De-attachment

Now I like bicycles a lot.

I own about four of them, although one I have gifted away even though I am still the only one that uses it on a regular basis. Another I don’t have access to. And another has yet to be delivered to my presence.

There is a case for me having another bike for use in another city which is being added to my list of domiciles.

There’s a few options for solving this problem:

1. I could figure out how to get access to one of the two bikes that I own and yet don’t have. One needs a lot of work and money to make right and the other probably needs some sort of gearing added (yet to be confirmed, this) to deal with the hills at the new domicile. In both cases I probably I’d have to spend money on the bikes and transport the things around 800km.
2. I could buy a second-hand bike in the new domicile, saving the transport cost but probably still requiring the fix up cost.
3. Or I could just buy a new bike on-line and have it delivered. This saves all transport costs and also avoids any fix-up costs. However it does incur the premium cost of a new bike. Although, oddly enough, second hand bikes can cost nearly as much to fix up as a buying a new bike since parts bought on-line are quite expensive. If you don’t do your own mechanics then fixing up an old bike is invariably more expensive than buying an equivalent new bike. Even if you do, it’s line ball. There is another cost associated with buying a new bike; one of attachment and detachment … I will explain below.

Accidentally I found myself in a bike shop last week. I was caught out with a puncture and well away from my own stash of bike tubes, tools and pumps.

Whilst waiting for my repair I was compelled into a test drive of a brand new Lekker Amsterdam Elite Nuvinci Series (http://bit.ly/1ShrRbJ).

This thing has two novel features – first, the NuVinci CVT gearing system combined with the Gates belt drive.

Now I’ve been curious about these technologies for sometime and to find them on a bike that I could test ride was an event that I couldn’t miss.

Quite unfortunately the thing was brilliant. Better than brilliant in fact. And quite affordable at $1400.

But that’s $1400 I probably don’t have to spend. I could possibly get away with a couple of hundred depending on which option I pick and it would be better for the environment.

It’s not that I am overly attached to the $1400.

It’s just that I wouldn’t want to leave a $1400 bike tied up to a sign-post. Thoughts of potential theft would ruin my Zen, just like a Pom worrying about a shark attack whilst swimming at Bondi.

So in this instance I am attached to the idea of being detached from the worry of the theft of an item that I am somewhat attached to.

Oh yeah, and it wouldn’t be too cool to ride around on a shiny new Dutch bike either. But I suppose I could scuff it up a bit and change some of the bits (like the pedals, the seat, the stem and handlebars, etc) with nice old crappy bits.

Just for completeness, the shifter on this thing shits me too. It’s designed for morons that don’t ride bikes and it stands out like dogs balls. It looks as though it belongs on a *spit* hybrid bike. I don’t think I could live with it!

So it would appear that I am also somewhat attached to detached appearances.