It looks like we’re getting back to normal a bit quicker than I thought.

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AndyRM

XOXO
Location
North Shields
Ahem.....he hasn't shown us the 12k bike. Just told us he has it.

He's put a few pics on the 'Photo of the day' thread an it's a lovely looking bike, but as @winjim said, there's ways of interacting on here, and generally OP has gone for what I reckon is a needlessly abrasive approach, which is why he gets the flak that he does. But as he's said more than once, he doesn't care, so it is what it is.
 

Ming the Merciless

There is no mercy
Location
Inside my skull
Ahem.....he hasn't shown us the 12k bike. Just told us he has it.

If I had a £12k bike I’d want it to go faster. I wonder if the brakes rubbing might explain his average speeds?
 

postman

Legendary Member
Location
,Leeds
The roads here in rural Poshshire are still very quiet. Cycling on the road is a relatively pleasant experience at the moment, although the number of potholes gives me cause to suspect that Elon Musk may be practising Mars surface EVA's in the area quite soon.
Now make your mind up.I thought your butler did your cycling,just so you did not get a sweat on.
 

PaulSB

Legendary Member
Even if I won the lottery £65+ million I would never spend that kind of money on a bike, even if the half centimetre was a physically gain
Oooh. No. If I won that sort of money I'd have a bespoke bike from the frame upwards. I have a daydream from time to time, walking in to my LBS and saying "Right guys, money no object, let's build a bike!" As much as anything a reward for 20+ years of help, advice and service.

Sounds indulgent I know but after buying my kids a house each the vast bulk of such a sum would go to charity. I couldn't conceive of spending it........
 
D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
Oooh. No. If I won that sort of money I'd have a bespoke bike from the frame upwards.
But I still don't understand how any bike could conceivably cost that kind of money, what is it you can add or not add that can take the price up there & as said ultimately what determines its usefulness is the engine. It doesn't matter how much lightness you add, I could never ride a bike up the alps,
 

PaulSB

Legendary Member
But I still don't understand how any bike could conceivably cost that kind of money, what is it you can add or not add that can take the price up there & as said ultimately what determines its usefulness is the engine. It doesn't matter how much lightness you add, I could never ride a bike up the alps,
Yes, I understand this and I agree it's the engine which counts. I feel what I'm talking of here is personal pleasure and owning something beautiful. At very close to 66 the circumstances of huge personal wealth would, for me, be irrelevant.

I'd love to set my kids up. A house and a reasonable sum in trust of some form so they could retire at say +/- 55. I'd pay a decorator to paint my house. I'd like a nice car, not big, £30k on a nice all electric. When we go away we could stay in better B&B's.

So things I could add to my life would be very small and the best bike I could imagine would give me more pleasure than the £65m.

Hope this makes sense?
 

classic33

Leg End Member
But I still don't understand how any bike could conceivably cost that kind of money, what is it you can add or not add that can take the price up there & as said ultimately what determines its usefulness is the engine. It doesn't matter how much lightness you add, I could never ride a bike up the alps,
Wouldn't adding something extra make it heavier?
 
But I still don't understand how any bike could conceivably cost that kind of money, what is it you can add or not add that can take the price up there & as said ultimately what determines its usefulness is the engine. It doesn't matter how much lightness you add, I could never ride a bike up the alps,

It really isn't that hard to understand though surely? :smile: Clearly, you are not the target market for such a machine, which is fair enough. I wouldn't pay the hundreds of euros for some of the bottles of wine for sale in my local supermarket. Or the 250 euros per kg for the Wagyu steak. But I appreciate some folks will and do so because they can afford to, because they can taste the subtle differences and know that the creation time was lengthier and involved more work.

You might not be able to ride a 6.8kg climbing bike with the best quality components for durability up the Alps but others can. Some of them want to get up those climbs as fast as they can and beat their previous times. Some of them will pay for the marginal gains that 6.8kg bike with more exotic materials that involved greater research to produce and advance their personal best times by seconds or minutes, as the case might be, over their less light 8 or 9kg bike. Same engine. Same course. Different times due to...the bike.
 

roley poley

Über Member
Location
leeds
It really isn't that hard to understand though surely? :smile: Clearly, you are not the target market for such a machine, which is fair enough. I wouldn't pay the hundreds of euros for some of the bottles of wine for sale in my local supermarket. Or the 250 euros per kg for the Wagyu steak. But I appreciate some folks will and do so because they can afford to, because they can taste the subtle differences and know that the creation time was lengthier and involved more work.

You might not be able to ride a 6.8kg climbing bike with the best quality components for durability up the Alps but others can. Some of them want to get up those climbs as fast as they can and beat their previous times. Some of them will pay for the marginal gains that 6.8kg bike with more exotic materials that involved greater research to produce and advance their personal best times by seconds or minutes, as the case might be, over their less light 8 or 9kg bike. Same engine. Same course. Different times due to...the bike.
I also think there is quite a placebo effect on thinking you are on the best of the best but would have no idea how to do a blind field test to prove it
 
I also think there is quite a placebo effect on thinking you are on the best of the best but would have no idea how to do a blind field test to prove it

Hmmm. Dunno. I appreciate that there will be a placebo effect on riders not chasing faster times and who ride relatively slowly anyway, so that the benefit is perhaps less than imagined and the joy is simply in riding a machine that feels great to ride. However, actual time records don't lie and repeated attempts on the same course on different bikes can tell a story. Personally speaking, I see a difference in Strava times between my own bikes. Not all bikes handle exactly the same even at the equivalent price point so there is an element of finding the right bike on a personal level too.

My two road bikes have a weight difference of 2.6kg and a big aero difference too - they handle very differently in terms of acceleration, how they maintain speed, general feel, easier or harder to climb with, faster to sprint on etc. There is nothing placebo about which is best for which route I want to do; the heavier more aero bike is notably faster on less lumpy routes whereas the lighter bike gets me Strava KOM's on steep gradients the aero machine has failed to match. That said, I have collected KOM's that on the lighter bike I struggled to get by sprinting on the aero bike. Same engine. We are talking seconds here. Marginal. Utterly irrelevant to most cyclists. But even as a 51 year old racer, the difference between me being on the podium or not is fine margins and so the bike best suited to me for a particular course can help me achieve what I want.

So...yeah, I firmly believe that while the engine is first and foremost to get in shape, a bike can make a difference too.
 
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