After my flirtation with components by Paul, I decided it was time to examine the other side, the low end of the bicycle evolutionary scale. Now, since I would never want to get too close to one of these machines myself, and since I am congenitally lazy, I decided to let my fingers do the walking and check out the Sunday paper. Sears is always a good place to start. Sears generally has good stuff in whatever genre (ask me about my Craftsman stories). Anyway, there was a fine looking bicycle, mountain bike of course, for $129. Now this was not the bottom of the line, this one actually had 18 speeds. I had seen another one for about a C note that boasted 15 speeds - I didn't know they made 5 speed clusters anymore. The Sears one also advertised Shimano SIS shifting! You could buy a pair of these and have change from the cost of one Paul derailleur. There was a picture of a happy, smiling family astride these fine machines (sporting $19 helmets, I might add). Although it did look like the HSF had yet to get out of the parking lot (beads of sweat were conspicuously absent from their familial foreheads). I suspect the happy smiling faces would be contorted in grimaces of pain after attempting Smuggler's Notch on such machines. Still, they looked perfectly adequate for a 2 mile junket down the bike path. This really is now the basic American bike, replacing the ratty ten speed that was inflicted on an unsuspecting public in days of yore. Now you or I wouldn't be caught dead without dropped handlebars and toe clips (now clipless), but your average casual rider really doesn't want to be forced into a position where his knees graze his chest. He wants to sit upright and damn the aerodynamics. And having 18 speeds to do it with makes life that much more easier. No longer the need to learn the arcane intricacies of friction shifting, just click away, the equivalent of automatic transmission for bikes.
Another ad that caught my eye was the Lechmere ad for a Huffy. This too was a $129.98 special, with optional $16 helmets. This one looked like a serious machine, sporting the cow horn handlebars. The saddle was pointed at a rakish angle towards the front wheel hub, and it looked like the chain was positioned on granny chainring and big cog in the back. Good for doing wheelies out of the showroom. What I couldn't tell from the picture was what variety the top tube and down tube were. They looked oversize from the side (could we be talking aluminum for $129 ?), but it was unclear if they were really round or just flat channel iron.
I saw an ad from a bike store that looked like a serious machine. I was a little dubious when one of the free extras thrown in was a kickstand. Also the absence of a price in the ad was worrisome. Maybe the kickstand was titanium.
One interesting item I saw next to the Sears bike ad was a treadmill device that was advertised as having "motivational electronics." What, I asked myself, could they mean by that. Maybe they had a little mechanical voice that would say "Come on, sluggo, move your lazy butt" when you started to slack off. After all, they have cars that talk to you. Last thing I want when I buy a car is a Japanese voice telling me my door is ajar. But I digress. Having a heart rate monitor that beeps at you when your out of the "target range" is bad enough. I set my "target range" for a low end of about 4 and a high of about 300. It never bothers me.
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