last 10 years. I'm not sure, but maybe bike prices have stagnated relative to the broader economy but salaries have stagnated? I'd love a quantitative investigation into the bike cost increase "trend" from NSMB!