What does your Magic Kingdom of Awesome Cycling look like ?

Mine is full of old bicycles that I have rebuilt and restored... the last new bicycle I purchased was in 1983 and I find great value in these older bicycles but not everyone has the same skills and experience as I do when it comes to making things work.

So for them, I encourage them to get a decent quality bicycle and quality does not have to equal expensive but do tell people to steer away from the bottom end crap that is sold at the x-marts of the world that now seem to be carrying better quality bicycles at rather decent prices.

The difference between a BSO and a decent bicycle at x-mart might be less than $100.00 and if people choose to buy there they need to understand that there will be little to no experienced support and the bike will need some setting up...if they want a little more then they should go and see what the local bicycle shop has, which is a place where the primary business is bicycles.

Besides this, there are many hundreds of nice used bicycles out there but again, it is hard for someone with limited skills to be able to determine if what they are buying is a good deal so this can make things hard.

The bike I was riding today is 60 years old, it was a dumpster find and has been serving me well for nearly five years and the wheels underneath it have seen more than 10,000 trouble free miles since I got them and they too were reclaimed.

I appreciate well made bicycles a great deal as well made bicycles is what I do and the only bike shop I work at is my own... I do not sell new bicycles or even many old ones as it is a repair shop so in this, I have nothing to gain by endorsing one model or another.

I don't service many low end bicycles as even though my rates are more than competitive and what some would say downright cheap, this amount usually exceeds what anyone that paid 99.99 for a bike wants to spend on a repair as they can just go buy another disposable bicycle instead.

This disposable aspect is part of what is wrong with an x-mart bike, the way they are made is what is wrong with them, where they are made is problematic because of social, environmental, and economic concerns.

The Chinese were recently slapped with a tariff of nearly 50% on bicycles they were selling in Europe as it was discovered that they were dumping them below cost to make it impossible for domestic manufacturers to compete. I do not like this kind of provenance in the things that I buy regardless of what it is.