The rich and the poor cyclists

I joined two bike brand/model enthusiast Fb groups for entertainment. And education.

One is for the discount Polygon Siskiu fans and it is full of upgrade talk. Which I find to be fascinating. After all, my early years in MTB riding featured a fair bit of upgrading trying to improve the performance of relatively inexpensive starting platforms. Most of it is related to over-forking (which needs caution) but there are other questions and discussions as well. Two guys I ride with have Siskiu bikes so I have additional reason to keep in touch with user experiences for the models.

The other group is for the range of the MTB I bought. Mine is approximately in the center of the price range. There is some upgrade talk about these bikes, but it is not usually about overforking. Nor does the chat get dominated by the lower end builds (the H30 for example). No, this one seems to feature a lot of people with models / build kits on the ridiculously overpriced side (I.e. more expensive than mine). Their upgrade chat is about even more absurd bits to further lower the weight and….

Upgrading their 2020-2022 models with a newly redesigned 2023 model.

I bet they lease their cars and turn them over every 3 years.

The other day I took a look at some used bike prices and tried to figure out what the per year cost would be. Looks like people try to get 67%-75% of the sales price for bikes that are 1-3 years old. Seems optimistic to me but who knows. Maybe that’s about right. Lord knows I’m riding several bikes that are over 20 years old on the regular. And this is where I hesitate.

Every ride I take on a bike that I own reduces the per-ride cost. Let’s say it’s $45 per ride at the moment. If I sell that bike for 67% of the cost, that per-ride cost goes to $15. This, however is a fixed cost for all of the rides to date, and the purchase of a new bike would reset the counter. My current riding rate says I need to put in four more years before the per-ride cost hits $15, but of course I get those years of enjoyment without resetting the counter to a high starting point again.

Advertisement