livedarklions

I'm ignorant of such things, but if the aero gloves are not much more expensive than other gloves, are they really much of a waste of money for any cyclist inclined to wear gloves anyway?

livedarklions

It really is basically the same story every time with this kind of poster. They post some tired stereotype like it's something "edgy", then get all " I guess I hit a nerve" when someone asks them to back up the claim we're all tired of hearing. Honestly, I'm sure there's probably a few guys who buy the $6000 bike and never use it, but the idea that this is really common is an urban legend as far as I can tell. And if it does happen, I wouldn't bet on it being just fat guys, old guys or old fat guys.

indyfabz

See post 536.

And I am starting to smell a sock.

delbiker1 

Just what BF has been lacking, BS.

big john

I know I'm a week late but I have. Had the cheap plastic ones break and the cheap aluminum, too. Started using the Tacx Tao plastic coated steel because I liked the way they felt sturdy. The tab extending from the cage to support the bottle would break off when hitting a square edged bump with a full bottle on the seat tube and the bottle would slide down to the bb. First time I thought it was a fluke, second time the shop gave me another. I think I broke 5 before I stopped using them (stubborn).

And they really didn't grip the bottle. I hit a dip at speed, above 25 at least, and the bottle came up out of the cage and I tried to trap it against the bike with my leg. Instead, it went between the seat tube and the rear wheel and locked the wheel. Thought I was going to high side but luckily I got my weight shifted and slid to a stop.

Been using stainless steel cages since then with good results.

big john

BFBS?

Maybe a sock, he/she/it sounds very similar to another someone who popped up recently.

terrymorse 

For the rest of us, aero gloves are just gloves.

I do like a minimal glove, though. If an aero glove had a thumb wipe, and it was reasonably priced, I might give it a try.

tomato coupe

Wiping wrecks your aerodynamics, so a thumb wipe is counterproductive.

rsbob 

You should. They are ‘fun’ to remove. The two pair I have use minimal padding. % gain in speed? Nothing so far but they look cool but don’t do much for wiping sweat. I believe the ribbing and removing the thumb wipe makes them aero. It;s the story of having your cake and…

rsbob 

Bought their seatpost double as well. Was not talented enough to get the bottles back in the holders on the fly. Had them for a couple of months and round-filed them.

Koyote

Can you see up his ass? ‘Cause Highcad pulled it right out of there.

rsbob 

Uh, fortunately no and won’t get anywhere near, or low, to the Cad.

His lack of a reply with any validation for any claim pretty well capped it. Putting it politely.

Eric F

How much is "too much time" to be on BF? What is the correct amount of time? Does that amount of time vary from person to person, or is it the same for everyone?

Gear_Admiral 

And a lot of college students who are lazy and think about getting in shape and whose parents are rich. The kid thinks he or she will "get into biking," if only he or she had the right bike.

No experimentation. Boom! Straight to super expensive pre-built racing bike that weighs less than 5 kg, which will then collect dust after a few months because the rider got a flat and won't fix it or got muscle fatigue from riding more than half a mile for the first time ever ... or it gets stolen because the idiot used a Kryptonite megalock around one spoke of the quick release front wheel.

I have been to college in America and worked on a university for 5 years later in life. This is depressingly common. One youth will get and lose more value in bikes or bike parts in one year than I will spend in two decades. If anything, this has gotten worse in recent years.

Most students have simple bikes, but 1 in 50 in September will literally be the $5,000 bike chained up by the front wheel only and every one of those bikes will be gone by October, either stolen or sitting in a dormitory stairwell rusting up (well, not the carbon frame itself, of course).

This does happen. I am not going to defend my estimates of frequency. I just mean to say that when this *does* happen, then it is a waste of money. Same goes for any hobby or thing where a newbie goes whole hog out of the gate. Think of the person who wants to try archery and drops thousands on a brand-new bow before experimenting first. This isn't to say that X person buying Y equipment is wasting money, but that when anyone buys Y equipment and does not use it, then that was a poor financial decision. Some of those "someones" will fit into one or another stereotypes.

I just think it stands to reason that an 18-year-old who abandons $5,000 property didn't think long and hard about buying that thing and didn't work hard for that cash to readily abandon the thing he or she bought with thay money. These people exist is all I am saying, and they seem to be more common than mid-life crisis racing bike shoppers.

Koyote

I've spent my entire adult life (40+ years at this point) on college campuses, and I've never seen a student on a $5,000 bike. Nothing even close, in fact.

PS: I'd like to see some examples of these $5,000 bikes that weigh "less than 5kg." Please show me.

livedarklions

So you do know you definitely weren't the newbie me and tomato coupe were talking about, right? I'd hate for you to be under that impression because you've done nothing to be obnoxious.

