Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Does it ever Stop?

I'm 18, and i have in fact NO money, infact i owe visa a couple hundred bones. Toronto is Due to get smacked with 10-20cm of snow. And i Still walk talk and breath bikes. I was hoping that when ski/board season would hold my attention untill spring. But no this year my interest in skiing is dwarfed by my lust for bike parts. I have no money and i dreaming building, 1 carbon(from scratch frame included) road bike, 2 conversions, and getting a Kilo TT, This spring alone,

So does it abate with age, as you mature and move on with your life, or does it get worse as you get more disposable income to fritter away on bike parts?

never. it never stops.

you have no idea of what broke is til mom and dad stop paying the bills. (not implying that they haven't already in your case. but most 18 year olds still receive some support, if not room and board)

bad credit will really screw you as you get older, pay that **** off before you buy more bike stuff.

some people get better at resisting the urges, some don't. peek over into the road forum for tons of examples of the latter.

buy ****, don't buy ****, just don't stop having fun on the bike. and srsly pay that visa bill.

does it get worse as you get more disposable income to fritter away on bike parts?

Yes.

It get worse as you age. Take myself, for example. I turned 33 this month and this year I bought a 2007 Kona Stuff MTN bike, a 2007 Kona Paddy wagon, built a fixed gear beater and I bought an 84 Honda Nighthawk 450 thats gonna bug me all winter long whenever I go out into the garage. Mind you, the Paddy and Stuff were insurance replacments on bikes that got stolen, but thats how it goes. The hobbies will get you if you don't keep it under control, or have a wife that will keep them under control for you.

there's really no need for neophyte enthusiasm to bring you to ridiculous levels of consumerism. focus your energies on riding bikes, not buying them. then - yes, it will ever stop.

marketing is great at fooling people into thinking what they currently have is not enough, when in fact they have more than a lot of other people.

desire is the cause of suffering. and marketer scum LOVE to create desire.
yes, there is valid marketing.

sometimes it doesn't stop, it just changes directions for a little bit— i put bikes on hold for a while while i saved up for some camera gear i needed, but my car still needs two new fenders, paint, and a few other things i couldn't fix myself. i got in the iro gb at a good time. pretty soon, though, it'll be over for bike purchases for a while.

It gets worse... :lol: :(

i'm 25. it hasn't stopped.

marketing is great at fooling people into thinking what they currently have is not enough, when in fact they have more than a lot of other people.

desire is the cause of suffering. and marketer scum LOVE to create desire.
yes, there is valid marketing.

"We live in an advertising culture where we are constantly told that the only thing that stands between our current state and wholeness is a particular commodity."

I sold a bike frame to stop myself from building it up...now I have two complete bike resurrected in it's ashes:o

I think about/look at/read about bikes all the damn time, but hardly ever buy anything. I've been planning to get a comfier saddle since early spring!
Disposable income has just arrived so I guess the course the disease takes will be evident by next may... If I'm on a new frame by then, there may be cause for concern:)

first you go from having enough money to upgrade from your conversion to a tarck bike. then you have two or three track bikes and a roadie. then you get a cross bike. then you have a kid and get a bike trailer. then you start wondering why all the kids these days drive so dangerously and you get an orange reflective jacket. then you think that your really cool brooks is just not as comfortable as it used to be, and a recumbant is really aero and great for long rides anyway. then you discover the joy that is wool jerseys, and start noticing that modern bikes are really ugly and impractical. then you hit mid-life crisis, and get a custom rivendell.

it is inevitable.

I won't get a rivendell. Maybe some custom carbon bike? That should get me over a midlife crisis really nicely.

I won't get a rivendell. Maybe some custom carbon bike? That should get me over a midlife crisis really nicely.

I respect a slow 50 year old on a rivendell way more than I respect a slow 50 year old on a bike made for a 22 year-old racer.

Its still here for me and Im 42 ;) but I dont think it becomes a BAD habit, its just a great hobby is all, as long as you can afford to buy whatever bikes/part you want and dont find yourself buying parts instead of paying bills or even worse buying food! I dont see a problem =) as for the credit? Clear it up, dont just make the minimum payment, thats the trick of it ;) then when your done paying it off dont get anything on credit that you cant pay cash for, that way you know you can pay it off right away and that builds good credit ;) I hate credit, at my age Ive figured out if I cant buy it cash I guess I dont need it :lol: I do have great credit but thats only there if some emergency should come up, but I buy everything else cash :D

marketing is great at fooling people into thinking what they currently have is not enough, when in fact they have more than a lot of other people.

desire is the cause of suffering. and marketer scum LOVE to create desire.
yes, there is valid marketing.

read this and reread this op

is there a support group for those that have a bike addiction?

there's really no need for neophyte enthusiasm to bring you to ridiculous levels of consumerism. focus your energies on riding bikes, not buying them. then - yes, it will ever stop.



