The Bike of Doom

I suppose that depends upon who’s riding it.

The question of who actually rides department store bikes (other than experienced cyclists who have made a conscious decisions to buy one) has intrigued me for some time. From what I’ve seen, there are two groups of people who choose department store bikes: the very poor and families with children.

This makes sense when you think about it. I see a lot of winter cyclists who are clearly not doing it for recreation, but because cycling is their only means of transportation: quicker than walking, cheaper than a bus. I’m always impressed by these hardy souls. If you live in a climate more temperate than Winnipeg’s, cycling in winter may not seem so strange, but when temperatures drop to -45 degrees C, as they did here a couple of weeks ago with wind chill, cycling becomes an amazing, arduous, and dangerous activity. Only those who absolutely need to cycle would do so. The majority of winter cyclists I see, usually riding on the sidewalk, are on department store bikes.

In summer, when kids start cycling, they all seem to be riding the cheapest sort of department store bike and, again, it makes sense. Despite all the encouragement by cycling evangelists and promotes to “buy local” or to patronize Local Bike Stores, parents know that their kids are fickle. They may express and interest in cycling one day, and lose it the next. Providing your kids with an expensive $200+ bike from a bike shop is economically unfeasible for many families. Last year while cycling with Mike, we saw many cheapSupercycles on the road, and many families clearly riding all new bikes. The $79 to $99 Huffy or Supercycle, purchased at the local Walmart or Canadian Tire, seems to satisfy most kids. My kids all had cheap department store bikes and rode them for years. Not one of these bikes wore out, or caused injury. They were eventually replaced with better bikes because the kids outgrew them.

So, what does all this mean? It means that for the most part, people who buy and ride department store bikes do so because they don’t have much choice, not because they don’t know better. I know a Mercedes-Benz is a better car than a Chevy Impala… that doesn’t mean I can afford to buy one. It also means that criticizing people for riding department store bikes is futile.

The only advice we should be giving cyclists is how to get the most out of the bikes they already own.

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