ThermionicScott 

I know I do. Don't let the Puritan leanings of some posters convince you that we are all like that.

Bike Gremlin

I've had my (main commuter, do it all, Mule) bicycle for 3 and a half years. Up to date, total cost of purchase, plus maintenance has been around 460 euros. I do around 4000 kilometers per year on that bike.

That makes it:

460 euros/12,000 kilometers = roughly 4 cents per kilometer.

My estimate, unless it gets stollen or totalled by a car, this bike should last around a decade, with below 5 e per month maintenance. I write everything down, so we'll see.

acidfast7

excellent ... shoot me some numbers and i'll make a chart.

Bike Gremlin

Bought new in June 2010, 350 euros (bult by a LBS).

[TABLE="width: 751"]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]10/08/2010
[/TD]
[TD]First service, bought odometer
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]10.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]15/03/2011[/TD]
[TD]New brake pads, new chain, shifers tuned.
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]10.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]15/08/2011[/TD]
[TD]Hit by a car. Wheels aligned, rear derailleur put, tuned brakes and shifters.
[/TD]
[TD] [/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]30/08/2011[/TD]
[TD]Rearview mirror, stronger sidestand and new pedals
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]20.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]15/09/2011[/TD]
[TD]New stronger front light[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]30.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]15/09/2011[/TD]
[TD]New tubes and tyres[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]55.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]21/11/2011[/TD]
[TD]Rear tyre replacend under warranty[/TD]
[TD] [/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]01/08/2012[/TD]
[TD]New chain and cassette (HG51)[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]30.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]15/08/2012[/TD]
[TD]New brake[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]25.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]09/11/2012[/TD]
[TD]New chain SRAM PC870 (old one was really bad)[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]20.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]09/12/2012[/TD]
[TD]Brooks Flyer seat[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]60.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]09/12/2012[/TD]
[TD]Platform pedals BMX style - no slipping in rain and snow[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]20.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]17/03/2013[/TD]
[TD]New no name chain[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]5.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]21/03/2013[/TD]
[TD]All the cables and housings replaced. Tuned brakes and shifters. Cleaned and re-greased bearings (wheels, brake pivots). [/TD]
[TD="align: right"]18.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]14/04/2013[/TD]
[TD]New chain (KMC Z72) and cassette (Shimano HG-51 11-32) 7 + 15 e[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]22.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]14/04/2013[/TD]
[TD]Cleaned and re-greased jockey wheels[/TD]
[TD] [/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]31/05/2013[/TD]
[TD]New chain (SRAM PC870)[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]18.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]10/10/2013[/TD]
[TD]New front tyre Continental City Ride 42-622[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]14.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]01/12/2013[/TD]
[TD]New rear tyre Continental Contact 2 47-622[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]15.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]05/12/2013[/TD]
[TD]Suspension corrected rigid fork [/TD]
[TD="align: right"]90.00 €[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



Home to work and back is 21 km. Shortest way. This spring I will start commuting on another (road) bike, but before that it was the Mule 99% of the time (except for about 15 days of big snow we get some winters). Odometer worked for the first year and it showed around 2500 kilometers when my commute was 3 times shorter. Now I guess it's a minimum of 4000 km per year, without joyrides, 5-10 km walking the dog most days and running errands.

acidfast7

sweet!

would you mind giving me a total distance travelled (so that I can do the math) ... use your discretion at totalling the distance.

also, can you tell me/us a little about the bike (FGSS/MTB/road/trekking/# of speeds)

it seems that all of us will hit an asymptotic value of between 4 and 10 eurocents with maintenance costs.

acidfast7

also, super nice chart by the way

Bike Gremlin

My estimate is around 12,000 kilometers until this December. Home to work, 5 work days, makes for at least 100 km per week.

