The O’Grady Theory of Affordability

~ Patrick O'Grady

Well, baby, what I couldn’t do
With plenty of money and you. — “With Plenty of Money and You,” Count Basie

There’s an old gag about the typical bicycle racer being the kind of guy whose car is worth less than the bike on its roof rack. But y’know, that ain’t all that high a bar to hop anymore.

Check out what one of my colleagues considers to be “performance bikes at prices for real people.” * A $3,000 frameset? A $7,000 ready-to-ride bike? If these are down-to-earth prices, I’m clearly living somewhere around the planet’s core, because the only way I could afford either of those items is if I did my shopping with the old S&W hand cannon instead of a Visa card.

You know what you can get for a hair over $3,000? A 2009 Honda Rebel. That’s right — a fucking motorcycle. Don’t gotta pedal it or nothin’.

Know what you can get for $7,000? A complete, ready-to-ride custom Steelman road bike with an Ultegra build kit — plus a spare frameset in case anything unpleasant happens to the first one.

And for $10,000? You can have my 2005 Subaru Forester. It’s got a Thule roof rack, too, so you can slap a couple $7,000 road bikes up there and fit the profile of the typical bike racer.

In the damp and steamy dreams of the cycling press, anyway.

* The headline has since been changed to something a little more sensible. So we’ve got that going for us.

13 thoughts on “The O’Grady Theory of Affordability”

  2. Hey, K … yes indeedy. It’s easy to get caught up in the carbon-and-titanium works of The Big Bullshit Machine® at Interbike, and none of the tech editors wants to be caught playing with the toys from the bargain bin. They want the shiny bits, just like any other monkey.

    That said, I’m told that one of the lads is on a mission to find decent road and mountain bikes for under a G. So stay tuned for News From the Cheap Seats.

  3. Or, as one of the commenters said, just wait a year and buy the 8k Unobtanium bike on e-Bay for half price or less after the original buyer tires of the thing.

  4. Affordable? No thank you very much! I’ll stick with my Austro-Daimler Ultima with my Mavic retrofriction controlling six (as in pack) cogs on the rear and two (as in fer) on the front. Yah, it be old ……… but so’s the motor. 🙂

  5. Ah, that’s affordable to the poor saps on Wall Street……

    Interbike: where the song “Take the retards bowling” has never been more appropriate!

  6. Sorry for the long delay in participating. I’ve been reading, but I’ve been too busy to respond.

    I bought the Cervelo Soloist in aluminum for the very reason that I did not (and still don’t) have the budget or the stomach to lay down seven to ten large on a plastic bike with disposable rims and other soon-to-be obsolete parts. At the time, the Soloist was $2000 out of the box ready to ride with a big warranty. I haven’t had one single problem with it.

  7. Now that my back has healed (knock on titanium) I find my old aluminum CAAD5 to be perfectly acceptable albeit the stem is seriously jacked up as I bought the frame a tad on the small size. The Six-Thirteen frameset I bought in ’05, just as I herniated a disk, is definitely more comfortable to this soon to be 57 year old bag of bones, esp. on long rides. But that bike is now a youthful five years old, usually riding on standard, long lasting Mavic Open Pro hoops and soon to be replaced Chorus-10 shifters. Sheeet, my left (front) shifter has now been on three successive framesets since 1996 while the right (rear) ones seem to wear out every half dozen years or so.

    Most of this new stuff seems long on dollars and short on longevity. I guess that is fine for former New York State Governors who like to bang expensive hookers, but makes less sense for the rest of us buying durable goods.

  8. The rich must be getting richer, because I’m seeing quite a few twatwaffles getting into that sport that requires sleeveless jerseys and Sharpies. I mean there are way too many black Audi driving, Cervelo P-4 riding 30-somethings in this town. Now, I don’t fault them for doing something other than eating, shopping, playing golf, and shooting Bambi. Maybe they’ll stay under the ubiquitous morbidly obese threshold. Chapeau to them for turning a pedal. But really, when your first and only bike is a TT that costs way more than O’Grady’s Subaru, that’s nuts (yes, I’m jealous).

    Good for me I’ll get to buy one of those Shivs only slightly used and for less than half price sometime next year when one of those hairy-legged douches gets tired of his wedding tackle going numb after 15 minutes of “training for next year’s half Iron Man in Dallas”.

  9. Makes me want to do something totally dorky to all of my bikes, just to piss off those who must have the latest and greatest. Kick stand on the road bike, book rack on the mountain. Maybe ride in cut-off jeans tomorrow. Anyone know where I can one of those Lou Brock umbrella hats?

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