Originally Posted by
longbeachgary
Seems like everyone is missing the point of the thread. No one is saying to buy a bike that doesn't fit. What he's saying is that some here and in real life, judge what others ride, wear, spend and look like based on their own needs and wants and not the needs and wants of the other rider.
What I always say is that you can't buy a bad bike (even a Walmart special has its applications) but you can buy the wrong bike (a Walmart special is the wrong bike for fast group rides).
Couldn't disagree more-- you can make anything
do (and it doesn't take much to get from an apartment to a beach bar with a coconut full of margarita or backpacking from the frat house to Biology 101), but... a real love of bikes and cycling comes from an appreciation and fascination with what seems to me to be an ingenious and continually evolving (even if only incrementally) way to translate the relatively small amount of horsepower a human is capable of generating into mph and miles/day on a modern road bike or
jeeping it in the outback or off-road trail that may go back hundreds of years-- e.g., to the time of Father Serra on a day's hike between missions.