I Bought a Bike

In my ever increasing attempts at staying active, for fear of being fat again, I decided that driving to work was a waste of money, and so I decided to buy a bike and just bike to the train station and get in some cardio every day.  So I started shopping around for bicycles. What I learned is that because I am cursed with being very tall and large in stature, like my brother before me, is that I wasn't going to find a good deal on a bike, because I had to get an XL frame which apparently no one has at a cheap price, because everyone caters to the "average" height/weight biker. Which is ridiculous. I feel like it is some kind of prejudice against larger than average people. Needless to say I had to bite the bullet and go to the local bike shop and buy a new bike that was actually big enough to support my statureness.

Once I got to the bike shop I tell the guy what I need and they set me up with a bike. I ended up getting a $420 hybrid bike, because, who knows, I could end up doing a little bit of off roading, and I wanted to make absolutely certain that I would have a bike that would support those kinds of situations while being smoothish like a road bike. So I buy the bike and a bike lock, and start riding the bike to work the next day, and every thing seemed fine. The bike rides just fine, and I am happy with my purchase.

The second day of riding to work I am in a hurry and while I am going over all of the speed bumps in my neighborhood, of which there are many, because old people - who are a different problem entirely. I swear the old people in this neighborhood should probably be living in a care facility somewhere and not by themselves in a neighborhood fraught with young fast driving whipper-snappers and ethnic diversity. Seriously, in my col-de-sac alone there are upper-middle class white people, blue collar hispanic families, single rich kids like me, and Polynesians. This is old person hell. Why are they living there? Anyway, lots of speed bumps. So as I am going over these speed bumps my handlebars start moving around, and I don't have time to go back home and get my tools to tighten them up. So I just got to deal with loose handlebars all day. It was pretty terrible. So feel bad for me.

Once I had tightened up my handle bars I went to work out and sat on my weight bench and felt an annoying aching pain in my bike seat area of my body. The bike seat wasn't super comfortable, but I didn't notice that it was actually painful until afterward I guess, because I was distracted by the flailing and out of control handlebars that I was dealing with. Needless to say, and this is where my actual rant is starting, I started wondering why on earth people sell products without things like, I don't know, a seat on a bike that won't destroy your rear end after 2 days of use. Seriously, I think that anyone that is buying a new bike, especially from a place that has a limited supply of something and is not giving a bargain, would just want a gel padded seat. So just charge an extra $10-20 for the bike and put on a better seat instead of the glute destroying triangle of butt death.

Sadly, that isn't even the end of things that needed to come standard on this bike. On Tuesday morning this week I went to get on my bike to ride to work, and noticed that it had a flat, and thinking back on what I had ridden through the day before I could not think of what would have caused a flat, because there was almost literally nothing. Here is the kicker. They have thorn resistant tubes and tubes that aren't thorn resistant. They also have a goo that they use to prevent flats that they can put in your tires and fills up holes. So why does that not come standard on all bikes? I am going to buy that crap anyway, because it is obviously necessary. I don't want to spend $100 on tubes every month to fix a flat tire, because I used my bike for the reason that people use a bike and got a flat 4 times. It is ridiculous. Include all of that crap in the purchase of the bike, just charge an extra $70 for it, and completely get ride of tubes that aren't thorn resistant, because what use are those? Is there any purpose for not having a thorn resistant tube? It's like if we lived in a world where you could buy children, and you went to the children store to buy one, because that is what you do in this world to get children, and there are kids that come with an immune system that doesn't actually do anything. It is just there, because children need to come standard with an immune system even though it doesn't do anything. Or, you can buy a child with a fully functioning immune system for a little bit more, but the one with the immune system is actually going to live for more than 3 minutes after you take it out of the box. Weird analogy? Yeah, I know, but I think I made my point.

So, here I am. I have had my bike for almost 2 weeks. My butt hurts and I have only been able to ride it to work 5 times since I got it. All because it didn't come standard with things that it should have obviously come standard with. So I guess the lesson to take away from this is that if you intend on selling a product. Include the necessary things even if it is a little more, because your consumer is going to buy it regardless, because they need/want the product, and they will be far happier with their purchase if it actually works like they expect and it doesn't destroy a triangle shaped area of their butt.

-- RANT END --