Wholemeal Biking

I had to laugh when I read Bill Fowler’s suggestion for a ten year life in any used bike... that alters the whole game. What machine would make 100000 miles? (A CBX1000, to my surprise!) If long term ownership is considered we are forced to question the value of hi-tech, including the cost of spares and the necessity of replacing tyres every 5000 miles.

The real cost of a vehicle purchased from new, for example, is not usually realised by the original purchaser, it’s spread over several owners, the total cost never really becoming apparent. Just how much in terms of money and total energy resources is expended is lost in the midst of time, and all we’re left with are yet more biking myths.

Purchase with a ten year life scale in mind drastically alters the ground work. Most of us change bikes with frequency, becoming bored or finding the bike unsuitable. Part of the fun is trying different bikes a haphazard and usually costly business.

An answer is to build ones own motorcycle, or modify existing machinery. To see Pete Lawrence’s beautifully engineered feet forward, hub centre steered, Talbot/Guzzi (the mind boggles - Ed), is a lesson to anyone dissatisfied with contemporary design and engineering. Bill Fowler’s call for the cheap, economical, all round roadster (albeit with drum brakes, silly old codger) will require much ingenuity.

But where, for instance, both these ideas or ideals will have their problems, the solution arrived at will have produced a vehicle with a completely different life from that anything a major manufacturer could or want to produce, because few, if any, manufacturers are interested in selling reliable, comfortable, cheap, powerful, fine handling machines.

The reason is simply political. We are all inexorably involved in the conspicuous consumption of crap (for want of a better word). We must try to extract some sense and useful components from this morass of madness. We tend to forget that we all contribute to the terrible pollution that is destroying our world, but wooden bicycles are not much of a turn on, so our mode of transport will continue to pollute and exhaust finite resources, we can at least consider reducing it to a minimum.

Although those big behemoths have passed, shedding several hundred pounds, they still cost the earth to buy and run. Perhaps ten years isn’t sufficient - maybe we should think 25 or 50 years? Anyone want to buy a 1947 BSA B33, rigid framed, in boxes for £1500, last you a lifetime, can’t go wrong...

Robert Garnham