Originally Posted by notfred
If you pay $3.50/gallon for gas, and get 20 miles per gallon, and drive 10 miles each way to work (5 days a week), it will take you 10 and a half months before you've made up the cost of the bike, and then you start saving $3.50/day every workday after that.
So, until you've been riding every day for a year, you can use that as motivation to get on the bike "But I *have* to ride the bike, it hasn't even paid for itself yet!"
I think I'm just a math nerd, so I had to figure out how long it takes an $800 bike to pay for itself in gas.
Well first of all i just want to thank everyone for all the responses!
As far as figureing out how much time i would need to spend to break even riding a 800$ bike, i think it would go by really fast. I drive a 98.5 Audi A4, and its chiped. So not only do i have to pay premium which just hit 3.91 the other day, but i also pay a **** load in insurance and even more in maintenance, i just hit 110000 miles on the car and i can tell you what that car is going down hill fast.... the first two months of 2007 i spent 2000 dollers in maintenance, and i still have another 1000 i need to do.
So, to put that in perspective the bike would pay it self of with out me even riding it. lol
I went to my local bike shop the other day and i test rode the
Specialized Crosstrail Expert It was amazing, it didnt have full size mtb tires on it so it rode very nice on the pavement. Another really nice feature i liked is that it had locking front shocks, so when i do ride on the pavement i dont have to waste my energy trying to fight the shocks, but when i want to go on the trail i have that option available. It was also very very light i could easly hold it up with a finger. I also test rode the Gery fisher like i said the other day, and it had road tires on them, and it also had lockable shocks. I did not like that as much at all because i felt that it was just a lot more bumpy because of the small tires. So thank you again for all your guys input. I am going to go to the store one more time today and try out a couple other bikes, but i think im pretty set on the Specilized Crosstrail. Ill tell you what i actualy do end up getting, and how everything goes
Thanks again!!
Chris