The system is designed for you to crave consumption, thereby feeding a bottomless pit of consumerism instead of your soul.


I spent quite a long time building crap bikes and learning about the production, design, and maintainence. Now, whenever I see some campaign or object marketed toward me, I can scutinize it according to quality, rarity, and usefulness. Not a lot of quality things are rare, not a lot of rare things are useful, and nothing more useful than knowledge, tools and drive.

Get out of the rat race before you forget that you're the rat.

marketing is great at fooling people into thinking what they currently have is not enough, when in fact they have more than a lot of other people.

desire is the cause of suffering. and marketer scum LOVE to create desire.
yes, there is valid marketing.



Josh, you've inspired me. Thanks.

fnord

pitboss, happytruck, and genericbikedude:


+omigoshaliens!

The first bike I built,a road bike, I built up top notch. It cost a lot of money and I put it all on credit card. 4 years later I just now paid off the bill in full. That bike now sits in the other room, with the other ******* frames, waiting to be built up and sold, only needs wheels though. Now I ride a Centurion road bike, rusty lugs and chipped paint, with Exage components and biopace rings. For a conversion I ride a road frame I found in the garbage with a mish-mash of mid level components. I couldn't be happier with either of my bikes. I am no champion but I regularly ride with the "fast" group during the road season. It's not about the bike but time on the bike. I love to work on bikes and I love to ride bikes but I have learned that no matter how much money you put into a bike you won't be any faster unless you put the time in the saddle. Lastly, it's fun to watch the people on the unobtanium frames slowly lose your wheel when you reach down to shift your six speed drivetrain, yes I only have one chainring on all of my bikes.

It stops if you stop it. Be happy with what you have. Get rid of the credit card.

I'm 33 and I miss still miss working in the shop where I worked some years ago...I visit there every week :D



"We live in an advertising culture where we are constantly told that the only thing that stands between our current state and wholeness is a particular commodity."

quote of the day, man.

there's really no need for neophyte enthusiasm to bring you to ridiculous levels of consumerism. focus your energies on riding bikes, not buying them. then - yes, it will ever stop.

+1 (and don't go into debt for a bicycle... save your money)

It's not just buying Bike parts though, And i don't lust for a flashy bike, want a crap conversion for rain and snow, a nice one so i have an oldish fix, And the homemade carbon road frame is a project with costs ballooning at an alarming rate. and the kilo TT because ill be in the state so the whole thing will cost me less than 350 now that the candian dollar is worth more than the american. i will most likely will not end up with the kilo and The homemade carbon will proably not be a rideable bike untill 2009.

It's taking up and ever increasing portion of my life, My friends are getting sick of me and my bike retoric, instead of talking about somthing else im looking for new firends. and in fact the more people i meet the more i like my bike,

Ok, Kol.klink, in that case you HAVE TO read "The Third Policeman", by Flann O'Brien.

I have a '92 road bike that cost me about $450 new, and a '95 MTB that cost me about $650 new. I'm 31. I probably will buy a new bike soon, but only because I made a new bike a self-reward for meeting a goal. Others here may ride more seriously, or put on more miles than I do, and thus may need nicer, newer bikes more often, but I find justifying a new bike difficult.

I did the consumerism thing in the early aughts. You're 18 now, and you're probably going to have a couple of McJobs before you start earning in the middle class. When you hit the middle class, don't go nuts! Keep living your McJob lifestyle. Maybe focus on retirement savings, maybe focus on a rainy-day fund, or even start saving for a down-payment on a house. I took my first solidly non-McJob job as a chance to go surpass the Jones'. Looking back, with debt and expenses built around a $18k job, there were a lot of wise choices I passed up when I first started pulling down $30k. But hey, I probably had an XM radio before you, an MP3 head unit before you, and a Palm-based smartphone before you - far better choices than saving for a house, right?


If you want something, research it, plan to your needs, and don't borrow to buy. Save for a couple months, for example, and buy a high-quality bike for cash, keeping in mind that "high-quality" isn't the same thing as bling. Are you really so dedicated and awesome that a $4000 bike is twice as good as a $2000 bike? It's only worth the money if you are.

If you don't start learning to live below your means, you will be a slave to your stuff until your dying day. That doesn't mean not to buy good stuff, just have less stuff than you know you can comfortably afford.

That said, I didn't start getting a good cushion above sustenance until my mid-20's. Right now, I save about 30% of my salary into retirement, savings, and employee stock purchase plans. It took a while, but it's worth it. Driving a cheap car, not having cable, and living modestly translates into having a lot of freedom.

Coming home at night and knowing you have no debt is the best feeling in the world.

a carbon-fiber road bike with top of the line components is still about as expensive as a low-grade used car. and you never have to pay for gas. that's comforting to me when i want to buy things for my bike i probably don't need.

really get rid of that credit card...that is the best way to get into debt...and get screwed by it.
Keep your dreaming realistic...im in the same situation. I have a crappy ss/fg, and im not happy at all with it but its better than having nothing. and i dream about bikes now and i always dream about building a new bike for the summer...and im from toronto too by the way.

