Originally Posted by
markaitch
this answer does not jibe with your earlier post or with the real discussion of this thread.
It doesn't have to. People are more complex than can be encompassed by a single argument on an internet thread.
are 40 yr old raleighs low-end bikes or cheaply bought c&v bikes?
Both. The Raleigh Grand Prix was the lowest-end Raleigh made at the time.
why do you need 5 of them if you just want transportation?
I don't just want transportation. Like I say, motivations are more complex than one discussion might suggest. I said that low-end bikes have no pretensions to be more than a mode of transportation and that I liked them for that aspect. But I never said that I only wanted bikes as a mode of transportation.
would not 1 of those bikes do the job?
One of them, the Jamis, is for hauling and touring. One of them is a runabout. Two of them were only $50 each and bought because I like old 'bike boom' bikes and I wanted to restore them to their original condition (which I did because any bike deserves more than to be left to rust) - I keep them because I need a couple of extra working bikes for when family visits. The other one was in very poor condition, so I stripped it down and it's sitting in pieces in my workshop because I'm rebuilding it to make it look like a 1930s Path Racer.