Sorry for kind of blowing off the day streaming but I've been talking about bicycles in the patrons discord. It's no secret I want to get back to pedaling but I'm kind of priced out right now. Until WalMart has apparently dropped a gravel bike for $250 that people say is really good actually?
The day went off the rails when I stumbled across this youtuber reviewing the bike. The tl;dw is basically "This is a bike that your average person is gonna' use for average stuff and it performs averagely" and folks, that's actually a huge fuckin' deal.
People who are super into pedaling know that buying a cheap bike from department store is a bad idea. You get a heavy, junky object with the world's cheapest shifters on a flat bar, assembled by a disgruntled dude in two minutes with furniture allen keys, and you're gonna' end up hating it.
It's also plain as fucking day that bicycle prices are absolutely stupid. EBikes have really blown the lid off of that as well. People are selling wholeass motorized electric bicycles for prices that are competing with the standard chain driven aluminium twigs.
For a few decades now bicycles have been exclusively the domain of sport sickos and kids too young to have a driver's license. So it's been you spend $70 on a bike shaped object for a child or Final Fantasy Boss raid dollars on a bike weaved by elves out of cat whiskers. Commuters? pff who?
My own specific desires for a bike are also complicated by being drop-bar-pilled. Even when you're not going super hard the weird bullhorns offer a lot more flexibility in position and eventually end up more comfortable in the long run. Especially during a long trip. I've been looking and the lowest I can find for something drop bar is in the $800 bikes. Now Wal Mart of all places has sauntered up with a drop bar bike, with shifters integrated into the bars instead of those insane "suicide shifters" mounted somewhere on the frame? And it has nice fat tires for taking bumps? And no unnecessary, energy absorbing, suspension? Disc Brakes?!?!
For only $250?
There has to be a catch, right? It's gotta' give you testicular torsion or something. Maybe it transes your gender? So I've been doing a metric fuckton of digging today trying to talk myself out of having to buy it and ride it myself.
The usual claim for bikes being so insanely expensive is that you're paying for: The service of the bike shop (fitting, wrenching, etcetera); Weight reduction; and the geartrain/shifting apparatus.
I'm gonna' go from easiest to least tangible and tell y'all what I'm seeing.
So the easiest thing to look at is weight.
This thing weighs 30lbs. To compare it to something that I'm familiar with pedaling, I looked up the current model of my most beloved commuter bike, instead of my road racing bike that got stolen when I moved to albuquerque
GIANT bikes doesn't own a scale
But Google says it's about 10.5kg which is about 23 lbs. So fully a third heavier than the best commuter I ever rode... which I put saddlebags full of tools and emergency parts on for miles and miles and miles. So that's... fine. Maybe even good considering I want this device to un-fat my fat ass.
Up next is the slightly less immediately verifiable claim of "part quality" which usually refers to things like the shifters, derailleurs (shift bits pt2) and "Drive train" (Spinny foot bits and chain stuff).
So I did what anyone would do and obsessively watched vids until I caught the shifter brand
This helpful youtuber has actually found the assembly on AliExpress, and it's predictably one of the cheapest things on the market. He's very thorough and I've gotta' talk about it for a couple of paragraphs because there's a couple things going on that amaze me.
He makes some very good notes about how there are some parts that you would want to be very strong being made of plastic, and even goes on to say that they work for the purpose. There's a little bit of weird feel if you're trying to shift too high that you should be aware of also lest ye damage stuff
He also runs just the levers in sequence with some "better" Shimano derailleurs and comes to the conclusion that they're pretty comparable. Fine even. You're not gonna' win any races or go touring any defrances with them but over and over he comes back to "yeah, they're fine I guess."
And this could sound like a criticism of their content personally, but it's everywhere in the coverage of this machine and I just have to point it out. There is an UNREAL amount of effort being put out there by cycling enthusiasts to be predictably disappointed in this machine. The amount of whinging, whining and weird sneering going on about this machine and these affordable parts that by all of their own fucking reports "work fine and are for normal people" is fucking WILD.
There's so much of it. If it were AVGN they'd be red faced and growling the words through clenched teeth.
So anyway, the shifters could benefit from a structural washer and some mindfulness during use but they also check out. So the only remaining thing is service, and I think this actually amounts to something.
This bike is gonna' be assembled by a 17 year old when you first get it.
This is super nebulous and I don't have any videos about it, but there's a shitload of people who could be out riding that straight up don't have access to a friendly local bike shop. There's also people who only have a bike shop, hold the friendly. The answer is the same for all of us though. Sometimes you gotta' be your own 17 year old, and buying a bike from Walmart is your commitment to that. You're gonna' need to take a look at this machine and wrench on it yourself. Even taking it to a bike shop it's gonna' cost its own price just to get it a once over by a real professional.
Me personally, I'm a bikes enthusiast and amateur mechanic, and I want to get around without spending money on gas, so this isn't even close to being an obstacle for me. But I know a lot of folks don't have years of obsessively loving two-wheeled transports or even own their own set of sockets.
But even so, for the low low price of fucking one of these bikes up and making a lot of mistakes you could just buy a second one of these bikes and start fresh. Give the nice 2nd one to your partner and help them love cycling so you can both go ride together. Learn some stuff. Go to harbor freight.
So all of this is me saying "I'm gonna' get one of these and report back. I guess."
If you're following this and you're interested in doing so you could also help me out here.
I'll not be shutting up about riding bikes anytime soon so that's investing in future content.
Anyway, this raises some further questions though. like "What the fuck is WalMart doing pedaling affordable pedals? Why is this peddler peddling pedals to the pedalers?
And the more I've thought about it the more it kinda makes sense that this is a great commuter bike, actually.
This is PURE speculation, but I think this is our first sign of the "Bicycles as expensive rich boy grunt machines" market falling to ash. This is by all accounts an affordable, reasonable, functional adult transportation device suited to a variety of terrains.
For Wal Mart, it makes sense to provide affordable transportation to a population that's being priced out of cars, but don't have functional transit forms of transportation. It's an investment in their own consumer base being able to continue to go to their stores instead of ordering online.
Bicycle shops can't really fill that niche affordably. They've been riding on the back of closeted spandex fetishist and extreme sport enthusiasts for years and years at this point. Finding new ways to condense hummingbird juice into lighter more iridescent bicycle frames.
But Walmart can import like nobody's business
Ebikes pulled the mask off of the bicycle market by offering robust adult MOTORIZED vehicles for the price of basically a "Good" bicycle and including A FUCKING MOTOR on the top for no real additional charge.
So why the fuck would you buy a non motorized bike that you can still pedal, for the same?
Long story short: Nobody is!
That's where Walmart is stepping in, presumably slapping the Ozark Trail badge on some frame manufacturer who really needs to move some back stock, and sticking some better bits on there, driving a bit of real competition at a jealously guarded garden.
To the benefit of the rest of us, hopefully.
So yeah, probably gonna' blow some money on this thing and get back out there. If you're interested in keeping up with that, this is social media and I like wearing lycra. I'll let you know.
anyway send me a can of spam. http://throne.com/wobblypython
