Money tight but bikes are free...Go figure!

[Janners BJJ Clunker Rider]

We hear on the news that money is tight, people are obese and the environment is collapsing. However perfectly usable bikes are free on Facebook Market place and people can't get rid of them. I love my old clunker of a pub bike, I lock it up with a cheap lock that if you sneezed on would break. It's only there so the bike doesn't fall over and be a nuisance. Nobody nicks it because you can't sell it!

The world has gone nuts, especially when I look at the price of the new stuff. Mad, I say mad, mad as mad man having a mad moment in a mad day. Proper bonkers!!!

Am I alone in this thought?

Janners (The Clunker Pub Biker)

PS The clunker is the Raleigh Mustang 1988(?) it's faded to pink and rust stains.

 

[KermitGKona88]

Been around a while and when you find yourself looking back at the bleak days of the 1970's and thinking yeah things were much better then, I think you know the world has gone mad...

Too many bikes and too much mass marketing, they were made too well, I saw a quote yesterday "A well maintained bicycle should last for 30 years.". I see from your bikes that is true and well beyond. Though I doubt so many plastic bikes will fair so well...

I salute you for keeping the Mustang alive and for riding it in such a punishing area.

 

[Janners BJJ Clunker Rider]

@KermitGKona88 It's the plastic box zip tied to what was once a chrome rear pannier carrier that adds the touch of elegance, panash and sophistcation to the Mustang.

 

[greencat]

It takes effort and food to ride a bike though - and humans are evolutionarily wired to waste neither. As soon as we could we were farming and riding horses etc. Today's world has just taken that desire to its logical extreme. We will pay serious dollar for convenience. It is only crazy people like ourselves that voluntarily challenge that built in heuristic. Trouble is the modern world has been so well designed to exploit our cognitive flaws that people get obese due to plenty of cheap food and no longer needing to use their own feet to get around.

 

[Janners BJJ Clunker Rider]

@greencat, indeed add to that the power and effectiveness of advertising and the problem extends again. I still regard it as utter madness though.

 

[bikeworkshop]

Trouble is the modern world has been so well designed to exploit our cognitive flaws that people get obese due to plenty of cheap food and no longer needing to use their own feet to get around.

It's not design tho, it's evolution

"And the public gets what the public wants"

 

[Woz]

Think it's all pretty mad myself.

Why anyone would want to rent a city bicycle over longer durations escapes me completely.

 

[Janners BJJ Clunker Rider]

@Woz . I saw this in Berlin (Bikes with blue tyres) and thought it all rather strange, but pleased to see so many bikes in use. Alas Plymouth has no such thing for me to ponder over and the hills here take some getting used to for the uninitiated.

 

[greencat]

Think it's all pretty mad myself.

Why anyone would want to rent a city bicycle over longer durations escapes me completely.

Someone who'd had theirs stolen and/or had no space to store a bike.

 

[Janners BJJ Clunker Rider]

Ahhh that's a point.