Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

Bike

I can’t choose a bicycle. The selection in local shops is limited, and I don’t feel like ordering from a catalogue—I want to see what I’m buying. I could drag glamour and discourse into this, but I won’t; I’ll simply explain the problem.

First, a little about bicycles. The quality of the "components", that is, all the other parts of the bicycle apart from the frame, depends mainly on the price and only to some extent on how well-known the brand is. Why? Because the components on decent bikes are always Shimano or SRAM, and the model corresponds more or less to the price. The conclusion is that you should buy whatever you like the look of and that suits how you plan to use it. What I need is actually a fairly simple bicycle for riding around the city. But of those, the only one whose looks I like is the Scott Sportster P4, which is overpriced (375 ls =  735$), meaning its components are much worse than those of a bicycle in the same class from another manufacturer.

A grey Scott Sportster hybrid bicycle with front suspension, black tyres, and straight handlebars, positioned against a white background.


I also like the look of the Giant Yukon. But it’s a mountain bike, so it’s not particularly well suited to my needs, although it has good components (though the manufacturer’s website lists worse ones? strange). And once again, it’s expensive.  (375 ls =  735$).

A Giant Yukon mountain bicycle with a two-tone blue-and-white frame, shown from the side against a white background.
The one in the picture is blue; the one I saw was black.

The bottom line can be summed up like this: on one side there’s my inner cheapskate, on another there’s the urge to show off, and on the third there are pragmatism and common sense.