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I feel this doesn't describe my experience and that of most Dutch people I know. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it doesn't really apply to my particular context which I think is pretty common over here. Let me elaborate: > clothing, panniers, lights, helmets, locks... The lock is the biggest expense for most people: in my case the lock was usually more expensive than the bike! Panniers are dirt-cheap, as are lights (if we bother, which I believe we should, but many of us don't). Helmets are not very common except for kids and high-speed cyclists. And some tourists. And nobody except for aforementioned high-speed cyclists buy special clothes. We just wear what we're wearing that day. > There's a fair amount of things on a bike that, like many other mechanical things, can need looking after to keep running well - new tires and tubes, CO2 cartridges if like me you are too lazy to manually pump, chains, cassettes, lubricant, wheels (eventually), brake pads/discs. It's a kind of point of pride, especially for men traditionally, to fix your own bike if you have a flat. Generally speaking the same goes for tires and chains, although we sometimes go to a bike shop for that. Often though we just keep going until the chain snaps or the bike gets too slippery on wet roads. That doesn't seem to happen much though, which perhaps has something to do with the kinds of bikes we ride and how we use them. And of course the fact that there's a decent chance that the bike will get stolen or we buy a nicer, cheap, second-hand bike in the interim. As for brakes: most bikes don't have the squeezy-hand-style brakes that do seem to be annoyingly needy. We generally have the back-pedal style that I've never ever had to replace. And pumps are so ubiquitous that I've never had to own one myself. |