Bicycling stuff is so expensive! How can I get things more economically?
Don’t get me started. I’ve been looking at high end road bicycling equipment since the late seventies, and the stuff still seems sky high. To make matters worse, the marketeers have gotten their hands on everything, and you can’t tell the hype from what’s useful without sifting through the buzzwords. On the other hand, there are some very good bicycle shops in the Triangle, and a nationally recognized mail order supplier. These people have to make a living just like the rest of us. It’s likely that more people have complained about the costs associated with my own profession (software development) than with theirs. Even so, the component lines that used to be slightly painful to pay for now seem stratospheric. I used to imagine ordering a custom road frame made to my specifications, and hand picking every component. At current prices, this would run upwards of five thousand dollars. And that’s just for competition hardware, not top end. And you know, a lot of it doesn’t have the jewele
