Originally Posted by
tudorowen1
You can put inline skate board wheels on for next to nothing and you can buy a bike bag in Thailand for made by Vicinta..fabulous bags which many Brompton owners use for $25..
I can tell you..no Taxi or bus driver in Asia will mind if his seat gets a bit dirty..majority of seats are plastic covered and many seats are wooden on trains..
If I needed to, I could make a whole bike. Do I want to? Not really - I have enough many projects on my plate. I go to the market to get something as close to my needs as possible, but also to figure out what is possible and what the reasonable needs might be. Usually I fiddle with the purchase anyway, but it is best if I do not need to it right away.
Regarding the transportation, should I also dress up myself in a plastic bag??
Originally Posted by
tudorowen1
I bought a bike on Ebay for $25 USD....an old Dahon clone ..steel.6 speed..20 inch wheel..Used it in Thailand the last 4 years in the winters....Last December rode it 300kms on a weeks tour down in the south of Thailand..
My first bike cost $10 at auction. Did it fulfill its role? Yes, it got me into biking, even though it was of poor quality. I could not even recognize the quality then. My current two Dahons are third-world models, on a junky side, purchased $100 apiece new. For the purposes I bought them, they fully fulfill their role and I made wonderful excursions on them. Still if I go to the market and want to buy a bike that will be of major use, I first care about quality and only second about the price. This is because the price spread out over years of use, or compared to the overall costs of world travel, becomes of reduced relevance. To add, it is very common to buy something second-rate and to start longing for something better after a while and getting the first-rate product that one should have purchased in the first place. Then buying the second-rate cheaper product turns out to be actually more expensive.