As of this month I could track days ridden, just in case. Especially since in snow I use studded tyre MTB (but we rarely have snow), and as of this spring I intend to use road bike more (since group rides start right after work, and going home would make me skip those rides). Going on a short holiday tommorrow, but so far it's been around 130 km this month.

acidfast7

ratios of Slaninar:

12000km/7456mi
£680/€812/$1117
5.7p/km
6.8c/km
14.9¢/mi

does that look correct?

anywhere interesting on holiday?

Bike Gremlin

That sums it up.

Going around country, visiting relatives. Nothing special, just social.

noglider 

Slaninar, your English is excellent. What's your story?

Bike Gremlin

Way to get good up to date info on most topics from where I live was to learn English (or Russian ). My English is rusty now, but it used to be quite good.

Trying to get myself to learn German after giving up on Hungarian - that's a tough one to learn!


Work with computers for money, bicycles and motorcycles for fun. My main passion is football (the proper one, for men, not thoes sisies in full body armour ), then come the sheWhoMustBeObayed & family.



OT: my main commuter, the Mule, is a 3x8 speed Shimano Acera built "trekking" (Germans know why ) bicycle. Rear wheel is dished with decent stainless spokes, rims are cheap but decent no-name ones, while hubs are also Acera I think.

acidfast7

Sie müssen mehr Deutsch mit mir sprechen weil ich möchte besser Deutsch sprechen.

Hungarian is quite hard. I picked up some really basic conversational Hungarian while spending time in Bakonyoszlop, Veszprém and Balatonfüred.

I follow CFR Cluj because I spent some time in Cluj-Napoca and the stadium is right next some of my buddies houses. Got to use some of my crappy Hungarian and found out the Romanian sounds quite similar to Italian. There was a 50-year old woman we stayed with who was trained in English for 2 years during the late 70s and early 80s in "gymnasium." She was quite happy to talk with an American. Hungarians are quite proud and I was fascinated to learn about the history of the Hungarian kingdom (1000 years!).

German didn't help at all.

I need to get some slavic language training

acidfast7

in CPH for 5 days:

Bike Gremlin

My German wife corrects you:

Sie müssen mehr Deutsch mit mir sprechen, weil ich besser Deutsch sprechen möchte .

"Modal werb is always at the end in causal sentences".

STAZI wife always reads my mail and EVERYTHING must be correct. Her English is with a strong Arnold-Schwarzenegger accent!

Part of Serbia where I live, northern one, called Vojvodina (Dukeland is a liberal translation to English) used to be a province of (Austro)Hungarian empire, with a Serbian majority and lots of Hungarians and Germans. After WW2, most Germans were driven out (quite an injustice IMO) and it was inhabited by Serbs from poor parts of Bosnia and Montenegro - those people were starving and Vojvodina has lots of fertile land, perfect for raising crops.

All in all, Hungarian is mostly a part of culture, especially in the north. Hungarian neighbours are quite proud of their history: they were giving Turks (Otoman empire) a really hard time. Hungarians have great culture, I can confirm (generally) they cook great, their women are the most passionate ones and their work ethic is really good.

What you said about Italian and Romanian is true. With Italian being the most beautiful language (next to Russian) and VERY easy to learn. After 2 days in Italy I could speak sentences, understand basic signs and say what I need. It took me a week to do so in German, but still was worse. As far as Hungarian language goes, it is unlike any other language IMO. Nothing similar, nothing to compare with. My experience was that most Hungarian Hungarians don't speak English. Not good at all. I believe they are worse than the French.

As far as politics go: Hungary is giving Hungarian citizenship to citizens of former great Hungarian empire, so I could get an EU Hungarian passport. Nationalism starting to grow there - like in the '90s Serbia. I'm alergic to nationalism.


Slavic ones: Russians understand Serbs, but Serbs can't understand Russians. Don't know why (maybe we're more stupid ). All the former Yugoslavia countries are similar: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are all the same - differ like US and UK English - no more. They all used to be called - Serbo-Croatian language. Macedonian is somewhere between Bulgarian and Serbian IMO, but can be understood if you speak Serbian well. Slovenian is a bit more exotic - most Slovenians understand Serbian though.

