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Putting mettle to pedal
The last time I wanted a cycle, my choice was easy. Two wheels, pedals. No child could ask for more. This time, I'm considering joining a PhD programme in bicycle buying... (I'm sure I'll find it just under the HDTV-buying or coffee-shop-ordering programmes in any college brochure.)
- By Gautam Raja, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:22 January 29, 2008
The last time I wanted a cycle, my choice was easy. Two wheels, pedals. No child could ask for more. This time, I'm considering joining a PhD programme in bicycle buying... (I'm sure I'll find it just under the HDTV-buying or coffee-shop-ordering programmes in any college brochure.)
As with any big decision in life-marriage, career, children-bicycle buying begins with soul searching. Who are you? What do you want out of life? And when you go, would you rather be run over by a car or eaten by a mountain lion?
Unless you want to cycle underwater, there's a machine for your every specialised interest, from paved road to mountain trail.
Do you have long legs, ride on rocks, but also spend time on the roads? No problem.
Do you have short arms, a pout and jump off 20-foot cliffs? Easy.
And if there isn't a bike you like, you can have one built piece by piece from the ground up. (I'm reminded here of one of my favourite scenes from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The one in which Eli Wallach as Tuco goes into a gun shop and assembles a "super pistol" from the best parts of other guns. You can do the same with a cycle: buy a naked frame and choose every single part from a range of brands and quality levels.)
Soul-searching
And after the soul-searching, it's time for home economics and materials science. Here, you learn the differences among materials used for cycle frames: steel, aluminium, titanium or carbon fibre. The home economics? Oh that's easy, you can either buy the carbon-fibre frame or eat.
Of course, I could have just walked into the nearest departmental store and walked out with a $100 bicycle that seems indistinguishable from the real thing. But over the years, I've become a great believer in the "buy cheap, buy twice" philosophy. I'm reminded of my uncle who loves the saying: "I am not rich enough to buy cheap things."
At first glance, he has fantastically expensive taste in shoes and shirts, but when he shows you a pair of Italian leather shoes that look new even after 20 years, you begin to see the wisdom here.
I recently spent more money than is sane on a kitchen knife, but realise that I now have an implement that -barring theft or emergency tunnelling through concrete - will outlast me, maybe even my children.
Considering this, as well as the fact that it gets used so much it's never put away, it's the cheapest knife I've ever bought.
Also, with any specialised interest, there's a whole range of unknown brands that are usually far superior to household names.
Take, for example, the audio system world. There's a brand beginning with "B" that most people consider to be the pinnacle of audio system engineering-but a peek at an audio forum shows it to be hated with a vengeance.
A little bit of research often reveals that many so-called "high end" brands are either considered entry level, or are reviled pretenders. But applying this logic to an area one knows nothing about makes decisions very hard indeed.
I've spent two weeks researching cycles, reading about cranks and derailleurs, Shimanos and SRAMs, Treks and Cannondales. I've made Excel spreadsheets trying to work out whether one bike uses better parts than another and I'm now setting up test rides at various shops... all this time and trouble for a bit of recreation on the weekend. By the time I'm done, I'm going to need that cycle simply to work off the stress of buying it.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.
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