Hobbes,
well expressed and reasonable comments, especially about newcomers thinking about this activity.
Clearly many of us here have been doing this for a while, and also clearly most of us are pretty passionate about bikes and love and appreciate the differences between bikes, riding bikes and maybe even working on bikes.
Heck I know so many people in the world can barely afford one bike, and then there are people who own multiple houses and cars and planes....so it's all relative isn't it?