I've been around campuses a lot including one very elite one with a generally rich student body, and I've never seen the above scenario. I don't doubt your word that you've seen it, but I really don't see losing any sleep about it.

tomato coupe

Sign me up for the $5000 5kg bike. In fact, I'll take two of them.

Gear_Admiral 

I wasn't under that misapprehension.

But I haven't ever owned a super expensive bike myself.

I ballparked the figures. Looking online, 5 kg was too low. It seems more like 8 kg for a carbon frame road bike. Whatever. My point still stands that some people go overboard into biking and then quickly lose interest. It happems with everything, but is the clearest case of a waste of money in biking. Calling a $120 pair of bike shorts a waste of money depends on who is buying.

As far as price, just searching online with Google and new bike shops online, a disc brake carbon frame model seems to go for $2,000-$6,000, with many between $3,000-$4,000. I was not that far off by saying that some are $5,000.

I cannot spot a $6,000 bike from a $3,000 bike in a line-up, but looking online, some brands I have seen go for the low end and others go for $6,000. The people I am talkimg about are not piecing together bikes from scratch. They are the ones going into the local bike shops and buying the tagged models that go for $3,500 and up. I have been in for parts and noticed middle-aged men with teenagers in college vicinities buying said bikes. It does happen. And when you are in an area with extremely low bikes per capita, you notice said bikes on racks easily. There is also a weird habit for newbies to get racing road bikes and very high-end MTB bikes ... in Florida, which is flat as can be. Yes, people are buying bikes for thousands and thousands of dollars and use them to commute around campus for a month and lose interest within a couple months. You see the bikes every late August and early September and then they are almost all out of sight by October.

Not you, lions, but the poster above you fixed upon my figures. I really do not think we need to quibble over whether a $2,000 bike or a $6,000 bike is de facto abandoned in order to say that someone just wasted thousands of dollars.

Eric F

Last week, as I was helping my daughter move into her freshman dorm, I saw a very nice Specialized MTB get unloaded from a pickup truck and added to the group of bikes that were later put into the locked bike cage adjacent to the dorm parking lot. Each bike was also individually locked to the racks inside the cage. The young guy who owned the bike never got to be seen riding his nice bike around campus because it - and most of the other bikes in the cage - were stolen on the first night.

prj71

Local high school kids that are on the MTB race team (NICA) have $5k bikes...more than likely purchased by parents. Then they will take these $5k bikes with them to college.

livedarklions

Well, like I said above, I thought this topic is only interesting if we stick to discussing stuff we ourselves bought that we decided were big wastes of money. I don't see why anyone's judgment of other people's purchases is anything anyone should care about.

Honestly, I don't see how you could know whether a particular bike or set of bikes disappeared from campus unless you can be on all parts of campus at all times. Also, there could be the possibility that they decided it wasn't the daily rider they thought it was and it's put away until summer while they're riding something else right now..

Koyote

If you can't recognize the difference between a $3k bike and a $6k bike, then why on Earth would you write a long post about how you've seen irresponsible college students bring $5,000 bikes to campus? You don't even know what they look like. (I think this is called "talking out of your ass.")

Read my post and cool your jets; I never wrote that college students never bring expensive bikes to campus -- I wrote that I can't recall ever seeing it in over 40 years (5 campuses). I suspect it is very rare, and probably limited to certain (expensive) colleges and universities...And the relative few that have cycling teams.

The nicest bike I ever saw on a college campus belonged to some freshman who sent me an email asking if he could join the local group ride. He showed up on his dad's Trek road bike, which was a mid-level hand-me-down --and then he thoroughly thrashed us and kept thrashing us for four years. He once thrashed me on his $500 fixie while wearing sneakers and cutoffs. (I was on my fancy road bike and wearing full kit.) Now he's wearing the WC Rainbow stripes, so I guess it worked out for him.

Eric F

My post wasn't intended to be contrary to yours. My post was illustrating that nice bikes very often don't last long at a lot of colleges due to theft, which would certainly contribute to your observations about not seeing nice bikes ridden by students.

I put together a late-90's steel Bianchi as a "townie" bike for my daughter, built from my parts bin, and includes some upper-end components. At the last minute, she decided to not take the bike until she got a feel for whether it would be useful (she also has a car) and safe. That turned out the be a really good choice.

Koyote

Probably depends on the area -- city vs town, etc. Also on security.

The aforementioned student and I built a bike rental program on our campus -- we eventually had a fleet of about 50 bikes which retailed for about $550 each. (We bought them in qty for about $300 each.) We rented each one out for the academic year for $20, and included a strong U-bolt lock...And the contract specified that, if the bike was not returned intact, the student owed us for the replacement cost. In about five years of running the program, I think we only lost one bike.

bbbean 

You are clearly a superior being. I can only hope and dream of someday being as rational and reasonable as you.