Originally Posted by
Johnny Alien
What I can't figure out about this thread on a whole is that 99.9% of the Bike Forums discourages people from ever buying a department store bike (and rightfully so). And here is a thread dedicated to how it's a really good idea if you are good at bike maintenance.
No matter how good I think that with Craigslists used bike there are way more options than this one and no one on Bike Forums should make this sound like a good idea.
You lost me a little on the last sentence but I think your saying get a bike from Craigslists. This was a big back-and-forth argument in the old (blue) Denali thread. One counter-argument was that there are areas in the country (United States) that just don't have a thriving trade in used "bike shop" quality bikes.
I live in extreme sounthwest Virginia. The county I live in (Lee) has around 25,000 people in it. I know of one other adult in this county that rides a bike. There are no bike shops, and as far as I know never has been one in this county. The closest bike shop that I know of, about a 45 minute drive, is across the state line in Kingsport, Tennessee. It stands to reason that if you don't have a number of people buying new quality bikes then there is not going to be many used bikes available. The time I checked Craigslist I only found listings for higher popluation areas, my immediate area did not even "show up" as existing.
To be fair I do see more adults bicycling in Wise county (a Virginia county next to Lee which doesn't have a bike shop either), and there are shops in the "Tri-City" area in Tennessee (Kingsport, Bristol, Johnson City) and consequently you can find some bikes listed from the Tri-City areas in the newspaper/internet "want-ads", but most sellers are 45 plus minutes away.
Apparently some on BF have 3 or more bike shops within 20 miles of their home and see a lot of bikes moving locally on Craigslist. I imagine (very unscientifically I admit) that the oppprtunity to score a nice used bike here (in Lee county Virginia) is like 1/20th the chance that exists in an ideal location (with more shops and more bicyclist). fewer (competing) options makes the Denali more attractive.
I see a bit of a "catch-22" with the Denali: If you know a bit about bicycles (and have mechanic skills) you can make the Denali work for you...........If you know a bit about bicycles (and have mechanic skills) why would you choose to purchase a Denali? The old (blue) Denali thread turned into, at times, a "class warfare" debate which I'm surprised hasn't happened in this thread.