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Do you have a favorite place that you buy your cycling gear from? Any places with really good prices on components or bike tubes? Feel free to share.
I personally have not purchased any new gear online, but I'd love to find a place to buy bike tubes in bulk at a good price.
Internet bike/bike part ordering is the Kraft's single-wrapped piece of processed cheese compared to the rich, soft Camembert shopping of the past brick and mortar hunt .
I must have bought from 20-30 bike shops and almost that many more online some so obscure I doubt many cyclists even heard of them. The last place I could buy bulk tubes from (quality tubes) was from Importer called J&B out near Miami when I had a connection there. Online shopping has brought convince, but so many disappointments. There are few things more exciting to a bike junky than scrounging through piles/boxes of old bike parts from bygone eras and I miss it. There were some fantastic old shops in NYC and Philadelphia (Via Bicycles a shadow of former self but they have internet presence last I checked - they were heaven in the eighties!) for old bike gear but sadly they are all fading away as the owners have gotten older/passed away.
I still enjoy the occasional trip abroad to France or England to old bike shops and/or attend a jumble or two. When I lived in Mid Hudson Valley (NY) and Lambertville (NJ) I'd attend bike shows and bike auctions (Copake, Brookline, Trexlertown) all over the NY/NJ/PA/CT area. Two events - the late nineties through 2003 Great British Bike Weekend in Philadelphia with rides, bike clinics, pub crawls, bike/bike parts swap and Jon Sharatt's Minnesota Lake Pepin ride were AWESOME. As for .com times the "new" Nashbar, Competitive Cyclist, Performance online buying and there ilk hold little interest for me as you're but an encrypted credit card and order number. Cycling for me was always about community and its what I like in cycling from shopping to riding. Yes I occasionally checkout online happenings at Rivendell to see what Grant's up to, Bob Beckman, Bruce Gordon's, Specialties TA (still some of the best chainrings anywhere), Wallingford in New Orleans (still hanging on through the flood and all), etc. If you must shop the Kraft's single places - checkout Wiggle in UK for a few things the US online discount warehouses might not stock.
Highlights of this cyclists life: all the rides with others, meeting the late Sheldon Brown at bike swap in Brookline, MA, meeting Specialized's founder in very early days (they had just come out with their first performance bicycle tire) and chatting with a "slim" Greg LeMond a month after his tour win.
Bikes owned. I've been into quality (compared to the typical hardware store bike most all kids owned) cycles since age ten when I bought a $350 ($350 in 1970 dollars was big bucks for a bike for a kid) Fuji Finest with my newspaper route savings in early 1970's. Since then I've probably owned and sold over forty bikes from a 1940's Raleigh Sport to a 1950's Claude Butler Audex, to a 1960's Schwinn Paramount to a 1970's Fuji Finest, Raleigh Professional, Cinelli, and Del Rosa racing bikes. I caught the mountain bike bug early having lived near the environs of Gary Fisher and owned one of the first run of Specialized Stumpjumper's, a Mountain Goat, a Yeti, a Ritchey P-21, and a Bridgestone X-01. I've also owned several customs like a Bruce Gordon and Rivendell as well as a stock Merlin, Look, and of course recumbents by Rans (V-Rex), Bacchetta (Corso or pricey Carbon Aero) and Lightening (P-38 midracer). Older age cycling. Over forty? There's more to cycling than keeping up with the young riders and the latest carbon fiber bike and heavily sweetened "energy" packets you see all over shoulders of roads may not be the best for you. My advice: If you're over forty and haven't tried recumbent/trike - I highly recommend. Your neck and back will thank you. You're not twenty-eight anymore.
Bikes in cinema: Checkout that luscious bike shop window across the street from umbrella shop in "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" or young Albert Finney in "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" with good scenes inside the old Nottingham Raleigh factory.
Stay safe out there and may the wind be at your back.
Last edited by bongofury; 08-18-2012 at 11:36 AM..
Usually if I'm ordering something online, it's because one of the bike shops either didn't have it, or couldn't get it for a reasonable price. That means I generally only order oddball things online. So I mostly order from Velo Orange, Wallingford Bicycles, or I'm buying some vintage part on Ebay.
Me? Nothing. I know the places to get what I need for any of my cycling needs. Obviously I went way off-topic in my lengthy post trying to convey a sense of the good old days of cycling before dot com, that and my hope to push some fellow cycling geezers off their diamond frames and onto a recumbent and/or trike for more comfort. Younger rider? Get out their and hammer on your carbon fiber frame and Zipp wheels to your hearts content, but please stash your empty GU's (and other energy supplements) till you're able to throw them away in an appropriate waste receptacle. Don't be a litter bug
Yes De Rosa. By the time I caught misspelling I could no longer edit my post.
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