One beauty of Serbo-Croatian is it has two alphabets. Cyrilic and Latin. After the break up of Yugoslavia and rise of nationalism, Latin was cast out of Serbia (now official alphabet is cyrilic), while Cyrilic was cast out of Croatia. Still, most people over 20 years of age can fluently read and write in both alphabets (used to be obligatory to learn them both). Also, Serbo-Croatian is a "phonetic" language. Everything is written the way it is pronaunced. So while it has 7 tenses (what do you call that, like in ancient Latin?), when you know what you need to write down it is easy. Also, reading is as simple as it gets - you see it writen, you read it out letter by letter and get it right. Whichever is easier.

Here's an example:

English:
I am happy.

Serbian latin:
Aj em hepi.

Serbian cyrilic:
Ај ем хепи.

noglider 

acidfast, not sure you're implying it, but you do know that Hungarian is not a Slavic language, right? It is not closely related to any language at all. The story is a mystery. It is not even listed among Indo-European languages.

I have lots of Hungarian friends and relatives, so I don't know the language except for a few words, but I know a bit about the culture.

acidfast7

I know.

Hungarian is a little close to Finnish and Estonian, but yeah it's different to everything else.

I think a slavic language would be quite useful to know when traveling (not in hungary per se).

Too many ideas in one post!

acidfast7

last commute of the year

stats:

633km/393mi
£396/$648 total
£0.63/km
€0.75/km
$1.65/mi

goal is to catch up to the ratios of bigbenaugust:

7239km/4495mi
£267/$438
3.7p/km
4.4c/km
9.7¢/mi

and of Slaninar:

12000km/7456mi
£680/€812/$1117
5.7p/km
6.8c/km
14.9¢/mi

photo:

cycloputer


stuff just arrived from Germany


gf's parents snuck in 54 bottles of French sprakling wine (brut!) ... that was a very nice surprise

acidfast7

also, I'm off to germany for 14 days!

so here's one of my favourite German songs (with some German culture mixed in!)

Bike Gremlin

21/12/2013

12,200 km so far
+7e for a new chain (KMC Z72, 8 speed one).

acidfast7

will get it with my next update ... Jan 10th or so ... keep the updates coming and Happy Holidays!

i like that 8-speed stuff is cheap ... it seems like the sweet spot for priceerformace

acidfast7

quick update:

in Germany and can ride my old MTB ... what a difference in two regards ...

1. The parts are much higher quality and you can really feel it in the drivetrain
2. I am much stronger know than before riding a single-speed ... I'm much more willing to mash now.

A couple a photos from the ride.

My trusty steed will stay in Germany!


Mooushausen!


der Illerkanal


good day for a ride


nice to get away from everything


good maps everywhere so that I don't have to carry one


I miss the Weinachtsmarkt in England


Good city wall


How could I say no to a "Wildpark"


Nice ride


Even the homemade signs/maps are great!

acidfast7

wild boar



more wild boar


can feed them if you like


large deer


small deer


price list (about as eco/well-treated as it comes)


other options


final options (if you're in the area and would like some)


largest deer, he didn't even care when I cam up to him


chapel in the middle of the woods


this bench is great place to sit in the sun


Mooushausen has it's own hydroelectric plant

acidfast7

technical details:

Bike Gremlin

28/12/2013: 12,300 km.

acidfast7

ah!

back in good old England! first working day of 2014! first bike commute of 2014!

stats:

651km/406mi
£396/$648 total
£0.61/km
€0.73/km
$1.60/mi

goal is to catch up to the ratios of bigbenaugust:

7239km/4495mi
£267/$438
3.7p/km
4.4c/km
9.7¢/mi

and of Slaninar:

12300km/7642mi
£682/€819/$1117
5.5p/km
6.6c/km
14.6¢/mi

photo:

lotsa scratches!


still unpacking my flat!