brandonobrien

First ride on my new (to me) Orbea Orca (link) and I was at a stop light when a motorcyclist rolls up next to me and stares at my bike for about 10 seconds then starts asking me questions about it and where it was made and stuff.

Pretty random but pretty cool too. I guess you don't see too many green Orbea's around Albuquerque.

I also ride a motorcycle though, so maybe he bikes too, who knows.

tagaproject6

That Orbea is really nice!

Buegie

a guy in my group has the same frame (same color too), it's definitely a head-turner

Specialized2k10

how much did you spend on that build?

ninjump

two wheels good! four wheels baaad...

brandonobrien

Ended up being around $2k when you count my new Garmin Edge 500 and all the other misc components.

HigherGround

He must have been obeying the "LOOK" sticker.

recon455

Cool bikes are cool.

A few weeks ago some random guy at a stoplight in a beater car said "Dude, that's a ****ing sick bike."

PaulRivers

haha, graduating from college, I needed a car but had about $200 to my name. My mother was trading in her car - a 1995 Buick Century with 90,000 miles on it - and offered to sell it to me, but didn't need to be payed back until after I got a job and such. I took it (duh!). I think it was about 5 months until I found a "real" job.

After a couple of years, I thought about getting something nicer, more stylish, etc. I started looking into cars - good lord! It was like $15,000 for anything relatively modern and such. The car I had was fairly reliable, so I stuck with it.

Around the same time, I started looking into buying a new bike (for one thing, I had discovered the bike I had was to big for me). I discovered that while $900 bought a decent bike when I was in High School, at this point it bought entry level. $1300 was more like "decent". $2k was full carbon. More than that was really nice carbon...after a *ton* of test riding and such I dropped $3500 on full carbon road bike that I really liked.

Once my friends found out how much I had spent on a bike, they started making fun of the fact (in a fun way I wasn't offended by, it was true) that my bike was worth more than my car. I kept making jokes that I'd rather run into someone with my car with my bike on the back than have someone rear end me because my bike would cost more to replace than my car. :-) I'd rather lock my bike up inside and have someone steal my car...etc etc. It was fun. :-)

umd

Somewhat similar, I was riding through a construction area yesterday and there was a 1-way traffic control guy. I had to stop and wait for the other side to come through, and he asked me about my bike. Any guesses as to what he question was?

chasm54

How much do you have to pay for a bike like that?

umd

ding ding ding. we have a winner.

actually he asked "how much does a bike like that go for?" which is a separate question from how much did I have to pay for it...

skol

I was going to guess he asked what your average speed was for the day...

bonz50

why are you such a fred???

chasm54

Acknowledges the applause of the crowd...

Almost inevitable. I've lost count of the number of times non-cyclists ask me how much my bike cost, and I don't even ride anything exotic. The next most popular is "how much does that thing weigh?" closely followed by "can you really sit on that saddle?"

roadandmountain

People stare at my bike a lot, which is interesting since I paid less than $600 for it!

I can tell they think it's expensive and want to ask questions: they probably think it was very expensive, but fortunately for me, it's a great ride that cost me very little.

Part of it's appeal was what I thought was it's understated good looks, but I guess other people think it looks fancy schmancy.

umd

Yep, and if I'm not on it, they want to pick it up too

CyciumX

somewhere between question 3 and 4 I get, "How fast can you go and aren't you scared?".

X-LinkedRider

Lol. Pretty much exactly the same around here.

"How much?
How heavy?
How fast?
How do you use that saddle?"

I ride a fairly low end Allez. I just smile knowing that most of the people I ride with sit on something worth at least 2x.

Honu

The correct answer to, "How fast does that bike go?"

is

"Depends on the engine."

jsharr

I get "Aren't you too fat for those thin tires?" quite a bit.

Guillotine007

I was stopped at some construction near Downtown Cleveland and one of the workers came over to me, stared at me/the bike for about 15 seconds and then said:

"so how many watts do you average for a 1 hour TT?"


no, seriously he asked me how uncomfortable the seat was.

runnercyclist

I always get "how far are you going?" and without exception they are AMAZED at the response.

darkadious

people are usually amazed if it's anything over 15 miles.

Guillotine007

you guys bike farther than 15 miles!!