^listen to him. i owe visa like 2300 dollars. it sucks man. being a dumb kid once, i wish i had bikeforums to lead me in the right direction.

It's never enough.

You may feel the urge, but there's resisting it and putting yourself in debt because of it. I'm pretty good at resisting it, simply because I capped my credit card limit (no, don't raise it to try to get me to put myself into debt, you evil bank) and refuse to use it when I know I don't have the money in my bank account to back up the purchase. I'm going back to school this spring because I want to put my life on a better track, so any financial planning advice I offer is juvenile at best.

What I can say is avoid the damn credit card, be patient and work out a budget for what you can actually afford to spend. Welcome to learning how to use a spreadsheet. Then put that much (take it off your pay each month - immediately) in a savings account. Once it gets rolling it'll motivate you to keep going. I put $50 in my savings account every two weeks. By the time I use is (trip to iceland this coming August) it's going to be a nice amount.

Oh, and quit smoking. Run the numbers on that and it'll blow your mind.

Edit: You know the saying about how people work in bike shops to get deals on bikes, etc? Well, play that angle - never ever ever pay full price or even a regular sale price for something. You can do better. Be patient and wait for a ridiculous sale somewhere, race for a local shop and get a deal that way, if your work is something that could help the shop, set up a barter agreement, something, anything. Shops are (sometimes) run by perfectly normal people. In a lot of cases (I'm speaking from personal experience as a shop owner here) inventory is easier to give out than cash. We've bartered in the past with bikes/parts if someone we know offers a service we're interested in or if we seek them out.

^yeah, quitting smoking is hard. but damn they are expensive as sin.

Dude, 4 weeks into my fourth time quitting, I hear ya. I smoked for a decade and after my first season of racing this year I saw quite clearly what smoking had done to me. **** that ****, I want to ride my bike as fast as possible.

Edit: I don't know about you, but cigarettes are ridiculously expensive in Canada now. I used to smoke about a small pack/day. That would run me $65 or so per week and over three grand per year. How much bike swag would that buy you? It's buying me a new 29er and a new cyclocross bike in 2008 - I can't wait. :)

Well thanks for the advice, well to be fair i owe them like 300$, i get check today and payday's tuesday.
Thats getting paid off. I work in a shop now and get 50% off all parts you can get from lambert.

It's all cool as long as

1. You don't get into debt for it.

2. You remember that the more important thing is actually riding the bikes rather than buying new bits.

If 2 stops being true buy a car and go to show and shines.

You're not alone. I finally decided 2 bikes is enough for me and i sold everything else. That was a big step. Now i want to improve the 2 bikes i have all the time.. for example, i want the $100 EAI Goldmedal cog for no reason other than I've basically got the same problem you do! Good luck.

Low self-esteem makes me want to go shopping...

in general if you have a decent setup: putting more money into your bike will NOT make you have more fun on it.

it also won't make you any better at it. if anyone was wondering...

It stops when you make it stop. Theres no reason to crave so much **** you dont need.

I love all the anti-consumerist rhetoric but let me ask one quick question.

Do I seriously get to buy a Rivendale when i hit the 30's?

Low self-esteem makes me want to go shopping...

.. or a bad day ("I deserve something nice for myself"), or a boring day ("I'll buy this to fill the void in my life").

2. You remember that the more important thing is actually riding the bikes rather than buying new bits.


Too true, man.. I thought I had it licked with my Cannondale. It was durable, comfy, and I felt fine commuting and even riding long distances on it. Plus I could swap the bars and ride it on the track. But them OMGFRAME and OMGDISCWHEEL and WTFPAINTJOB and I'm down a grand. I sold a great conversion (no regrets), and I'll probably flip my road bike next season if this current build works out (easily switched between fixed and 8spd). So my only consolation is that I'm thinning out my stable. Hopefully I'll be down to just two bikes when this all is done.

Wait.. except for my college beater. But that'll actually be a beater. I hope. I'm setting a limit of $75 on it.

Good luck, man. Good luck.

They key is keeping your desires in line with your income. Why waste your time coveting something you don't have the money for?

+ on trying to get rid of the credit card, it could end up causing you a lot of trouble if you like shiny things.

my problem is i'll buy an old schwinn to canibalize for parts for my other old schwinns, but then i can't just get rid of the frame. so then i have to build that up for cheap, but still sell it for less than the build cost. And sometimes it's hard to sell b/c I'm afraid the new owner won't take care of them. Sheesh. My goal is to have the conversion/beater, the road bike, and the cruiser and nothing else by summer.

tomorrow is buy nothing day

good place to start